COVER STORY

Chinatown Searching for Answers on Park Row

By Josh Rogers

Mayor Mike Bloomberg wanted to have lunch in Chinatown last week, but unlike most people who work in the City Hall area and have a craving for scallops and onions (Bloomberg’s new favorite), the mayor can get through the Park Row barricades protecting police headquarters. Presumably, the trip was less than five minutes by car.

Two days later — on a lighter traffic day, Good Friday — a Downtown Express reporter drove from City Hall, around the barricades to the same restaurant, Sweet & Tart at 20 Mott St., and it took 24 minutes.

“Twenty-five minutes is pretty good,” said an impressed Edward Lam, who, along with his neighbors at Chatham Green and Chatham Towers, plans to file a lawsuit against the mayor April 22. He said he has clocked similar trips at 45 minutes. Lam, the president of the Chatham Green board of directors, said since the closure of Park Row for security reasons, residents have had to put up with onerous checkpoints, as well as longer walks and rides to bus stops, stores and other necessities.

Bloomberg came to Chinatown last Wednesday ostensibly to encourage visitors to ignore irrational fears about contracting SARS disease in Chinatown (all city cases so far are believed to have been transmitted overseas and no Chinatown resident has reported symptoms). But as he showcased his chopstick chops over lunch with neighborhood leaders, Bloomberg heard about the problems caused by the protections around One Police Plaza.

“This whole area was closed off, trucks couldn’t get in” after 9/11, the mayor said at a press conference immediately after the lunch. He said “most of the security issues” have been resolved.

Asked if the street connecting Chinatown to the Civic Center could be reopened with checkpoints, he said: “Hopefully we can loosen things up a little bit…. I’m going to talk to the [police] commissioner. You don’t want me being the commissioner.”

Bloomberg, a few minutes later, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly tends to be more cautious. “I keep asking the police commissioner to cut my police protection,” the mayor said. “He keeps saying I need it. I can’t figure out why.”

The same day, Kelly, in response to the national security alert being brought down from orange to yellow, said “nothing has changed in our minds to lower the things we are doing in New York City,” according to the Daily News. The city’s alert level remains at orange.

Some businesses near Police Plaza say the street closures have reduced business drastically.

Annie Zittell, who owns a bar called Metropolitan Improvement Co. at 1-3 Madison St., said in the first two months after 9/11, business was O.K. because Park Row was open to pedestrians. It was convenient for workers to walk from the Municipal Building to her bar for lunch, she said last week.

“We didn’t have a drop after 9/11; we had a drop after they closed down the streets in November [2001],” Zittell said. “It used to take them three minutes to walk here. If you have an hour for lunch, you’re not going to walk 10-15 minutes to get here.”

Now an idling Sanitation truck blocks her street to all but police personnel vehicles, making the block inaccessible to delivery trucks and uninviting to most pedestrians. She blames Bloomberg for creating an area for more police to park. Across the street from the bar is James Madison Plaza, which is still marked by a city Parks Dept. sign even though it is now used for police vehicles to park.

“The barriers are really killing us,” said Zittell. “He’s got it closed because of the parking.”

Attorney Jack Lester, who plans to file the lawsuit against the city this week, said the takeover of park land is illegal and the city has to explain to residents whether or not the closure is permanent and what the rules will be regarding such things as ambulance access to the buildings.

“Maybe there’s a valid basic reason for doing it, but they haven’t articulated anything to the public about the nature and duration of the closing,” said Lester. “If it’s permanent, it requires an environmental assessment of what they’re doing.”

Spokespersons for Commissioner Kelly did not return repeated calls for comment. Jordan Barowitz, a spokesperson for Bloomberg, said he was confident the mayor raised the issue with Kelly, but Barowitz did not have any information about the result of the conversation.

Danny Chen, who is on the board of directors at Chatham Green, said the police are in the process of making the situation worse by constructing a pop-up barrier that will prevent residents from driving up to their building. “Never mind the streets are closed; they’re putting in the mother of all pop-ups north of the Chatham Green driveway,” said Chen. “What is that, but to punish us for complaining…. What evil person came up with that?”

Councilmember Alan Gerson, one of several politicians trying to help the residents, said police officials have told him that there are technical reasons why the pop-up has to be built further out from the existing barrier, but they have indicated they may be able to build a new entrance to the driveway for Chatham tenants.

Gerson, who met with Kelly several weeks ago, said he no longer feels optimistic that Kelly will improve the situation since he has heard little since. “I left the meeting feeling good, but now I’m feeling frustrated,” said Gerson. “The worst part of this is the callous disregard, the disrespect shown to the community,” Gerson added. “If you have to close it down, you give an explanation. You do a mitigation.”

He has Council attorneys drafting legislation that would force the city to assess the traffic effects if a street is closed for more than 45 days for security reasons. The city would have to develop a traffic improvement plan in such instances.

Gerson said Kelly has agreed to a Park Row task force made up of Gerson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez and State Sen. Martin Connor, but the commissioner has resisted having any neighborhood representative on the committee.

Gerson said it was “sad” residents were given no choice but to file a lawsuit.

Several high-ranking Bloomberg officials including Dep. Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and Rob Walsh, Business Services commissioner, have said recently that the Park Row closing has hurt businesses in Chinatown. But not everyone is convinced it is an important factor. “Chinatown is latching onto this,” said one city official involved in the discussion. “If Park Row were opened, would that mean the recession would be over in Chinatown?”

Paul Lee, whose grandfather opened a gift store on 32 Mott St. over 80 years ago, disputed that. If Park Row were reopened, “It creates the flow,” said Lee, who now owns the store on Mott. “The buses can come back here. It brings us back to life. The fact that senior citizens have to walk three blocks out of their way, to a 90-year-old, it is more than an inconvenience.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has had to reroute the M15 bus away from Park Row since the closing.

Some in Chinatown are more willing to give Bloomberg the benefit of the doubt. David Chen, executive director of the Chinese-American Planning Council, who ate with Bloomberg last week, said he had the feeling the mayor would try to improve the situation. He said just like President Bush defers to Gen. Tommy Franks to develop war strategy, the mayor must turn to his general for security, but “I think [Bloomberg] understands the issue,” said Chen.

Bloomberg’s Transportation Dept. is now working with the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. on a Chinatown traffic study that will examine a myriad of issues in the neighborhood including traffic flow, parking, tour bus routes and other quality of life concerns. Parsons Brinckeroff will conduct the seven-month study for $350,000 to be paid by the L.M.D.C.

Andrew Salkin, Transportation’s borough commissioner of Lower Manhattan, said everyone may assume Park Row is the root of the problem, but a comprehensive study is needed to be sure. “We need to understand the problems and put them in definable pieces that lead to solutions,” said Salkin.

He said even with the street closed, motorists are still able to travel between Chinatown and the Civic Center. “The streets work,” said Salkin. “They do get congested, but they do process. The traffic moves.”

He said the Parsons Brinckeroff study is likely to look at whether changing traffic directional flows can relieve some of the problems along Park Row.

Vern Bergelin, the traffic engineering company’s senior planner, will be managing the study, which will begin next week. He said he plans to look at what can be done if Park Row remains closed and what could happen if it is reopened. “We’re going to go in with an open mind so that anything is possible,” Bergelin said. “We may find out early on that that is not the case.”

Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said she’s glad to see more attention being paid to the neighborhood, but she wonders whether a new study is really needed. “It’s clearly in their range of thinking; they are sympathetic,” said Fung. “They’re going to do a study. What are they going to find? Chinatown needs more access, there needs to be more parking and they have to find a way to open Park Row.”

Josh@DowntownExpress.com