Privately Owned Public Space

Here is an article about through block arcades in the garment district built many decades ago without zoning encouragement.  Compare these to the zoning-created ones between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in the West 50s.

Amanda Burden, former Chair of the New York City Planning Commission, shares her deep expertise about public spaces in a March, 2014 TED talk in Vancouver, Canada.  Her overarching principle could not be clearer:  “I believe that lively, enjoyable public spaces are the key to planning a great city.  They are what makes it come alive.”

Even if it is a significant reduction from last summer’s city experiment with public space programming in the privately owned public spaces along Water Street, the street is offering shuffleboard, put-put, foosball, and World Cup viewing in the various spaces that dot the area.  Here are the link to the offerings and a link to the planning framework.

The City of Toronto recently released a new report, POPS: Creative Place Making to Enhance Urban Life,” that proposes urban design guidelines for newly created POPS as well as for the city’s 100 or so existing POPS.   Toronto, along with Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo, is a city that has taken a closer look at its POPS since their creation and considered  ways of improving them.  An article by Peter Goffin in Torontoist describes the report and makes additional suggestions.

Here is an interesting essay about the role of public space, including POPS, in cities.  As with all of our links, the fact that APOPS@MAS spotlights an opinion piece does not mean that it necessarily agrees (or disagrees) with its conclusions.

Here’s the link.

Here is the link to her piece.

One Chase Manhattan Plaza, the bank’s original modernist headquarters building and plaza downtown,  is on the market, according to an article in Crain’s.  The iconic plaza, which has been closed for almost two years for repairs, is not a privately owned public space created pursuant to the 1961 zoning resolution.  Its legal status derives in part from the site’s landmark designation, a variance granted in the late 1950s to the owner by the City’s Board of Standards and Appeals, and a street closing action taken by the City.  A New York Times article in June provides background about the plaza.

Nancy Slotnick, proprietor of Matchmaker Café and participant in “Water Street POPS!” this summer at 75 Wall Street, provides an update from the field.

Matchmaker Café Week 1

The café has traditionally held a unique place in public space, and that held true for Matchmaker Café, which launched this week, as part of the Water Street POPS, at 75 Wall Street.  This idea that the café’s role in a public plaza can be both political and unifying was introduced at the Harvard conference “Putting Public Space in its Place.”  At that conference, I was confirmed in my belief that the café serves as a “third place” (first and second being home and work respectively) around which people can convene.  Unfortunately the laws around the commercialization of public space don’t necessarily see it this way.  I believe they should.

Luckily for me I got lucky.  Hurricane Sandy, which caused so much damage, also allowed for re-birth and re-zoning of public space for this summer and beyond.  So I applied to Water Street POPS and was chosen to participate in the events there.  Matchmaker Café immediately commanded its unique role and accordingly became the problem child.  A café that is open M-F 7am-9pm is hardly considered an “event.”  The Health Department, the event coordinators and the landlords hosting Matchmaker Café soon realized this to be the case, leading to countless obstacles.  I won’t bore you with the details.  But thanks to a lot of hard work on both the private side and the public side, and also thanks to some inexplicable magical power that Matchmaker Café seems to have, the concept prevailed.  And we found the most beautiful and comfortable public plaza that I could have imagined to start helping New Yorkers find love.  We have staff, we have ice, we have Brooklyn Roasting Company coffee, we have a biergarten full of Wall Street guys (yes, girls, mostly guys!) and we are ready to rock!  Come on down to 75 Wall Street and say hi.  That’s what public space is all about.

Matchmaker Café Week 2

I have never been so dirty in my life, but it feels good. I don’t mean that I feel dirty. That has a whole different connotation, especially since I run a dating cafe. I mean that I am dirty, as in dirt under my fingernails. I’m not doing gardening. I’m not cooking any food. I’m just standing in public space outdoors on Wall Street in 100 degree weather.

Today I put on my bikini top and surf shirt and I poured a bucket of ice water over my head right in the middle of it all. I got a thumbs up from a few pedestrians and people who were braving public space along with me at lunchtime.

Please come down to 75 Wall Street in the Biergarten to join in the fun. We have some great iced coffee and cold drinks from Brooklyn Roasting Company. No pun intended.  If you’re single, I will set you up on a date. If you’re not, I will let you pour a bucket of ice water over my head. (Only if you buy a few coffees first.)

Matchmaker Café Week 3

This week turned a corner- the party began!  The heat wave broke and gave way to a day that was so cold that my staff had to call me for back up sweatshirts.  We ran out of hot coffee because customers switched from cold brew.  But we started making things fun! And that’s what’s important.  I got a colored LED for the bar to “light up the party” and we started the music going.  Our developer, Justin Demaris, finished the new IOS app so that we can sign up new members right outside at the café on our ipad.  We take photos so we can show them to customers and set up dates accordingly.  And we were featured on TV (Fox News) and in the Huffington Post and Business Insider!  Being on Wall Street has its business advantages.  A few customers expressed interest in investing in the concept.  And the café operations broke even this week.  Private and public came together in an electric way.  Now it’s time to start spreading the love….

Matchmaker Café Week 4

Being on Wall Street is great for the private side of public space.  Matchmaker Café is now garnering interest in investment as well as TV opportunities.  Two different TV production houses have contacted me about creating a show based on Matchmaker Café.  And the Broadway musical First Date, opening this week, wants to have us throw the opening party outside the theatre.  So on Thursday night this week (August 8) we’ll move the bar and all the fun to 48^th Street.  Don’t worry, we’ll still be selling coffee and manning the fort on Wall Street as well.  We even have a married volunteer matchmaker who loves to spread the love.  And we’ll be careful not to commercialize any other POPS around town above the Financial District for legal reasons.  So we may have to give out some free coffee instead as we work out a plan to POP-up around town in the fall.  Brooklyn Roasting Company and I are brewing up a love potion called Mexstasy.   Watch for it!

Matchmaker Café Week 5

This week my coffee supplier (and sponsor in this venture) broke up with me.  By email.  I have no idea why.  And I don’t care.  There is so much great coffee in this city.  That is easy to find.  What is really hard to find is love.  In order to even attempt to do that, you have to put yourself “out there.”  Is putting up a profile online “out there” enough?  No, not in my opinion.  Is hiring a matchmaker “out there” enough?  I don’t think so.  Is getting into public space and having your video taken by the Matchmaker Café staff while coffee drinkers stare, getting “out there” enough?  Now we’re talking.  Come join us and try it.  It’s character-building and you never know where it can lead.  As the Lego artist, Nathan Sawaya, re-purposed- “dreams are built one brick at a time.”  BTW, his exhibit at the Discovery Museum is fantastic.  Not just for kids.

Join The Municipal Art Society of New York, in cooperation with Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, on Thursday, August 15 at 6:30 PM, for a special FREE screening of the 1980’s urban planning cult classic, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” a film by William H. Whyte, produced by MAS.  The screening is part of the Eventi Hotel’s Hester Nights series, held weekly in its plaza at 851 Sixth Avenue, entered from West 29th or 30th Streets.

Bring your friends and enjoy the film along with plenty of food and drink available for purchase from local vendors..

The screening will begin at 6:30 PM.  The Hester Nights artisanal food market opens at 5:00 PM.

About the Film
This witty and original film is about urban spaces in American cities and why some work and others don’t.  Beginning with New York City’s Seagram Plaza, one of the city’s most celebrated spaces, the film analyzes why this space is so successful and how other urban spaces, both in New York and elsewhere, can learn from its surprisingly simple lessons.

This event is FREE but registration is requested.