Manhattan Community Board Five

Vikki Barbero, Chair

450 Seventh Avenue, Suite 2109

New York, NY 10123-2199
212.465.0907
f-212.465.1628

Wally Rubin, District Manager

January 9, 2015
Mayor Bill de Blasio
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
Borough President Gale Brewer
1 Centre Street, 19th Floor
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor de Blasio, Speaker Mark-Viverito and Borough President Brewer:

Manhattan Community Board Five has become aware of a proposed NBA promotional event for All Stars
Weekend, slated to take place on February 12th, with set-up beginning three days earlier. The event is
to feature A-list entertainers and athletes, and is expected to draw 10,000 attendees to the northern
section of the Flatiron Pedestrian Plaza.
At a meeting of the Parks and Public Spaces Committee of CB5, the Committee unanimously found that
the event is inappropriate in terms of scale, duration, volume, and impact for this dense commercial and
residential area of our district, and will result in an unacceptable impact on neighbors and businesses.
The Flatiron BID, the 26th Street Resident Association, small business owners and residents alike have all
registered their concerns or opposition, as they will be directly impacted and inconvenienced for a
period of four days.
The event will require the following street closures: 5th Avenue and Broadway from 23rd Street at least
to 26th Street and possibly beyond, 24th and 25th Streets between Broadway and 6th Avenue, and the
length of 26th Street from Madison Avenue all the way to 6th Avenue. Set-up will be 24/7, beginning at
12:01 AM on February 10, with three active overnights involving the use of forklifts and heavy
equipment operating in close proximity to residential buildings and scores of local businesses. A steel
stage structure 60-feet wide is to be constructed over an existing fire hydrant on top of the Pedestrian
Plaza, rendering it unusable. Six towers of lighting, audio and video equipment will be erected
surrounding the closed-off area, resulting in excessive amplified sound.
The staging for the event will require that all of the open space and all of the amenities presently
enjoyed by the public in the north Pedestrian Plaza - including DOTs recently installed public art
program, over 100 granite blocks and standing planters, a CitiBike dock, the Flatiron BIDs information
booth, several trash receptacles and two solar-powered charging stations - will have to be removed and
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relocated, possibly to the southern pedestrian plaza, rendering the southern plaza equally unusable for
the four days required to complete the installation for this 45-minute event.
Community Board Five strongly stands in opposition to this and, frankly, any event of this scale in this
pedestrian plaza, whose creation by the Department of Transportation was designed for passive use.
We do not support the usurping of this public space, the dislocation of all of its public amenities, and the
considerable inconvenience to the neighborhoods stakeholders by events of this size and magnitude.
Community Board Five has been on record since 2009 registering our concern that this newly-created
pedestrian plaza network might be usurped from its intended passive use by out-of-scale commercial
events. In November 2013, we unanimously opposed a ULURP application to extend the pedestrian
plaza network on the same grounds, as no mechanism had been put in place to ensure proper public
review of any large event in our districts pedestrian plazas (see attached; the ULURP application was
subsequently withdrawn). To date, there have been no modifications to the existing procedure by
which the Street Activity Permit Office manages the placement of large events in these public spaces.
We reiterate our concerns, outlined in detail in the attached resolution of November 2013, regarding
the process by which these events are unilaterally placed in our pedestrian plazas. Since there is no
mechanism for public review of these events, residents and business owners in our district are deprived
of any notification of proposed events in these public spaces. Nor does the community have any
opportunity to make their voice heard at a public hearing, as they have come to expect from event
applications that are submitted to the Parks Department for events that take place on parkland. This is
a systemic dysfunction that it is past time to address.
Community Board Five repeats our call for the formation of a Working Group to address the
management and administration of our districts Pedestrian Plazas in a more holistic fashion. The
Working Group should consist of representatives from Community Board Five, the Borough President,
DOT, BIDs within our boundaries, and the affected Council members. It is high time we work together
to establish a uniform set of rules and procedures for the management of these public spaces, in order
to restore and protect the public benefit for which they were originally designed, and put an end to
out-of-scale commercial events in spaces that are far too small or otherwise inappropriate for them.
Community Board Five is perplexed about why an event of the size and nature of this example is being
shoehorned into a space where it so clearly does not belong. We have several questions about this:
1) We understand the All Star Weekend events original location was to have been Times Square, a far
more appropriate location for an extremely large, entertainment-focused commercial event. Why is
the City changing course and moving forward with an area for which it is unsuited?
2) The Department of Transportation created the pedestrian plaza network and is the city agency
responsible for their oversight. The area BIDs were chosen to activate, administer and protect these
plazas. Why, then, has the Street Activity Permit Office been given the sole discretion to make final
determinations of what special events are appropriate for these public spaces?
3) Other city agencies require the notification of the community well in advance of any action that will
have an impact on it. Why is it that when it comes to the use of our pedestrian plazas, there is no
such requirement?

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This proposed event clearly demonstrates that public review is essential. We call on all appropriate
agencies and officials to help us find a way to make Community Board review a requirement for all
special events proposed for our pedestrian plazas.
Many thanks for your assistance and consideration.

Vikki Barbero
Chair, Community Board Five

Clayton Smith
Chair, Parks and Public Spaces Committee

Copy:
Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris
Commissioner Polly Trottenberg
Councilmember Corey Johnson
Councilmember Dan Garodnick
Councilmember Rosie Mendez
Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez
Cristin Burtis, CECM
Emil Lissauer, SAPO
Jennifer Brown, Flatiron Partnership
Barbara Randall, Garment District NYC
Jennifer Falk, Union Square Partnership
Tim Tompkins, Times Square Alliance
Dan Biederman, Bryant Park/34th Street Corp
Alfred Cerullo, Grand Central Partnership
Rob Byrnes, East Midtown Partnership

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