Mayor Supports Pedestrian Plaza on on Vanderbilt Avenue
Later
this week, the Bloomberg administration will unveil the parameters of its big
plans for rezoning Midtown East. While the specifics of the plan still remain
scant, one bit of news was revealed today when both Crain’s and the Post
revealed that Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden is lobbying to have
Vanderbilt Avenue turned into another one of the administration’s patented
pedestrian plazas.
The
proposal is not yet a definite, but Mayor Bloomberg supported it all the same
at a press conference today for the city’s initiative to create
micro-apartments.
“I
think you gotta stop and say what are the streets for?” the mayor told
reporters when asked about the proposal, never denying it. “They are for
transportation. What is the basic first kind of transportation? It’s walking.
And then you should look after that and see whether other things can fit in.”
The
plan is similar to those on Broadway and other corners of the city, where an
under-utilized strip of roadway will be closed to vehicular traffic, in this
case the two-lane road running along Grand Central Terminal from 42nd to 47th
streets. The mayor pointed out that the street is lightly used and therefore an
appropriate place for a pedestrian plaza, especially with the heavy foot
traffic going into and out of the train station. Improvements to the open space
would likely be funded by the sale of air rights to adjacent landlords, as The
Observer had previously reported.
The
mayor stressed that emergency vehicles would still have access to the street
and Grand Central Terminal, a concern raised by one of the reporters who
brought up the issue.
“Vanderbilt
is a street that gets virtually no traffic,” the mayor said. “There’s some but
very small.” The strip is especially quiet, not just for cars but pedestrians,
as well. But new towers along the avenue could mean an enlivened street, as
well.
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