Mayor Adams is the Grinch who stole his own car-free Christmas shopping spree!
The Adams administration has pared back its successful holiday open street on Fifth Avenue in Midtown from three Sundays to just one, despite City Hall previously touting its car-free program as a boon for business.
The Fifth Avenue Association, which has managed the initiative since 2022, blamed the two-thirds reduction on the increased security around Trump Tower. The famed roadway will now only be closed for cars only this Sunday ... and mainly to celebrate the street's bicentennial, not to accommodate hoards of holiday gawkers.
"Given the heightened security required around Trump Tower and the significant resources needed to safely stage this event, we chose to refocus Open Streets this year around our 200th birthday celebration," Claire Holmes said in a statement. "We hope New Yorkers will join us on Fifth Avenue not only on Sunday, but throughout the holiday season to celebrate the iconic street's historic anniversary and spread the festive spirit."
The one-day event between 48th and 55th streets, including the cross streets, from noon to 6 p.m., on Dec. 8 — comes after two years of the city cordoning off the road from the automobile on three Sundays leading up to Christmas Day, and as far uptown as Central Park.
Reversal of fortunes
In 2022, Mayor Adams for the first time ever banished cars from Fifth Avenue, from 48th to 57th streets, to make room for the throngs holiday shoppers that routinely spilled into the roadway in previous years.
Here's what the first year looked like.
Last year, Adams expanded the program two blocks north to 59th Street, and celebrated the initiative for boosting sales to $3 million along the strip, a 6.6-percent bump, according to a Mastercard study that City Hall touted.
"Open Streets are good for people and good for business, and we can’t wait to bring back the iconic Fifth Avenue Open Street this holiday season — bigger and better than ever," Hizzoner said in a press release at the time.
His predecessor Bill de Blasio had expanded the sidewalk by temporarily nixing two of the five vehicle lanes in years prior.
De Blasio had originally proposed banning through-traffic for a busway on the road, but scaled back his proposal after pushback from mom-and-pop retailers there, like Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, and Tiffany and Co.
The city's latest pro-car backsliding on the beloved tradition was "frustrating and disappointing," said one advocate.
"The reduction is really surprising given that Fifth Avenue is a priority for major, more permanent, public space improvements - including more pedestrian space," said Jackson Chabot, director of Advocacy and Organizing at Open Plans (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog). "So why aren’t they flexing in more pedestrian space when this corridor needs it the most, when the mechanism to do so has already been tried and tested?"
Local lawmakers also called on the city to step up.
"This is something we should be doing every year across the month of the December, it’s such an easy win for the area in Midtown," Council Member Keith Powers told Streetsblog. "The city should be working with stakeholders to make sure we can bring it back next year at full scale."
Department of Transportation spokesman Vin Barone put a positive spin on the one-day event.
"Fifth Avenue’s holiday open street will bring a large, pedestrianized area to the heart of Manhattan to kickoff the holiday season and celebrate the corridor’s 200-year anniversary," he said in a statement.
The DOT rep pointed out that Adams's long-term plan for Fifth Avenue includes building out the sidewalks by removing two lanes in the roadway starting in 2028, but that proposal eliminated a previous redesign that included a bike lane and also will likely slow down buses on one of the city's busiest surface transit corridors.
