The Fowler Square pedestrian plaza debuted today and is already being used. Photo: Brownstoner

Fort Greene’s newest public plaza opened today and Brownstoner was on the scene to capture the moment. The plaza, which reclaimed space for pedestrians on a short, lightly-trafficked block of South Elliott Place between Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue, connects the sidewalk to an existing public triangle.

Even though construction only finished today (because the plaza materials are epoxy, gravel, granite blocks and planters, it only took about a week to install, Brownstoner reported), it’s already getting use. One of those now-iconic folding tables had a crowd of people gathered around it.

At the request of the community board, DOT will be evaluating the impact of the street reclamation on traffic flows and pedestrian life over the summer.

In addition to creating new public space, the plaza shortened this crosswalk on Lafayette Avenue, improving pedestrian safety. Photo: Brownstoner

Proposed sidewalk extensions along Whitehall Street would keep pedestrians out of auto traffic. Image: NYC DOT

Pedestrians at the southern-most tip of Manhattan are getting a lot more space to walk, thanks to a DOT proposal [PDF] first reported by DNAinfo last week.

New sidewalk extensions along Whitehall Street, as well as a new plaza at the famous statue of the bull at Bowling Green, will make conditions safer for people walking to the subway, the Staten Island Ferry, or the Battery.

Right now, there’s just not enough room for all the pedestrian activity in Lower Manhattan. Along one block of Whitehall, for example, 390 pedestrians walk in the roadway during a single peak hour, according to DOT. Existing sidewalks can’t handle the capacity.

Under the DOT plan, sidewalks on both sides of Whitehall would be extended into the street between Broadway and Pearl Street. The extensions would be even larger at intersections in order to shorten crosswalk distances. The effect is a sizable expansion of the pedestrian realm.

The redesign would use paint and flexible delineators, and could be put into effect in as little as two weeks.

DOT also proposes using the same materials to extend the plaza on which the bull stands all the way back to Morris Street, providing space for tourists who currently crowd onto a striped median in the street to take pictures of the statue.

The pedestrian improvements were unanimously approved by Community Board 1′s Financial District Committee, according to DNAinfo. Said committee chair Ro Sheffe: “What’s not to like?”

A diagram of the permanent Willoughby Street plaza. Click here for a larger image with legible text. Image: DDC

Downtown Brooklyn’s Willoughby Street plaza, located just off Adams Street, was the forerunner of New York City’s current efforts to reclaim roadways as pedestrian spaces. Built in 2006, before Janette Sadik-Khan took over the city Department of Transportation, the city used now-familiar ingredients — concrete planters and folding chairs — to close the block to auto traffic and open up space for people to walk and sit.

Six years later, the plaza is a construction site, as the city transforms it from an overnight experiment to a permanent part of Downtown Brooklyn. New street trees and planting beds will supersede the movable planters and uniform sidewalk-style paving will replace the asphalt of the former roadbed.

The neighbors can’t wait.

“The new pedestrian plaza that they’re putting in is going to be fantastic,” said Jeff Kay, COO of Muss Development. “We’re really excited about it.”

Muss Development bought the bottom two floors of 345 Adams Street, a superblock-sized city office building that fronts the Willoughby plaza, in 2007, with the intention of turning the space from offices into retail. Kay said the plaza has been a boon to restaurants signing new leases in the building. “It’s a great complement, the fact that people can eat there and bring stuff out of the restaurant,” he said.

A new Panera Bread is set to open shortly on the ground floor of 345 Adams, according to Brownstoner. A Muss media release says Candy shop Sugar and Plumm and restaurant American BBQ and Beer Company are scheduled to open this fall. A Shake Shack just opened on the other side of the plaza.

Not coincidentally, Muss is also building a new entrance to 345 Adams that will front the plaza.

The lack of vehicular access on Willoughby doesn’t bother Kay. “We’ve had absolutely no problems,” he said. Neither shoppers, workers, nor deliveries have had trouble reaching the building, said Kay, noting that they can use Fulton or Adams Streets. “It wasn’t a particularly traveled street in any event. It’s just a perfect use of that street.”

Photo: Aaron Naparstek

There aren't many reasons to drive on this section of South Elliott Place. Image: Google Maps

In a meeting Wednesday evening, Brooklyn Community Board 2 endorsed plans to try out a new pedestrian plaza at Fort Greene’s Fowler Square. A short, lightly-trafficked block of South Elliott Place, between Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue, will be reclaimed for pedestrians, allowing the existing square to be connected with the adjoining block. The vote was 28 to 4, according to District Manager Rob Perris.

The plaza had garnered support from the community board before, but a small group opposed it on the grounds that the street closure would inconvenience drivers too much by forcing them to go a block or two out of their way. One opponent, who also invested a lot of energy trying to undermine nearby Putnam Plaza, posted flyers calling the Fowler Squre plaza a land grab by the “greedy 1%.”

The community board, apparently, disagreed. Pedestrian space and pedestrian safety are resources everyone in the neighborhood benefits from.

The Fowler Square plaza will be built with temporary materials for now, and DOT plans to monitor its success after it is installed in May. The department will be measuring traffic in the area and pedestrian usage of the new space.

Time-lapse photography of the before and after conditions will provide animated evidence of how people move through the space with and without automobiles, said board member Mike Epstein.

Planters installed last week are adding a little bit of color to the 37th Road pedestrian plaza in Jackson Heights. Photo: Clarence Eckerson, Jr.

A package of enhancements and adjustments to the new pedestrian plaza on 37th Road in Jackson Heights — the object of a high-profile backlash from a group of local merchants this winter — is winning over some of the skeptics.

DOT has placed new planters and seating to spruce up the plaza and give it more color, while also adding parking and loading spaces and reversing the direction of traffic on a nearby block to improve access to the plaza, allaying some of the merchants’ fears.

The larger package of transportation changes related to the plaza had shown impressive benefits — shaving seven minutes off of local bus trips — and the new public space was already widely used. But recent tweaks have helped build a stronger consensus around the plaza, which proved to be the most controversial element of the plan.

City Council Member Daniel Dromm is a plaza supporter and has used his discretionary funds to pay for its upkeep. ”DOT has stepped up to the plate,” he said of the dozen or so planters that arrived in the plaza last Thursday. “The place is looking much more attractive.”

More street furniture is set to be delivered this Friday, when tables and chairs will be delivered at the request of two local restaurant owners. Those business owners, who had previously aligned with the merchants leading the fight against the plaza, have disassociated from the opposition. “They have grown to see the benefits to their restaurants,” said Dromm.

The tweaks aren’t limited to the new pedestrian space between 73rd and 74th Street. One block to the east, DOT has changed the direction of 37th Road. Now, the street feeds into the plaza rather than away from it, easing merchant fears that the redesign of the neighborhood’s street network had made it harder for customers to access their stores.

On that same block, DOT replaced a bus layover area and striped bike lane with parking; the buses were moved a block away and the bike lane replaced with sharrows. According to Dromm, the addition of  these spots is more than enough to offset the removal of parking to make way for the plaza. “There’s actually more parking for the merchants now,” he said, estimating that there’s been a net increase of five parking spaces. Loading zones were also added around the corner for stores fronting the plaza.

Overall, the new traffic pattern appears popular in the neighborhood. At a town hall meeting held last night, ten or so plaza opponents held up signs and protested, but a much larger number cheered and clapped for the changes, reported Len Maniace, a vice president of the Jackson Heights Beautification Group. “There was opposition,” he said, “but there was significantly more support.”

“It was an overwhelming show of support for the plaza,” said Dromm. “It was just great.”

When the transportation plan for the neighborhood was first presented to the local community board last year, including rerouting two bus routes and making the one block of 37th Road car-free, it passed unanimously.

While some merchants are coming to embrace the plaza, the hard core of opposition shows no sign of being mollified by the modifications. “I don’t think they will be totally satisfied until the plaza is gone,” said Dromm, “and that’s not going to happen.”

In addition to speeding bus service, said Dromm, the plaza has had a marked impact on safety. The intersection at one end of the plaza, where 37th Road, 74th Street and Broadway all meet, was the most dangerous in Jackson Heights until last year. “Since the implementation of the traffic study, there hasn’t been one accident on the corner,” said Dromm. “That alone is reason to keep it.”

A more formal DOT evaluation will be ready next month, said Maniace, and will be presented to the community board.

With better weather around the corner, Maniace said he expects the plaza to become only more popular in the coming months among residents and merchants alike. “With the spring and summer coming up, there’s a real opportunity for increased business there,” he said. “They may end up needing even more tables and chairs.”

Photos: Brad Aaron

In March, The Uni posted photos of a behemoth advertising installation in the pedestrian plaza on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue. Here it is as of late last week. We received reports that today it’s coming down.

For a solid two weeks, most of the plaza was reserved for cosmetics samples as passersby were blasted with amplified music.

Plaza users — people for whom this space was designed — were relegated to a small triangular area at the north end, where the view was dominated by the tail end of this thing, about the size of a bus.

North end of the plaza, looking south toward 14th Street.

Companies like Sephora can apply to use public spaces through the Street Activities Permit Office. It looks like the SAPO guidelines don’t prevent this kind of appropriation of public space to hawk products, at least on a temporary basis.

Courtesy of Clarence Eckerson, Jr., here are some more scenes from the Jackson Heights pedestrian plaza that don’t fit the New York Times’ preferred narrative. Clarence says he passed through the plaza three times yesterday and it was bustling each time. On a Thursday.

Related posts:

• The Jackson Heights Plaza Photo the Times Doesn’t Want You to See
• Unlocking the Potential of the New Jackson Heights Plaza

This piece of alarmism was produced by an entity known as FACT, believe it or not.

The reports are in, and it seems like Fort Greene residents were able to have a productive workshop with NYC DOT and the Fulton Area Business Alliance (FAB) last night to discuss the new public plaza planned for Fowler Square. A reader informs us that aside from a few minutes of haranguing from a few individuals, attendees could sit down together and share ideas.

Previous public meetings for both the Fowler Square plaza and the recently opened plaza by Putnam Avenue in Clinton Hill have been ambushed by Schellie Hagan, an opponent of plazas and FAB who goes by the acronym FACT (Fulton Area Coming Together). As you can see from this Hagan flyer that our reader sent along, FACT is really all about bringing the Fulton area together by informing everyone of the facts.

After all, how could Fulton Street withstand another project to “split a neighborhood apart” like the “leisure class” plaza that opened at Putnam Avenue last year?

There just aren't many reasons to drive on the block of South Elliott Place between Fort Greene Park and Fowler Square. Image: Google Maps

NYC DOT, Council Member Tish James, Community Board 2, and the Fulton Area Business Alliance are hosting a community workshop tonight to gather ideas for a new plaza at Fowler Square — the triangle formed by Fulton Street, Lafayette Avenue, and South Elliot Place in Fort Greene. In addition to lending your expertise as the new public space takes shape, this is an important one to turn out for because a handful of project opponents have managed to commandeer past meetings.

The Fowler Square plaza would reclaim a short, lightly-trafficked block of South Elliott in front of the Smoke Joint. Community Board 2 overwhelmingly approved it, but opponents have disrupted workshops for this project before and they will probably try again. Their complaint seems to boil down to two things: 1) If they happen to be driving on the one block of South Elliott Place between Fort Greene Park and Lafayette, they’d have to drive one block out of their way to reach Fulton Street; and 2) New York is not Amsterdam.

So if you live in the neighborhood and you’re of the mind that New York is not Parsippany or I-95, tonight’s workshop is a good place to share your vision for a city where streets do more than just move cars. Here’s where to go:

Lafayette Ave Presbyterian Church – Jarvey Room
85 South Oxford Street (between Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue)
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Full seating in the new Jackson Heights plaza last fall. One merchant opposed to the project told a local paper that the plaza is "like a ghost town." Photo: Clarence Eckerson, Jr.

Earlier this month you might have noticed a few press accounts about merchants in Jackson Heights who think a new public plaza on one short block of 37th Road is crimping their bottom line. The plaza is actually part of a much broader plan to improve street safety, speed bus trips, and reduce traffic congestion in Jackson Heights, which neighborhood groups and NYC DOT have been working on for years without receiving much media attention. Now that there’s a tinge of conflict, the press is all over it — an innovative and community-driven transportation project has turned into a story about shopkeepers upset over the removal of 20 parking spaces.

The plaza reclaimed the block of 37th Road between 73rd Street and 74th Street. Before the plaza, traffic on that block degraded the neighborhood street network. Drivers turning left onto 37th Road used to cause traffic to back up on 73rd Street and beyond, causing epic fits of horn-honking. Buses routed onto the block more than a decade ago to make way for the construction of the 74th Street transit hub had to make a series of zigzagging turns, slowing down more than 10,000 bus riders every weekday. When the proposal to re-route the buses and take traffic off the block came before the local community board, the vote in favor was unanimous.

“The objective was to get that traffic to move more smoothly and reduce that honking,” said Council Member Daniel Dromm, who has championed the changes and shepherded the project through to completion. Now Q47 and Q49 buses make one turn instead of three, and Dromm says bus drivers have told him they save seven minutes on each trip compared to the old route.

Merchants knew about the changes well in advance and most of the neighborhood’s business groups were supportive, said Dromm. After the plaza installation last fall, complaints began to surface about the loss of parking. But the parking loss — 20 spaces, according to one plaza opponent — is insignificant compared to the foot traffic that could be drawn to a well-run public space. Not only is Jackson Heights compact, walkable, and full of pedestrian traffic, but it has the least amount of park space per capita of any neighborhood in the city. The plaza is also right next to the 74th Street subway station, which sees more than 40,000 boardings on a typical weekday.

Some local merchants apparently don’t see the value of having a public plaza on their doorstep. “Our customers come to do shopping, not to sit,” said Mohammed Pier, president of the Jackson Heights Bangladeshi Business Association.

But it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of people who come to Jackson Heights don’t drive there. According to DOT’s 2010 neighborhood travel survey, 94 percent of interview subjects didn’t drive cars to get to Jackson Heights:

Image: NYC DOT

Other merchants believe that the benefits of the plaza outweigh the effects of having less parking. “Right now the business is slow because of the economy,” said Vasantrai Gandhi, who owns a shop called the New York Gold Company and used to chair Community Board 3. “Nobody can judge how much this affects business. One thing is sure. Now there is no accidents, no horn honking, no pollution, no fumes. Some areas benefit and some areas are at a disadvantage, but what’s important is safety.”

I spoke to some residents familiar with the project who think any loss in foot traffic is probably due to the re-routing of buses, not the plaza. They also speculated that the plaza would have received a better welcome if it had opened during the warmer months and started drawing crowds immediately. (Although even in the fall and winter, the space attracts people.)

The missing ingredient, more than great sunny weather, is vision and leadership from the businesses around the plaza, said Afzal Hussein, who opened Espresso77 on nearby 77th Street in 2007. “77th Street never used to have foot traffic,” he said. “Since I opened it people walk here.”

Hussein sees the potential of the plaza to become a destination, and he says he’d be glad to help make it work. “In the summer you can have art exhibits or performance,” he said. “You need a community working together, it’s no one person’s job. They need a leader. It’s a lot of potential there but nobody’s thinking that way.”

Without a merchant group taking ownership of the plaza, Dromm’s office has been coordinating events and maintenance. So far, he said, several community organizations have asked to use the plaza for events, including the Bangladeshi Youth Congress, Queens Community House, and Sindhu USA.

“We’re really working hard to make this successful and I’m calling on the business community to do the same thing,” said Dromm. “We want to help them, but it may require a little different thinking than they’ve had in the past.”

A reader passed along this photo of a new sign announcing that Fowler Square, a small triangle of grass in Fort Greene, is in line for a public space upgrade courtesy the Fulton Area Business Alliance and NYC DOT’s plaza program. Head to the Facebook group advertised on the sign and there’s more information. The next public workshop to help design the space, for example, will be on Thursday, February 16, at 6:00 p.m.

In past meetings, Community Board 2 endorsed the idea of a plaza wholeheartedly, according to a report in the Brooklyn Paper. Supporters haven’t always made a strong showing: At one meeting, some residents complained that by cutting off through traffic on a block of South Elliott Place and creating more space for pedestrians, the plan would “countrify” an urban area.

James Vacca got a lot of press for attacking the DOT plaza program at a hearing in his committee, but didn't seem to listen to the business reps he invited to testify. Image: CBS 2

James Vacca should know better.

On Tuesday, the City Council passed his bill requiring the Department of Transportation to consult with the Department of Small Business Services, among other agencies, whenever it implements major changes to a street. Vacca gave this explanation of the bill’s significance: “Many of the bike paths, many of the pedestrian plazas negatively impact small businesses and their ability to survive in the City of New York.”

Say what?

Just about every single plaza that DOT has built or approved (see here, here, here, and here) is sponsored by a local business association. The tiny handful that are not still have prominent local sponsors like Heritage Health and Housing in West Harlem. We reached out to Vacca’s office to ask him to specify some of the “many” plazas that have hurt small business. So far, there’s been no reply.

As chair of the City Council Transportation Committee, Vacca has a talented staff to make sure he understands the issues. So why does he keep mangling them in public?

Vacca can’t plead ignorance. At a hearing on public plazas in his own committee earlier this year, Vacca heard from representatives of four business groups: the 34th Street Partnership, the Dumbo BID, the Pitkin Avenue BID, and the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation. Each of them raved about the plazas.

Mario Bodden, the assistant vice president of community development at SoBro, had this to say about DOT’s Roberto Clemente Plaza to his fellow Bronxite: “I am so proud of it. I am very passionate about it. I want the City Council to put more money in the plaza program.” If business representatives like Bodden didn’t feel that way, they wouldn’t keep lining up to sponsor more plazas.

The available data bolster what these business leaders know in their gut: A better pedestrian environment is good for the bottom line. Retail rents in Times Square continued to rise after DOT turned traffic lanes into public plazas on Broadway in 2009. This year Times Square cracked Cushman & Wakefield’s list of the world’s top ten retail districts for the first time.

As for the effect of NYC bike lanes, hard data is scarce, but walk down any of the commercial avenues with protected lanes, and the retail environment looks healthy. Yes, Columbus Avenue business owners complained about the new bike lane’s effect on parking and deliveries, but merchants are notoriously bad judges of the issue, and a 2007 survey found that only two percent of the people on Columbus Avenue got there by driving [PDF]. Studies from other cities, meanwhile, show solid evidence that bike lanes can improve business.

The plaza, which was completed around six weeks ago, closed a short block of Ashford Street between Livonia and New Lots Avenues. That enabled the Department of Transportation to connect a tiny, 800 square foot triangle in the middle of the street to the sidewalk, creating a new 3,800 square foot space.

All that new public space was in heavy use today, as visitors were treated to a DJ playing hip-hop and reggae, a Thanksgiving turkey raffle, and the gospel choir of the local America Come Back to God Christian Academy, seen above singing “The Best Is Yet To Come.”

The best sign of a successful plaza? It's already in use by locals, including Ceciline Frank, on the right. Photo: Noah Kazis

But even before the event kicked off, East New York residents were enjoying the movable furniture in place. Ceciline Frank was walking past the area with a friend and decided to sit down and drink a coffee. “It’s a different environment,” she said of the plaza. “It’s an upliftment for us here.”

Eddie Di Benedetto, the owner of a local pizza parlor and the head of the New Lots Avenue Triangle Merchants Association, which sponsored the plaza, said businesses have already seen a boost from the new pedestrian space. “They love the fact they’re having tables and chairs,” he said. The plaza, he predicted, will become “a crown jewel of our community.”

According to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, in 18 months the plaza will be upgraded from its current design, which uses granite blocks and planters to mark off the space, to a more permanent form.

The New Lots Triangle sits directly below the final stop on the 3 train in Brooklyn, and the station exit lets deposits people onto what used to be a narrow sidewalk. “You would get off the number 3 and actually step right off into traffic,” said Sadik-Khan. The plaza, she said, creates “a great new welcome mat for the community.”

The plaza is also expected to improve safety. Sadik-Khan noted that 14 people had been injured in traffic crashes over the last five years at this location.

City Council Member Charles Barron also spoke in support of the plaza this morning. “This beautification is a step in the right direction to let people know we’re taking pride in our community,” he said. To open his remarks, Barron led the crowd in chanting “East New York is on the rise.”

Also in attendance were staff members for Assembly Member Inez Barron and Senate Minority Leader John Sampson.

More photos of the plaza below:

The plaza adds a whole lot of public space to this corner of East New York. Photo: Noah Kazis

Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan officially opened the New Lots Triangle plaza along with community leaders and City Council Member Charles Barron. Photo: Noah Kazis

Most New Yorkers spend a lot of time walking, so pedestrian infrastructure is bound to be popular. Image: Municipal Art Society

The Municipal Art Society’s second annual survey on livability, released today, provides still more opinion data showing that New Yorkers want to see more bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. They’re more conflicted, however, when it comes to new, large-scale development.

The MAS poll, a survey of 1,000 residents performed by the Marist Institute, found that a preponderance of New Yorkers think that both bike lanes and pedestrianized streets make their neighborhoods better places to live. Bike lanes proved more popular, with 56 percent saying they improved livability and only 17 percent opposing them. Even the bold proposal of closing streets entirely to traffic had a citywide approval rating of 42 percent to 29 percent. Previous polls have shown similarly sizable levels of support for bike lanes.

MAS found more conflicted feelings toward new, dense development. While 62 percent of those surveyed believed that “large real estate development” is a good idea, an equal number said that development should “maintain the character of the neighborhood.” Bronx residents were much more willing to embrace development while Staten Islanders and Manhattanites were the least.

As MAS found last year, New York City’s staggering levels of inequality are reflected in New Yorkers’ opinions towards their neighborhoods. “We continue to see some underlying discontent, especially among people living outside Manhattan and those with lower incomes,” said MAS president Vin Cipolla. “It’s clear that citywide organizations like MAS need to step up our individual and collective efforts and presence in neighborhoods and forge new partnerships with community-based organizations to address these issues.”

Clarence sends over this photo of the newly car-free block of 37th Road between 73rd Street and 74th Street in Jackson Heights. Since this picture was taken, the asphalt on this block has been coated with an epoxy-and-gravel surface, and it looks like a two-way bike path will be striped on one side of the street.

The new plaza is part of a package to improve pedestrian safety, bike safety, transit effectiveness, and traffic flow in the commercial core of Jackson Heights, which DOT has been working on with neighborhood residents since the beginning of the year. You can track the changes and give DOT your comments through the online portal for the project.

City officials showed Community Board 5 renderings of the design for the permanent plaza at Times Square last night. Image: NYC DOT

By taking out a troublesome diagonal from the Manhattan grid, the Green Light for Midtown program improved street safety and retail business while creating new public space at one of New York City’s most iconic locations. Pedestrian injuries are down 35 percent and injuries to motorists are down 63 percent, even while traffic is flowing more smoothly than ever. Pedestrian volumes are up 11 percent in Times Square, bringing business to area shops and catapulting Times Square to the second-most expensive retail area in the city.

Yet all anyone ever seemed to talk about were the lawn chairs.

That particular media obsession may finally be ready for retirement, though. NYC DOT and the Department of Design and Construction released plans for the permanent reconstruction of Times Square last night, as reported by DNAinfo. The entire roadway is going to be rebuilt for the first time in 50 years, said DOT spokesperson Seth Solomonow, repairing the utilities beneath the street. Instead of putting the asphalt back in place, however, the city will be installing a plaza designed for pedestrians from the ground up.

The Times Square design, seen from the TKTS booth. Image: NYC DOT.

No longer will you have to step down from the sidewalk to the reclaimed street space. The width of Broadway will be laid with concrete pavers in two dark, alternating tones. In another touch from architecture firm Snøhetta, which designed the project, stainless steel discs will reflect some of Times Square’s neon back off the ground. Benches will be sited to separate areas meant for lounging from areas meant for walking.

The concrete pavers will extend into the roadbed where crosstown streets interrupt the plaza space. Hopefully, that will send a strong visual message to motorists that they are entering a busy pedestrian space.

The new design also includes a bike route through the area, but not on Broadway. According to DNAinfo, cyclists riding south on Broadway’s protected lane would switch to a short contraflow segment on 47th Street, turn onto the west side of Seventh Avenue, cross to the east side of the street at 45th Street, and then cross back onto Broadway at 42nd. For those five blocks, the lane would not be protected.

Construction would begin in 2012 and be complete by 2014, according to DNAinfo.

As seen in this plan, the Broadway bike lane would turn onto Seventh Avenue at 47th Street and run alongside the plaza until it switches to the other side of the street at 45th Street. Image: NYC DOT

“People can enjoy it now, and have been since about five minutes after the street was closed,” said Phillip Kellogg, the manager of the Fulton Area Business Alliance, which sponsored the plaza. Five minutes after the work crews left, he said, a skateboarder was trying out the new space. Immediately after tables and chairs were put out, locals brought out their chess sets. People escaped the heat of the laundromat and waited for their loads to finish out in the fresh air. “Everybody’s been giving it a thumbs up,” said Kellogg.

The plaza, still only a week old, has so far been the boon for business that the FAB hoped it would be. “Enhancing the pedestrian experience along Fulton makes it more appealing to walk on Fulton Street, to shop and come to our restaurants and get dinner or a drink,” said Kellogg. That theory was put to the test on Sunday and passed with flying colors, he added, convincing even the skeptical businesses that the plaza works, so far. “The deli sold a lot of soda and seltzer. The cafés were jam-packed, with lines out the door.”

Because Fulton cuts through the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill grids diagonally, said Kellogg, there are lots of underutilized triangular spaces created at three-way intersections. In addition to the Putnam plaza, which was built quickly with less permanent materials, FAB is also sponsoring the Fowler Square plaza, at the intersection of Fulton, Lafayette Avenue and South Elliott Place, which is going through the DOT’s formal plaza program and will be built with higher-quality materials. Right now, Fowler Square “is the kind of place where people just walk through on the way to somewhere else,” said Kellogg. “It’s really important that people realize that it’s theirs.”

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

While one can imagine a tsunami of ink engulfing the city if over a hundred doctors and other providers had joined up to condemn bike lanes and public plazas, with media types refusing to print a positive word about measures that are making streets safer, it will be quite a feat if this ringing endorsement pierces the news cycle.

Read the text of the letter after the jump; see the original with signatures here.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

We, the undersigned medical professionals, write to acknowledge and encourage your efforts to calm traffic and make New York City streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. As a result of your efforts, from re-envisioning Times Square to building the first protected bicycle lanes in the U.S., more New Yorkers are biking and walking than ever before. Mayor Bloomberg, we urge you to continue to set ambitious goals for how our streets and public spaces can help make all of New York City more healthy and safe.

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

These changes help pave the way for a city that breathes cleaner air and is in better physical condition. Commuting to work by bicycle or increasing the distance of daily walks has been shown to promote weight loss better than any exercise program or medication we could prescribe. Vital to fighting the epidemics of asthma and obesity is the opportunity for children to have safe places to play and clean air to breathe. The traffic calming infrastructure you have built is as valuable as a playground toward encouraging active youth and instilling healthy habits that will last a lifetime.

Thanks to your leadership, bicycling is the fastest growing mode of transportation in New York City and pedestrian safety is at an all-time high. Mayor Bloomberg, we enthusiastically support your efforts to improve bicycling and walking in New York City. As you shape your legacy, please continue to make safe, complete streets part of the prescription for a healthy New York City.

NYC DOT is implementing this pedestrian plaza in partnership with the Fulton Area Business Alliance. We’ll have a detailed story on the project in the days ahead. For now, enjoy the pictures courtesy of our tipster.

Watch the asphalt disappear...

...beneath the new epoxy-and-gravel surface.

The strip of asphalt before it was reclaimed for use as public space. Image: Google Street View

The Union Square Partnership interviewed local business people to see what they thought of the redesign of traffic patterns around the square. Each green dot represents a business that liked the changes, each blue dot signifies no opinion, and the three red dots represent businesses opposed.

It’s been a year since DOT made more room for pedestrians and cyclists around Union Square, and a recent survey shows a neighborhood happy with its new public spaces.

Feedback from businesses and residents led DOT to back away from its original proposal to, among other things, close two blocks of Union Square West to drivers during part of each day. Recognizing that remaining opponents were hopelessly intransigent, the local community board ultimately approved the plan by a vote of 24-1. By last September the changes were in place. In addition to installing roomy new public plazas, the city extended the protected bike lane on Broadway through 17th Street and around Union Square.

In August the Union Square Partnership collected surveys from 60 area businesses asking what they thought of the redesign. Thirty-six said it was a “good thing,” 21 had no opinion and three thought it was a “bad thing” [PDF]. Even the three who disapprove admitted that it hadn’t hurt their business. According to the New York Times, no businesses or store managers complained to elected officials, either.

“The vast majority of visitors in the district arrive on foot and public transportation, therefore the enhanced pedestrian environment has made the area more attractive to shoppers and diners,” explained Jennifer Falk, the executive director of the Union Square Partnership.

Most important, the streets are safer. On Broadway north of the square, for example, DOT reports the share of vehicles speeding dropped from 28 percent to 12 percent after the redesign [PDF]. Pedestrians crossing 17th Street at Broadway were given more than twice as much time to cross a street that is almost half as wide as before.

At the same time, motor vehicle speeds were not negatively affected by the changes. Taxi speeds fell by four percent on Fifth Avenue but rose by 14 percent on 18th Street, where the worst congestion was predicted by project opponents. On Park Avenue, speeds rose by marginal amounts.

Business people who were previously opposed came around to the plan, said Falk. “Their major concerns — increased traffic congestion, difficulty finding parking, delivery problems — never came to fruition,” she said. “Vehicles adapted to the new traffic patterns without disrupting normal flows.”

A broader Partnership survey, which included area residents, employees and visitors, found that 74 percent liked the new traffic pattern, with only 16 percent opposed.

DOT made some alterations after installation and plans to make more adjustments. Already, a few signals have been re-timed. A traffic calming neckdown was removed at 17th and Park while another was shaved down to make for easier vehicular turns at Broadway and 22nd. To alleviate crosstown traffic congestion, DOT is considering installing additional turn lanes at certain locations.