Readers react to Eric Adams’ proposal to ‘pedestrianize’ 5th Ave

In attacking Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to “pedestrianize” Fifth Avenue by widening sidewalks and lowering 4 auto lanes to 1 final week, I warned that it could lead to a Times Square-like situation the place pedestrian plazas made for a poorer procuring setting whereas enabling disorderly conduct and crime.

The blowback was fast. One reader, “Uncle Sammy” proposed on nypost.com that Fifth Avenue be used for “outside eating sheds and outside playing pop-ups.”

Much less amusing had been tweets by retail leasing specialist Steve Soutendijk, a managing director at Cushman & Wakefield and retail committee co-chair on the Actual Property Board of New York.

Soutendijk raged of my piece, “By no means seen something so out of contact.” It was “borderline parody,” “drivel” and “canine whistling.”

He objected that I disparaged D Sports activities at 1466 Broadway, which changed Without end 21 on the location, for promoting primarily sneakers. I quipped that Instances Sq. was shedding its classier retail to “quick meals and quick ft.”

Soutendijk tweeted that D Sports activities has 3,400 shops worldwide. I hope the soundtracks on the 3,399 different don’t additionally pipe in, as on the Instances Sq. location, a rap quantity referred to as “Uber In all places” replete with a number of f-bombs and lyrics comparable to, “Shorty wanna kiss me however I do know she sucking d—.”

Not everybody in retail was on board with Soutendijk’s view. Colliers vice chairman Bradley Mendelson, who has dealt with epic leases each in Instances Sq. (Toys ‘R’ Us) and on Fifth Avenue (Uniqlo), responded on Fb to Adams’ Fifth Avenue scheme that the mayor “doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Mendelson, a longtime plaza skeptic, opined about Adams’ plan, “Why doesn’t he do what he ought to … clear up the rubbish, do away with the rats as a substitute of taking what’s already nice and make it worse.”

The most surprising assist for my view got here from  the Chicago Tribune. An editorial calling for revitalization of once-premier however now struggling Michigan Avenue warned in opposition to turning the “Magnificent Mile” into a reproduction of what Adams has in thoughts for Fifth Avenue.

The paper was “skeptical of too many pedestrian plazas in large, cold-weather high-crime cities.” It quoted my column, “For a take a look at the harm these … so-called oases trigger you want go no additional than Instances Sq..”

Recent air from the Windy Metropolis!