Though the pandemic took a toll on many of us, one silver lining of it was the creation of NYC’s Open Streets Program, which proved to be an instant hit and was made permanent in 2021 by The City Council and former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
And each year as the weather warms up, us New Yorkers look forward to taking to the hundreds of streets that participate in the program to enjoy the great outdoors–but have we reached the end of an era?
Streetsblog recently reported that one of the city’s most popular open streets zones, Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue Open Street, has unfortunately had to call it quits this year. Nearby on Vanderbilt Avenue, the open street zone south of Atlantic Avenue will have to half its program, only running May through September rather than April through October.
The announcement comes as a response to the city’s failure to replace pandemic-era funds that made the open streets program possible.
Curbed writes that while the DOT and pandemic grants supplied the open streets with some funding, the Business Improvement Districts (BID) and volunteers of the programs themselves were responsible for funding everything else, such as staffing and programming.
BID Executive Director Joanna Tallantire told Streetsblog:
We’ve been running a thriving program for four years. The funding, a big chunk of it came from the city with [pandemic] recovery money that we got as a grant. And then we had [Department of Transportation] money, and we also raised money. All those pots of money have gradually dried up, so we don’t actually have any money to do the program this year.
The Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC) Executive Director, Gib Veconi, supported Tallantire’s statement, stating how the funding they receive from the DOT doesn’t even come close to running Vanderbilt Avenue’s Open Streets Program.
Veconi added, according to Streetsblog:
In 2022 and 2023, we and other full closure open streets received grants from the Department of Small Business Services that were substantial, more than we get from DOT. Those were tied to the American Recovery Plan Act, and those funds have been exhausted. SBS is not continuing with that program, they no longer offer [grants to] Open Street sponsors who do full closure streets.
And while many New Yorkers enjoyed the Open Streets Programs growing, more workers were required to manage the spaces. Moreover, since the programs themselves were responsible for some of the funding, wealthy areas around the city saw more open streets than lower-income areas.
These funding issues were clearly seen during the first two years of the program when, according to Curbed, the total amount of open streets dropped from 83 miles to just over 20 miles worth of participating streets.
Tallantire told Streetsblog that some programs had to raise upwards of $40,000 to keep their programs running–a number that simply isn’t plausible in some areas of the city, especially when it covers only 50-70% of total program costs.
Veconi told Streetsblog:
If the city expects other communities to be able to launch something like a Vanderbilt Avenue, they’re they’re going to have to come up with new solutions that are fully funded, and to help people do it.
In May 2023, the DOT stated that they were investing $30 million to “dramatically expand available resources for management of plazas, open streets, other public spaces.”
They also added that they would be focusing on partners and open streets locations in higher areas of need to support those programs wherever possible.
According to Streetsblog, the DOT stated that BID bailing on the program doesn’t necessarily mean open streets are done for good, and the city reportedly expects they’ll find a new partner to aid in funding.