Flatiron Plaza The New Times Sq? Roc Nation Closes Down Flatiron Neighborhood And Beyond

"Will the New Year's Eve ball drop here next?" -  Neighborhood resident

The de Blasio administration allowed the event to proceed despite strong opposition from the community and elected officials.  Emil Lissauer, the Deputy Executive Director of Street Activity Permit Office (SAPO) tried to down play the expected crowd for the 10,000 ticketed event to closer to 6,000- 7000,   telling the Community Board,  "Its February, it'll be cold."   (Photos: Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates) click on images to enlarge.

 

Fans are penned in where Fifth Avenue and Broadway intersect.  The event drew thousands of concert goers to the Flatiron Pedestrian Plaza across from Madison Square Park.  The Roc Nation event created havoc for the Flatiron neighborhood and beyond. 

Manhattan

By Geoffrey Croft

In the end it was all about Roc Nation. 

Shawn Carter's corporate event invaded Flatiron neighborhood Thursday night,  and apparently Jay Z has more power than the community and local elected officials.  

The poorly sited concert snarled traffic for miles during the evening rush, and infuriated neighborhood residents.

The controversial event featuring Roc Nation client Kanye West and drew thousands of fans who braved the freezing temperatures to the Flatiron Pedestrian Plaza across from Madison Square Park.   

The commute home last night was a nightmare along Fifth Avenue as traffic was ground to a halt. Police prevented vehicles from traveling south on beginning at 34th & 5 Avenue.  

The stage show began with a five minute promo video featuring Roc Nation clients and its business portfolio.

Power 105.1 FM radio's Angie Martinez, a sponsor,  kicked off the show and thanked the Mayor for making it happen. 

"Can you believe we're in the streets," she said.

Billed as the 1st annual Roc city classic Kanye West performed 12 songs with an assortment of colleagues during the 45 minute set.

The show was streamed live exclusively on JAY Z's Life+Times.  Police stood guard outside his 40/40 club around the corner. 

The vile lyrics of Sean Anderson's - aka Big Sean -  "song"  I Don't Fuck With  reverberated off residential buildings and could be heard five or six blocks away. 

"The apartments were vibrating," said Debra Kletter, a dining consultant  with eatquestnyc who has lived who has lived in the neighborhood for decades.  

"It seems that NYC has become just one big corporate staging ground, there's no regard for people who actually live here. Why come to a tiny corner of a residential neighborhood and strangle it with 10, 000 people for a pop concert? No regard for neighborhood concerns. Will the New Year's Eve ball drop here next?"

Fans rushed past police and barricades and climbed atop Madison Square Park's Eternal Light Flagstaff veterans statue.  Fans also trampled planting beds, and perched themselves in a tree, and on top of fences to get a better views. 

Concert goers were separated into multiple pens between 23rd street and 25th street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway.  

Spectators lined the pathways inside Madison Square Park. 

Organizers directed the long line of prescreened concert goers on the side walk along the park's northern end. 

Large sections of the park were shut down and police closed all entrances and exits except for one on Madison Ave.    

Concert goers were separated into multiple pens between 23rd street and 25th street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway.  

Despite the limited access thousands of fans gathered in Madison Square Park. A 7-foot high green mesh lined fence erected supposedly to prevent the public from watching show from the green space proved ineffective as predicted.

A police officer stood at the entrance of the dog run which was open but lightly used. 

Towards the end of the concert fans rushed past police and barricades.  They climbed the park's Eternal Light Flagstaff veterans statue, trampled planting beds, and perched themselves in a tree, and on top of fences to get a better views.

Moments laster police had to close ranks as fans began to bring down a temporary fence that separated them from the event. 

Police outside Shawn Carter's 40/40 club.

As fans lingered after the show police ordered those perched on top of the park's perimeter fence to disperse.

 "Get off the fence, get off the fence, get down off the fence," police ordered.

No word yet if any damage was done to the park. 

For people trying to get home after work beginning at 6:00pm on Fifth Avenue and 26th Street police asked residents to show ID and visitors had to call their hosts to come down and get them.  

A half a mile away the public's frustration was palpable.   The police closed down all south bound traffic on Fifth Avenue and 34th street at 6:00pm creating a nightmare for tens of thousands of people during the evening rush.

On the corner police and traffic agents fended off  the same question over and over again, what was happening.  

"What's going on, is there an accident or something,"  a passer by asked.

"No,  they're having a  concert,"   a traffic agent replied. 

"You have to be kidding me," a frustrated driver told police. 

"Talk to the Mayor," an officer replied.

Some residents simply opened up their windows. 

“It’s kind of unbearable, ” said Terry Niefield who was forced to endure the noise from his apartment three blocks away. 

"I had no choice. If they are planning another one I say absolutely not."

Mr. Niefeld a neighborhood resident for 30 years described what he sees as an endless succession of commercial events  and programing in Madison Square Park and the pedestrian plaza.

"They are making the area uglier, louder and busier.  No one is asking for these things.   No one is  saying they want them in there, it's the people running these spaces.  The power of the purse speaks.

It's a neighborhood and these spaces should be primarily for people in the community.

He and others also specifically raised concerns about how the city was allowing the Madison Square Park Conservancy to operate the park.

"The Park is in a constant state of construction.  It used to be so beautiful, they're ruining it. Niefeld said. 

"The park is supposed to be an oasis of peace and escape but that's violated by such crass commercialism, "   Debra Kletter added.

 Much of the park was closed. Fans would later rush the barricades and past police to get better views of the event.



Bird eye view of the concert from the tree.

Fans stand on top of the park fence. For some reason the city thought erecting a fence with a green mesh would prevent or deter concert goers from doing this. Instead it only encouraged it.



Thousands of people lined the park pathways.

Sign of the times. All of the park's entrances  were closed except for one.

 Times Square or Flatiron Pedestrian Plaza? 

Is this an appropriate place to hold an event of this scale right in middle of a residential community.

 Office workers checking out the scene.

Concert finally begins.

Attendees in the back could watch the event on video monitor.

View from Above. 

5th Avenue & 34th Street. Traffic at a standstill.   (Photos: Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates) click on images to enlarge.

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City Not Complying With Park Private Funding Reporting Law

City-Wide

Four years ago, the City Council passed a law to shed light on how much money was flowing into different parks across the city. Advocates were concerned that the parks system was splitting in two: in wealthy areas of the city, gleaming, innovative green spaces, buttressed by private financing sources; elsewhere, ailing parks with far fewer resources at their disposal.

The legislation required the Department of Parks and Recreation of New York City to prepare an annual report that would detail, park by park, the contributions of nonprofits and other private donors.

“We wanted to see just how large the disparity is,” said Geoffrey Croft, the president of NYC Park Advocates, which supported the legislation. The City Council agreed, and after the measure was approved by a vote of 48-0, the new reporting requirements became Local Law 28 of 2008.

Yet the reports from the parks department fall far short of the law’s requirements, according to The New York Times. 

A report on the 2010 fiscal year fails to list the city’s largest parks nonprofit, the Central Park Conservancy, which spent $28 million during that period. Other major parks groups, including the Union Square Partnership, the Madison Square Park Conservancy and the Friends of Washington Square Park, are also missing.

“It doesn’t reflect a real effort to comply with the law,” Alan J. Gerson, a former councilman who sat on the parks committee in 2008, said.

“Whether it’s for schools, or parks or any public place, the public should know where the private money is coming from and what it’s buying. It’s basic good government,” Mr. Gerson, a Manhattan Democrat, said.

“That’s what we wanted to establish,” he said.

In 2008, the law was praised by council members and the parks department during public hearings. Liam Kavanagh, the first deputy commissioner for parks, said at the time that the legislation was in sync with the Bloomberg administration’s efforts to increase government transparency, adding, “I want to reiterate our shared commitment to full disclosure.”

The reports, however, were never posted on the Web sites of the City Council or the parks department.

Of the over three dozen park conservancy groups listed in a 2007 study by the Citizens Budget Commission as having expenditures high enough to meet the law’s reporting thresholds, the parks department included only seven in its 2010 report.

Dozens of other donors are also missing from that report, including Columbia University, Cabot Creamery, and real estate and construction firms that do business with the city. At least 40 such donors contributed to the parks department during fiscal year 2010, according to filings at the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, but the 2010 report lists only six of them. Columbia and Cabot were listed on the latest report encompassing the 2011 fiscal year.

Many organizations that are listed on the reports appear without the precise dollar amounts of their contributions. The Prospect Park Alliance, for example, is listed on the 2010 report, but its expenditures of $10 million are not. Instead, the group appears with a code indicating expenditures of “$1 million or more.” The codes are borrowed from the Conflicts of Interest Board, where they are used to protect donors’ privacy.

“It’s clearly not the most illuminating,” said Doug Turetsky, chief of staff at the city’s Independent Budget Office, referring to the 2010 report. “You’d want to see more detail in terms of specific amounts.”

The parks department initially defended the reports. But after receiving detailed questions about their content, a department spokeswoman, Vickie Karp, wrote in an e-mail that “questions about who should be reporting through this document are fair and deserve further review.” The department did not offer an explanation for the missing data and declined to make a parks official available for an interview.

The current chairwoman of the parks committee, Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, a Manhattan Democrat, declined to comment.

A spokesman for Councilwoman Helen D. Foster, a Bronx Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the bill in 2008 and shepherded it through the parks committee, which she led at the time, said Ms. Foster “did not feel she remembered the legislation.”

The disparities are evident in Pelham Bay Park, which sprawls over 2,700 acres in the northeast Bronx. It is the city’s largest green space — three times the size of Central Park — but its budget is far smaller, and clearly strained, despite the efforts of parks employees and an active volunteer group.

“The staff is passionately committed to the park,” said Lizbeth González, the president of the Friends of Pelham Bay Park. “But we need more resources.”

Along the park’s eastern edge, the waters of the Long Island Sound lap up against a crumbling retaining wall. A quiet beach alcove is strewed with meteor-size chunks of brick and mortar, and piles of trash in decay.

“We would collect all the trash and burn it,” said Aníbal Lugo, a retired handyman who was angling for bluefish along the shore. “Then the police gave me a ticket.”

He produced the citation, which he carries in his wallet, and explained that now, they let the trash be.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 14, 2012

An article on Aug. 27 about the compliance of the Department of Parks and Recreation of New York City with a law requiring annual reports on nongovernmental support of its parks included several errors.

A report covering the 2010 fiscal year is not the most recent report. A report encompassing the 2011 fiscal year has indeed been submitted by the parks department; it is not the case that the 2011 report, due in December, is still incomplete. (The 2011 report was not made available to the reporter until after the article was published.)

While the 2010 report did not include information on the city’s largest parks nonprofit, Central Park Conservancy, or donations from Columbia University and Cabot Creamery to the parks department, some of that information was included in the 2011 report.

And Pelham Bay Park is about three times the size of Central Park, not four. That error, introduced during the editing process, was repeated in a picture caption.

Read More: 

A Law to Expose City Parks’ Inequalities Is Neglected

New York Times  - August 26, 2012  - Jacob Hodes

Private Park Salaries Soar

Manhattan

Maybe money grows on trees in Central Park.

Douglas Blonsky, the head of the Central Park Conservancy, got a 20 percent raise, bringing his salary to $433,940, according to the nonprofit's just-released tax filings for 2009-10, according to the New York Post.

Several other directors also raked in the green.

* Debbie Landau, the head of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, got a $15,000 raise in 2009, plus a bonus of $20,000, bringing her salary to $200,000 during a year in which the conservancy's revenue declined by $246,715.

* Aimee Boden, the head of the Randalls Island Sports Foundation, got a 6 percent hike from $166,274 to $176,200 -- including a $15,000 bonus -- in 2009. The city pays $126,609 of her salary and the nonprofit pays the rest.

Bryant Park Corp. Director Daniel Biederman's salary for the year ending June 30, 2008, was $220,027, up from $210,374 a year earlier. He also earned $220,027 as head of the 34th Street Partnership.

The directors of some groups earn more than Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, whose salary is $205,180.

"Blonsky oversees 843 acres. Our parks commissioner oversees 29,000 acres. It doesn't make sense," said Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates, a watchdog group.

The bulk of Blonsky's raise of $73,766 came from a $69,400 payment for accumulated vacation time, said Kari Wethington, a spokeswoman for the conservancy.

The Madison Square Conservancy refused to comment on Landau's raise. The group also employed Landau's sister, Maggi, with Landau paying her $125,000, plus a $12,500 bonus in 2009. She has since left.

The city Parks Department in 2009 began paying the bulk of Boden's salary for running Randalls Island, the location of Icahn Stadium and dozens of athletic fields. The Parks Department said it upped her salary to be more in line with her work.

A spokesman for Bryant Park Corp. and the 34th Street Partnership, a Business Improvement District, said the boards of both groups believe Biederman's "salary is justified given the renaissance that both districts have undergone."

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Parks turn 'greener' for exec $

New York Post - February 20, 2011 - By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein

High Line Spending Exposed

A Walk In The Park - August 3, 2009

Meyer's Shake Shack Paying Considerably Less Than Other Park Concessions

Line for Shake Shack(Amnestic_Arts/flickr)

...consider this article by Patrick Arden in Next American City, asking "whether the city’s reliance on private-funding schemes was creating disparities between parks in wealthy and poor neighborhoods," WNYC's Arun Venugopal writes. 2009 Shake Shack collected revenues of $4.9 million; $220,256 of that went to the city and $348,389 to the park. C

In 2009 Shake Shack collected revenues of $4.9 million; $220,256 of that went to the city and $348,389 to the park. Concessions in other parks pay as much as 20 percent of their take to the city, but not [owner Danny] Meyer, whose company adds to its profits by catering private parties in the park for $15,000 an hour. When Meyer opened his fast-food stand, he was the director and co-founder of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that oversees the public park.

oncessions in other parks pay as much as 20 percent of their take to the city, but not [owner tArden gives numerous examples of the "big business" that public parks have become:

Few may object to the $364,000 salary paid to Central Park Conservancy president Douglas Blonsky, because his group is responsible for raising 85 percent of Central Park’s $27 million annual operating budget....

But those two parks now exemplify how lucrative the conservancy model can be. The Bryant Park Corporation took in more than $8.8 million in 2007 and its executive director, Daniel Biederman, picked up $210,000 for overseeing its 9.6 acres. Over at the Madison Square Park Conservancy, president Debbie Landau pulled in $185,000 — and her sister Maggi made $114,962.

Read More: 

Shake Shack $$$: Bad for City Parks?

WNYC - September 14, 2010 - By Arun Venugopal