No Balls! DOT Cancels World Cup Street Viewing Parties After NYPD Balks, Organizers Say
Red card!
The Department of Transportation’s plans to host outdoor World Cup watch parties on existing open streets was scrubbed due to concerns by the NYPD, Streetsblog has learned. The move came as DOT’s scrubbed its own planning process that included check-ins with organizers this week to work out the details of the much-anticipated neighborhood events.
The agency canceled the meetings after “feedback” from the NYPD — an agency that has exhibited a pattern of intervening in the planning of public events on the grounds that cops will be overstretched during a busy summer that includes the World Cup games in the New York area and the nation’s 250th birthday party on July 4.
Feedback or not, DOT has called off a match watch on the popular Vanderbilt Avenue open street in Brooklyn — and the group behind that car-free space put the blame squarely on top cop Jessica Tisch.
“Commissioner Tisch is actively choosing to ban New Yorkers from enjoying anything fun in our public spaces for a huge portion of the summer,” said Alex Morano, a board member of Prospect Heights Open Streets, which runs the Vanderbilt Avenue space. “This is an absurd decision that the commissioner needs to immediately rectify. “
DOT had already gotten the ball rolling on plans to set up as many as 20 viewing parties on open streets and plazas, with $10,000 to stand up each event, between June 11 and July 19, according to agency plans obtained by Streetsblog.
Transportation officials had even scheduled a professionally produced event for Vanderbilt on June 20, and were all set to do a site visit, but the agency called it off yesterday and told them that the event would not happen, according to Morano.
Similarly, DOT canceled a planning call about a June 14 world cup event with organizers of the 31st Avenue Open Street in Astoria, Queens, on Wednesday, though it is unclear if the plans are fully off the table yet, according to John Surico, chair of the group that runs that open street.
“We were meant to have a screening June 14 on the open street and we were essentially told pretty abruptly on Wednesday that we wouldn’t have this call,” Surico told Streetsblog. “We’ve heard that PD doesn’t want to provide the resources and won’t issue the permits.
“If that is true, it’s a bummer.”
The public space group in Mamdani’s home neighborhood hosts movie screenings all the time, Surico added, with hundreds of people in attendance.
“What’s crazy is we have screenings all the time. We had three movies over the summer. What makes this any different,” he said. “We had literally 500 people on the street for our movies.”
Open streets organizers regularly apply for permits with the city’s Street Activity Permit Office, or SAPO, in order to operate on the roadway, but for the larger viewing parties they had to file for a separate such permit, Morano said.
SAPO representatives recently denied Streetsblog a permit to host a party for its 20th anniversary, citing “a directive from NYPD to ensure that resources are not strained and everyone can remain safe during the busy period” during the World Cup. But now even events the city had planned for the sports bash are facing the chopping block.
The permitters technically operate inside the Mayor’s Office, but each application has to be reviewed by the NYPD, and cops have shut down requests for things as benign as a street cleanup due to vague security concerns.
Mamdani recently greenlit a ban on larger events on city parkland during the upcoming sports bonanza – also at the request of the police – with Parks Department officials telling the Post that it was due to police staffing being stretched during the tournament along with celebrations for the 250th celebration of America’s Declaration of Independence.
The city also abruptly axed a viewing party on a blacktop section of McCarren Park in north Brooklyn, said Kevin LaCherra, who works with several groups in the area. Meanwhile, a viewing at the nearby Banker’s Anchor plaza remains ago, he said.
“What an incredible opportunity that we’re missing as a city,” LaCherra said of the cancellations.
The series of own goals comes after advocates urged the mayor to channel his well-known love for the sport to turn the city into a pedestrian paradise beyond just a corporate-friendly “fan zone” in Times Square, by allowing public viewings on the swaths of the street scape Hizzoner ostensibly controls.
A spokesperson for the NYPD, who declined to provide a name, said police were “working with City Hall and other city agencies to plan a wide variety of events associated with the World Cup and to ensure that everyone attending these events can enjoy them safely.”
DOT spokesman Vin Barone promised the city “a summer of fun, affordable events, including viewing parties across the city so New Yorkers can appreciate the World Cup right from their neighborhood.” He did not offer specifics.
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