Pols and business groups are encouraging the next mayor to bring cars back to Park Row, even as a first-of-its-kind poll of residents shows that a vast majority wants to continue barring cars from the strip linking Chinatown and Lower Manhattan.
The city has cited security reasons for sealing off Park Row since the 9/11 terror attacks, and the Adams administration vowed to continue that car-free precedent. But with the mayoral primary just three months away, one Chinatown lawmaker rallied local groups to lobby candidates for City Hall to bring back cars.
"With every election cycle, I see it as an opportunity," Council Member Chris Marte told the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association at a meeting last week. "If the mayor really wants to represent our community, this is the number one issue, and we should open up Park Row."
Street safety opponents have begun lobbying candidates vying to replace Adams, such as one man who on Monday asked former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to "get rid of the goddamned bike lanes," to which the pol responded, "I know. How crazy it is."
Park Row has been a sticking point in Lower Manhattan since the barriers went up two-and-a-half decades ago on the roughly half-mile strip, transforming the Civic Center's streets into an NYPD campus full of officers' parked cars and security paraphernalia.
"The majority of us want to see Park Row reopen again. It’s very essential to us because it determines what’s the future in Chinatown," said Benevolent Association President Tony Chuy at the March 5 meeting.
But residents of Park Row don't share that the pro-car agenda, according to a new survey by the civic group the Park Row Alliance [PDF], which polled people living in the strip's only residential complexes: Chatham Towers and Chatham Green.
"This survey provided an opportunity for residents who don't normally get involved in political issues – including parents, seniors, and working adults – to share what they think and want for Park Row," Nick Stabile, a co-founder of the Park Row Alliance, told Streetsblog. "As this survey shows, there is so much that we agree on. It’s time for everyone to come together — and push for the federal and state funding needed to build a beautiful passageway along Park Row connecting FiDi, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Chinatown."
More than three-quarters, or 76 percent, want to keep Park Row free of public car traffic. Another 77 percent want to boot all NYPD parking from the street.
What the Manhattanites did want to see on the street was an end to the Checkpoint Charlie regime to which they've been subjected for a quarter-century, and they called on lawmakers at the city, state and federal level to fund a beautified roadway that draws in people, rather than keep them away.
That includes channeling the millions of people crossing the Brooklyn Bridge each year to the adjacent neighborhood via Park Row, which has a once-grimy set of steps that the city has spruced up with a new paint job.
Government leaders should get behind creating safe pedestrian space and connecting the road back to the nearby subway stops, while removing the plethora of barriers and blocks.
The neighborhood group conducted the survey in English and Chinese over a month, sharing it with residents via emails and daily postings in lobbies of both complexes. Some 150 people responded out of roughly 1,500 total residents.
The city has restricted access to Park Row for more than two decades to emergency vehicles and transit buses, citing a risk of a car bomb attack on NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza, which towers over the road, according to a Bloomberg-era safety assessment.
That almost changed when Marte had gotten the ear of former Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks, and cops even briefly installed digital signs in 2023, saying the street would resume private car traffic on nights and weekends, before abruptly removing them.
That effort petered out after Banks resigned last fall, reportedly amid pressure from Gov. Hochul for Mayor Adams to clean house as Hizzoner faced federal corruption charges. City Hall in January decided to keep Park Row closed, as it studied ways to overhaul the road and the complicated adjacent intersection at Kimlau Square for $56 million. The money included $4 million specifically for Park Row as part of state funds to revitalize downtowns after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Officials cited the same security concerns of the past, and DOT showed new traffic models forecasting Midtown-level vehicle volumes descending on the neighborhood if the city removed the barriers. Many new trips only would only pass through Chinatown — not to mention slowing down buses and endangering pedestrians and cyclists.
Those negative outcomes would hit the neighborhood like a ton of bricks, given that 80 percent of people in Chinatown walk, but have to fend for just 37 percent of the streetscape. Residents of the area are also older, poorer, and have a lower car ownership rate than Manhattan as a whole.
The city's latest redesign mirrors plans from 2009 for Kimlau Square, but then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg also proposed major upgrades for Park Row, including a new pedestrian ramp from Park Row up to the plaza below the hulking David N. Dinkins Municipal Building.
The Department of Transportation did an in-house facelift of the street over the winter, with a new sidewalk at a chokepoint near the bridge, and murals to make the darker sections of the road easier on the eyes.
The NYPD has also moved its cars to one side of the street, and one resident leader hoped the city could now move forward with improving the streetscape with the millions in public funding, rather than get bogged down in the debate over car access again.
"It’s time to get what we can get done done," said Lucy West, the president of Chatham Green's co-op board, who co-wrote the letter with the survey results. "We’ve got $4 million. Let’s not throw it away. Why hold it up because we can’t open it up to traffic."
For example, the city could work with the federal court officials to reopen the ramp from Park Row up to Municipal Plaza, which is currently fenced off, forcing residents to walk blocks out of their way to get to the City Hall subway stop on the 4, 5 and 6 lines.
"For 24 years I’ve been having to walk two blocks out of my way to go to the subway," said West. "Why can’t I just walk up the street and go to the subway like I used to, it doesn’t make sense?"
Marte, the CCBA, and city officials did not respond for comment.
