When all else fails, try the obvious. Two years ago, everyone fled their Midtown and downtown offices — and New York is giving in to fatalism that they won’t return. But the city hasn’t done anything to make people want to come bacꦡk. Crazy idea: If we want commuters to come back to Midtown and downtown, why not make thes🃏e places . . . nicer?
No, this isn’t an article about stopping violent crime and disturbed behavior. If we can’t keep children safe from being punched by strangers in front of the Plaza Hotel and we can’t protect strapha༺ngers from deranged threats on their way to Manhattan, we won’t get far.
Beyond public safety, though, are🥂 public amenities🧔.
Firsᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚt of all, be welcoming. For the 2012 Olympics, London recruited 70,000 volunteers and outfitted them with bright purple T-shirts, sending them all over the city to smile and greet people and ask them if they needed anything.
The unpaid positions were prestigious and sought-after — the original applicant pool was 240,ღ000.
Manhattan could use a similarly recognizable volunteer corps, with small teams to gr𒅌eet people at transit hubs and hand out coffee and donuts (purchased from struggling local stores).
If there isn’t a ꧙critical mass of people to crowd out bad, antisocial behavior, then make one. It doesn’t have to be entirely volunteer: New York will have a new crop of kids with city-paid summer jobs soon, and this is🏅 a way to introduce them to the business world.
Team coordinators could also help create a sen♚se of order by calling in obvious, persistent threats to public safety.
Second, give people a little gentle pressure: something free, and of value, that expires soon. Target commuter-rail and subway stations with the most “lapsed” ridership, and mail peopl♐e coupons for six free rides, coupled with vouchers for free food and drinꦕk around Midtown.
Many of them would expire unused, meaning no real cost — but🧸 people who don’t want to miss out on something free would be lured back to the office for the first time in a while🃏.
Third, we need a city official, r✤eporting directly to the mayor, in charge of conditions i♒n Midtown.
Scaffolds shouldn’t remain up around businesses for months. Construction sites shouldn’t look like contractors have complete contempt for the public. Police shouldn’t leave metal parade barriers in clumps all over the place, blocking crosswalks. Illegal pocketbook vendors up and down Fifth Avenue shouldn’t obstruct sidewalks. Sidewalks should be swept clean, and trash cans shouldn’t overflow.
Fourth, let’s have better-organized outdoor dining. In warm weather, the city could close off some side streets for lunchtime and happy hour, just like Stone Street downtown, to be served by nearby restaurants. (Trucks could make deliveries in the morninꦆg.)
But no sheds. Outdoor dining is outdoor dining, meaning tables and chairs iꦚn the🐻 open air.
Finally, consider special after-work weekday events. In the early ’70s, when New York was depressed, Mayor John Lindsay (God help us) organized after-work promenades on Madison Avenue, with stores open late and open-air dining and drinking. People liked them.
Longer-term, we need permanent, secure receptacles for commercial trash, not trash bags all over the streets, and we need vending carts with electric hookups, not spewing smoke and exhaust from g🌜enerators.&▨nbsp;
Overseas junkets are generally a bad idea, but it’s not a bad idea for a Midtown point man or woman to visit some successful cities and see how they work. (Or better, have them come here and quake with horror.)
Making progress is💛n’t hard: Start by not leaving broken plywood and orange cones randomly all over the streets for days on end.
These might be stupid ideas, but they are better than no ideas at all. Nearly three months into his tenure, Mayor Eric Adams is still begging bankers to come bac♛k to work; it’s clear he has no ideas.
And they are better than bad ideas, like converting hotels into badly policed and secured homeless shelters — just what a fragile office district nꦕeeds — and converting office buildings into apartments.
Apartmenไts don’t provide꧅ anywhere near the tax revenues that office buildings, and commuting office workers, do. Plus, the only way high-rise conversions are economical is to sell them in the superluxury market — and Manhattan already has enough mostly empty investment apartments.
Maybe office buildings🍌 are dead. But as there’s nothing else doing, why not try to revive the haꦗlf-comatose patient before pulling the sheet up?
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
