City Hall Park Advocates Want Fewer Vendors Crowding the East Plaza
While one of Manhattan’s oldest public spaces, the eight-acre park that occupies the triangle formed by Broadway, Chambers Street, and the confluence of Park Row with Centre Street, experiences a renaissance, thanks to non-profits such as the City Hall Park Conservancy and Friends of City Hall Park, one corner of the site remains stubbornly blighted.
The plaza at the edge of Centre Street, adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge, has been buffeted by turmoil in recent years. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, it was occupied for several weeks by an encampment of protestors, who renamed it “Abolition Park.” Although the makeshift village was cleared by police in July of that year, damage to features such as bluestone paving went unrepaired.
In 2024, then-Mayor Eric Adams ordered the police to evict all vendors from the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. The enterprising food and souvenir sellers simply moved to the plaza, where they have remained ever since.
At a recent Community Board 1 (CB1) meeting, Jonathan Stirling, a Master’s Degree candidate in Landscape Architecture at City College of New York who is serving as CB1’s Urban Planning Fellow, said, “we’re dealing with a lack of investment in infrastructure, the real growth of the residential sector in this area, and the removal of the vendors from the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“It’s a multi-agency problem,” he continued, explaining that jurisdiction over the plaza is shared by the multiple NYC Departments: Parks, Transportation, and the Transit Authority (which is responsible for the sub-surface infrastructure, because City Hall subway stop is located beneath the plaza).
“The history is that this has actually been an issue since the late 1800s and early 1900s, shortly after the Brooklyn Bridge was built,” Mr. Stirling noted. “There has never been any real attempt at place-making or planning.”
In a survey conducted by Mr. Stirling on behalf of CB1, more than 60 percent of respondents described moving through the space as “difficult” or “very difficult.” Similar majorities cited concerns about “vendors blocking paths” and “excessive crowding,” while more than 40 percent mentioned “conflicts with bikes, e-scooters, or delivery riders.” More than 80 percent suggested “managing or relocating vendors” as a prime area of improvement, while a smaller majority called for “better separation between cyclists and pedestrians.”
One survey respondent said, “if you would like to make a few permanent structures for food vendors, two or three, and restrict the table vendors selling junk, it would be a better representation of our City and City Hall. It is an utter disgrace.”
Another City Hall Park user suggested, “create a green plaza that is able to connect City Hall Park to the Brooklyn Bridge and Gotham Park. This would create a great line from the heart of Downtown, eventually all the way to the water. And connect City Hall Park to Chinatown via the Park Row bike path. This is a great chance to be bold and embrace pedestrian plazas. Use tactical urbanism like flower planters to create safe spaces for people to walk.”
“This is both a design and a management problem,” Mr. Stirling said. “A lot of pavement is broken and loose, and a construction fence surrounding unrepaired stone has been there for years. And in terms of rules about vending, the Police Department and the Sanitation Department are both in charge of enforcement, but very little is happening. So it’s nearly lawless, and the void has been filled by vendors.”
Mr. Stirling urged CB1 to consider brokering a formal partnership between the City’s Parks Department and a non-profit organization, on the same model as the Battery Conservancy. This could limit the number of vendors through an authorized concession process, which would also raise funds (by levying a percentage of revenue collected by these vendors) that would be directed to maintenance of City Hall Park. (The Battery Conservancy collects approximately $250,000 per year from this arrangement.)
He also proposed that CB1 advocate for more diligent enforcement of vendor rules and the creation of a multi-stakeholder steering committee, to consider both long-term and temporary design solutions, to explore prospects for improved funding, and to create a dedicated “plaza manager” role.
In the meantime, the City Hall Park Conservancy plans to focus on urban planning studies and low-cost design interventions, which are expected to cost $20,000.