The story of the green chairs in Bryant Park can be boiled down to an antidote to hostile architecture.
In the late 1970s, William H. Whyte, a journalist and urban planner, was commissioned by a foundation to write up a set of recommendations for revitalizing the underutilized green space at the corner of 42nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas. Whyte had spent hours meticulously documenting the habits of people in Midtown’s public plazas and came away with the dispiriting conclusion that for all of its conviviality, “New York is a tough town to sit in.”
Among the things that the park needed, he said, were movable chairs.
It was a seemingly simple solution, but the plan lay dormant for more than a decade.
Then in 1991, Andrew Manshel saw a job listing to become the associate director of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, the nonprofit founded in 1980 by Dan Biederman and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund that was spearheading the park’s renovation—and Whyte’s vision. Manshel, a former attorney with no planning experience, applied and got the position. Soon after, he set out to pick a chair. Continue reading →
The depth and breadth of social capital that exists in Utica, New York is astonishing. When down-staters and policy makers generally think about the string of industrial cities along the New York Throughway from Albany to Buffalo they/we envision hopeless, dark, hollowed-out downtowns and empty factory buildings. Because of the wealth generated in Utica from the late 19th Century to the mid-20th Century it has the cultural and social resources to meet the needs of a city of more than twice its size. Utica has an impressive collection of downtown commercial and civic structures by major New York architects (including Carrère and Hastings, Thomas Lamb and Richard Upjohn). The town has a City Beautiful era, 600-acre park system, that is way more than a city of 60,000 people could ever use, or even properly maintain. It also has an actively used, well equipped, professionally run public library. Utica boasts one of the country’s most recognized art museums, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, in a Phillip Johnson designed building. Like so many American communities that had periods of great economic expansion during the industrial age, among Utica’s legacy institutions is a significant community foundation. Utica’s has assets of around $150 million. The city also is situated in the Mohawk Valley, an area generally under-recognized for its incredible scenic beauty, and which is only minutes away from the foothills of the Adirondacks and their vast recreational opportunities. Continue reading →
We moved beyond the suburbs so that we can breathe free, park without worry and enjoy a parade.
By Liz FarmerOct. 11, 2019 6:22 pm ET
The Steam Engine and Craft Show parade in Smithsburg, Md. Sept. 26, 2017. PHOTO: LIZ FARMER
Smithsburg, Md.
On a Saturday afternoon in late September, I observed my 6-year-old son repeatedly doing two things we’ve always told him not to do: run into the street and pick up candy off the ground. We were watching the annual tractor parade roll down Main Street here, inhaling the festive atmosphere along with a fair amount of diesel fumes. The parade features more than 100 steam- and gas-engine tractors (most of them with riders tossing candy) and is the highlight of Smithsburg’s annual Steam Engine and Craft Show.
In this town of about 3,000, the weekend of the fair is a big deal. It draws visitors from all around Maryland’s Washington and Frederick counties. This was only the second year we’ve gone to the parade. Last year we barely knew anyone. This year we ran into more than a half-dozen people we knew through school or youth sports. Some were simply friends we’ve made in the community. One of them invited us to watch the parade on her front porch. As we left that evening for the five-minute drive home through mostly farmland and woods, I smiled and thought, “This is why we moved here.”
For the fourth consecutive year, U.S. census figures have shown that thousands of millennials and younger Gen Xers are leaving big cities. Since 2014 an average of about 30,000 residents between 25 and 39 have left big cities annually. My husband and I left Washington, D.C., for the suburbs more than a decade ago because of affordability issues. Now I believe we’re in the next new trend of workers with mobile jobs: moving to a small town to improve our quality of life.
According to a survey by the freelance marketplace Upwork Inc., people who freelance or have jobs they can take with them are more likely to move out of urban job centers to places that cater to their lifestyles. It’s one of the reasons places like Boise, Idaho, and Charlotte, N.C., are seeing faster population growth than most big cities. When we packed up and headed for farm country 70 miles outside Washington, my husband and I took our son, cat and jobs with us.
Raising a small child in a major metro area can be grueling. Paying for child care is like taking out a second mortgage. Weekend activities often require far more planning than they’re worth. Any parent knows that leaving the house with an obstinate toddler requires reserves of emotional strength. Add the near-certainty of hitting traffic, struggling to find parking, and waiting in long lines, and each trip requires a stockpile of fortitude.
When it came time to leave the city, our priorities were simple: We wanted to live in a town with good schools and in a house on a lot 3 acres or larger. My husband and I were both able to work from home four days a week, so we cast a wide net around the Washington area.
That’s how we ended up here. We now live in a house that could swallow our old house whole, with acreage to spread out and start long-talked-about projects. We’ve acquired pigs, chickens and, most recently, a puppy. We live next door to a winery with owners our age and whose property we can stroll to on paths cut through fields. Our other neighbors have a herd of goats from which we have a 5-gallon bucket of frozen milk. My fall project is to learn how to make goat-milk soap.
The seasons actually change here. The mountainsides are awash in fall colors. In the winter, the snow creates a quiet, white blanket over the land and stays around to be enjoyed instead of melting into dirty sidewalk slush. In the spring and summer, the fields come to life again and we marvel at how fast the corn grows. Once people get here, the speed and intensity of city life loses its hold over them.
Of course, we’ve had to make adjustments. Washington County is a conservative and rural part of Maryland, so we’ve traded cultural diversity for economic diversity. Eighty percent of the population (including us) is non-Hispanic white. Nearly 14% live in poverty, a rate almost twice that of our old suburb.
There have been lifestyle trade-offs, too. Eating at a good restaurant now requires a 30-minute drive. But going apple picking is something we do at an orchard on the way home from school. I miss being able to walk to our neighborhood playground or the nearby yogurt shop. But I love ambling around our property here, or driving to the local creamery and watching my son play with school friends on its playground.
Perhaps most important, we have psychological as well as physical space. I don’t wonder if I’ll find a parking spot at the grocery store or movie theater. I don’t reflexively check for traffic unless I’m getting on a highway. While playing in our backyard, I don’t feel hemmed in by trees and roof lines. I look up and feel the wide expanse of the open sky.
Before we moved, it had been years since I’d been to a parade. In crowded cities, they’re a pain. Who wants to deal with the hassle of parking and the crush of people trying to leave when it’s over? As children in pre-tech-boom Mountain View, Calif., my sister and I walked from our house to the main drag to watch the small parades the city would host. We often marched in the annual Halloween costume parade. In my memory, parades are simple and fun—a reason for a community to get together.
Living here, I’ve found that again.
Ms. Farmer is a journalist and fiscal policy expert.
Erie Hit ‘Rock Bottom.’ The Former Factory Hub Thinks It Has a Way Out.
Pennsylvania city aims to plow $150 million from mix of public, private sources to rebuild blighted downtown; ‘We might not have another chance’
John Persinger, CEO of Erie Downtown Development Corp., says: ‘We want to bring more people in and raise the quality of life for everyone.’ByRuth Simon and Kris Maher | Photographs by Libby March for The Wall Street JournalUpdated Oct. 7, 2019 10:51 am ET
ERIE, Pa.—To local leaders, a row of abandoned redbrick buildings in the heart of this Rust Belt city’s ailing downtown presents the best hope to spark a citywide revival.
The buildings—stripped down to their plaster walls, tin ceilings and worn wood floors—are part of a $150 million plan to draw more people to live and work downtown. One building, most recently a biker bar, will house a food hall with seating for nearly 200 people. An old bus terminal will be demolished to make space for an indoor courtyard that will connect to an incubator for culinary startups.
The project is the cornerstone of an effort to reimagine a city once defined by industrial giants such as Hammermill Paper Co. and General Electric Co. Erie has lost more than 30% of its population since 1960. Nearly 27% of its residents live below the federal poverty level, according to the Census Bureau, well above the 14.6% U.S. poverty rate.
Erie Mill & Press Co. building in Erie, Pa.
Older industrial cities across the Northeast and Midwest are struggling to replace lost manufacturing jobs after decades of deindustrialization. Erie, with a population of about 96,000, presents a new test of whether—and how—a town built on manufacturing can redefine itself, the role a city’s largest employer can play and the potential impact of the new federal opportunity zone program, which provides tax benefits for those who invest capital gains in low-income areas.
“One of the biggest questions policy makers, economists and pundits are asking now is, ‘What do we do for places like Erie?’ ” said John Lettieri, chief executive of the Economic Innovation Group, a nonpartisan think tank that helped develop and promote the opportunity-zone program. “Is there a future for these places when the industry they were built around has withered?”
A panoramic view of Erie from the early 1900s. PHOTOS: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION
Previous efforts to turn around the area’s fortunes haven’t worked. A pedestrian-friendly mall downtown failed. A regional economic development agency filed for bankruptcy liquidation in 2016 after a plan to create a new transportation hub for freight traffic and other projects fell apart.StrandedManufacturing employment as a percent oftotal nonfarm employment%U.S.PennsylvaniaErie1950’65’80’95’100102030405060
“We hit rock bottom,” said Tom Hagen, who moved to Erie at age 7 and is now chairman of Erie Indemnity Co. Known as Erie Insurance, it is the city’s largest employer and only remaining Fortune 500 company. “I compare it to an alcoholic who has to be in the gutter before he or she sees the light.”
The 94-year-old insurer will next year complete a $135 million expansion of its corporate campus. The sleek brick-and-glass building is within Erie’s downtown opportunity zone, but was started before the legislation was enacted and won’t qualify for the tax benefits.
As they looked for ways to rebuild, local business and philanthropic leaders traveled west to study how the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. helped revitalize the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, an effort led by Procter & Gamble Co. , that area’s largest employer.
The Erie Downtown Development Corp. is renovating Park Place and Sherlock’s building in Erie, Pa.
Among the lessons: Start in the core of downtown so that the city’s anchor doesn’t pull you down. Cluster investments to gain momentum and attract additional capital. Create a nonprofit to redevelop blighted properties with the help of philanthropic, state and federal dollars. Tap private financing, a considerable challenge given Erie’s soft real-estate market and blighted properties.Median family incomeErie as a percent of PennsylvaniaErie as a percent of the U.S.195920170%255075100
One of Erie’s first steps was to create the Erie Innovation District in 2016, with a $4 million grant from local sources. It recruits about 10 technology startups to come to the city each year for a 10-week accelerator program, with the aim of creating local jobs. Several startups, including one developing tracking technology for manufacturers, have made Erie their home.
The following year, some of the city’s biggest employers and its largest foundation created the Erie Downtown Development Corp., a nonprofit to revitalize the city’s center. Many of the same firms kicked in $27.5 million to create an equity fund to support redevelopment projects that wouldn’t otherwise make financial sense.
Erie was one of the first cities to jump on the federal-opportunity zone program, creating a 58-page prospectus and identifying a dozen “shovel ready” projects, including the renovation of a 133-unit downtown hotel. Redevelopment would have happened with or without the opportunity-zone program, city leaders say, but the tax breaks will speed the process.
Erie Mayor Joe Schember sees technology companies playing a bigger role in the city.
But so far, investors have gravitated to bigger cities such as Baltimore and Los Angeles, said John Persinger, chief executive of the EDDC. Social-impact investors, he said, want greater returns on their investments and are reluctant to invest in a city where they don’t already have a presence.Erie’s total populationSources: U.S. Census Bureau of Labor Statistics(employment, population); Economic ResearchInstitute of Erie (income)1950’60’70’80’90025,00050,00075,000100,000125,000150,000
“Opportunity zones should never have been seen as unlocking a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow,” Mr. Persinger said.
Erie is looking to advanced manufacturers like Plastikos Inc., located just outside the city’s borders, to keep some factory work alive. In clean, brightly lighted rooms, robotic arms swing back and forth molding resins into medical device components for insulin pumps. More than 150 employees earn about $11 to $24 an hour; experienced toolmakers can earn up to $90,000 annually.
Going forward, technology companies will play a bigger role, said Joe Schember, who became Erie’s mayor in 2018. “A lot of people in Erie think we might have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn it around,” said Mr. Schember, a former bank executive who put himself through college by working at a foundry in the city. “And if we miss it, we might not have another chance.”
Auditor Sylvia Watson, left, performs a quality inspection at Plastikos in Erie. At right, another quality inspector, Daisy Rivera, checks for defects in electronic connectors at Plastikos.
Health care has become another source of growth in Erie. Highmark Health and Allegheny Health Network are investing $140 million to expand their medical campus; the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-Hamot is spending more than $110 million on a new building.
Erie is still home to a handful of old-line companies, such as American Tinning & Galvanizing, founded in 1931 and employing about 80 people. The company has managed to survive by keeping costs low and maintaining good relationships with other local manufacturers, said its president, Robin Scheppner.
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Erie also hopes to work local connections. More than 300 people turned out to the city’s third-annual Erie Homecoming in August. This year’s event focused on opportunity zones, part of an effort to get local investors and expats to invest in the city. At the event, Erie Insurance announced a $50 million opportunity-zone fund that will include investments in its hometown.
The EDDC is planning $150 million of opportunity-zone projects focused on the city’s core. For the first project, Erie Insurance and the new equity fund will each provide about $2.6 million of the estimated $10 million cost of the new food complex. The new equity-fund arm is providing capital to purchase the buildings; it will cover the first losses on the project and gap financing if the EDDC can’t raise enough to cover the full project cost. Other projects will include more than 200 market-rate residential housing units, retail and office space and a new parking garage.
Paul Scalf, top left, and Lucky Cowans, top right, work in the anodizing room at the American Tinning & Galvanizing Co. in Erie. Robin Scheppner, bottom, is president and CEO.
Liz Allen, a city council member, said she’s excited about development downtown but worries about potential displacement of some businesses and low-income residents.
“It’s a real balancing act, because you want cities to thrive,” she said.
The food hall was partially inspired by the city’s inability to persuade a grocery store to locate downtown. Another building on the block will include a fresh-produce vendor, a bakery, a butcher and a distillery.
“When people raise fears of gentrification, I say we can’t afford to lose one more person,” said Mr. Persinger. “We don’t want to push anyone out. We want to bring more people in and raise the quality of life for everyone.”
Corrections & Amplifications The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-Hamot is spending more than $110 million on a new building. An earlier version of this story misspelled Hamot as Hammot. (Oct. 7, 2019)
By the 1970s, 42nd Street in New York was widely perceived to be unsafe, a neighborhood thought to be populated largely by drug dealers, porn shops, and muggers. But in 1979, civic leaders developed a long-term vision for revitalizing one especially blighted block, Bryant Park. The reopening of the park in the 1990s helped inject new vitality into midtown Manhattan and served as a model for many other downtown revitalization projects. So what about urban policy can we learn from Bryant Park?
In this new book, Andrew M. Manshel draws from both urbanist theory and his first-hand experiences as a urban public space developer and manager who worked on Bryant Park and later applied its strategies to an equally successful redevelopment project in a very different New York neighborhood: Jamaica, Queens. He candidly describes what does (and doesn’t) work when coordinating urban redevelopment projects, giving special attention to each of the many details that must be carefully observed and balanced, from encouraging economic development to fostering creative communities to delivering appropriate services to the homeless. Learning from Bryant Park is thus essential reading for anyone who cares about giving new energy to downtowns and public spaces.
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About the Author
Andrew M. Manshel for 10 years was Associate Director and Counsel at the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation and General Counsel and Director of Public Amenities to the Grand Central and 34th Street Partnerships. He now serves as Assistant Commissioner for Franchise Administration at the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. Previously he was Executive Vice President of Greater Jamaica Development, in Jamaica, Queens. He is a long-time Director and the Treasurer of Project for Public Spaces, Inc. Mr. Manshel blogs about downtown and public space revitalization at theplacemaster.com.
It wasn’t the authors’ intended message, but one theme that becomes evident from reading “Who Cleans the Park?:” is that for decades the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) has not been allocated adequate resources. This lack of resources not only results in dirtier parks with more broken equipment, but also created serious dysfunction among employee ranks and the need to rely on private dollars and private governance to get parks cleaned and mowed. Privatization of public space has had a number of positive benefits to parks in New York City, beyond just better programmed and maintained parks, but private entities have also has proven to be somewhat unreliable partners and has raised serious issues of equity and fairness in the distribution of resources among parks in better and less well off neighborhoods.
It’s been something of a mystery to me why Mayor de Blasio, with his fervent commitment to equity in local government, hasn’t seen the Parks expense budget as central to his equity agenda and allocated to DPR increased operating resources (the Administration did provide capital dollars to smaller parks in under-served neighborhoods early on). Parks are the ultimate civic equalizer – open and providing important benefits to all. In the most recently concluded budget, there was some sign of a change in direction on the part of the Administration, with $43 million in increased parks funding (on a base operating budget of about $500 million). My rough guess is that an additional base operating budget of $200 million is required to “fully fund” Parks Department operations. By fully funded, I mean a budget with sufficient money to provide high quality maintenance and programing to every park and playground in every neighborhood in New York. And in a near $100 Billion City expense budget, there is no reason why a fully funded Parks department shouldn’t be a reasonable goal.
This blog only represents the views of the author and does not reflect the policies of the City of New York or its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
Is urban “revitalization” a mere expression of cultural preference – reflecting white, upper-middle class predilections? Was the pre-revitalization 42nd Street somehow a more authentic expression of something before it, and Bryant Park, became “Disney-fied.” Essays in “Deconstructing the High Line: postindustrial urbanism and the rise of the elevated park,” edited by Christoph Linder and Brian Rosa (Rutgers, 2017), suggest that prior to its re-visioning as an urban public space, the High Line of gay cruising and wild, invasive plants was authentic, organic and more correct. In an essay in Deconstructing the High Line, Darren J. Patrick even argues that the pervasive and self-seeding, but non-native, Ailanthus altissima, had more of a right to live and thrive in the along the abandoned elevated rail line than the artificial more native, highly curated plant selection that distinguishes the High Line now.
When we were working at Grand Central Partnership and Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, we were occasionally surprised to learn that there were academics, like Sharon Zukin, who thought that we were engaged in a misguided attempt to destroy the complex, authentic social ecology of “The Deuce.” We couldn’t understand how someone might prefer the porn theaters, prostitution, unpicked up trash and three card monte of 42nd Street of the 70’s and early 80’s to what we were envisioning. Continue reading →
This blog only represents the views of the author and does not reflect the policies of the City of New York or its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
The original New York City highly incentivized corporate center was MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn. MetroTech was built by Forest City/Ratner (FCRC) as back office space for Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), Bear Stearns (now defunct, as some may recall), Brooklyn Union Gas (now National Grid) – with some New York City government offices thrown in to sweeten the pot. Having worked in Queens for a decade, with an office now in Brooklyn at MetroTech, feel I have some credibility in bringing something to the spirited discussion now taking place about the advent of Amazon to the Queens waterfront.
The first point to get out-of-the-way is that no Governor or Mayor could ever let a project like H2Q slip through their hands without making a major effort to win the competition. It would be a political disaster to be seen as not having made a maximum effort to attract Amazon – even given the outcry now taking place on the part of some local elected officials. No one wants to be seen as the “the Mayor who let the Yankees move out-of-town.” In addition, these kinds of negotiations of necessity have to take place without publicity and with a minimum number of people involved. Complex economic development deals can’t be negotiated in public. For the deal to close there has to be a level of certainty to the outcome – hence the use of the Empire State Development Corporation to avoid the normal public review process. Putting the process behind closed doors and circumventing public review are political risks the Governor and Mayor took to get the deal done. If the electorate truly objects to the terms of the deal and the manner in which it was accomplished they have a remedy – vote them out of office at the next opportunity. That’s how democracy works. Continue reading →
