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Parks & Public Spaces
Application from The New York Times and Empire Entertainment for The New York Times Food Festival, a vendor event in association with Bryant Park Corporation, to take place from October 2, 2019 through October 7, 2019 in Bryant Park.
At the regularly scheduled monthly Community Board Five meeting on Thursday, July 11, 2019, the following resolution passed with a vote of 35 in favor; 0 opposed; 1 abstaining and 1 present but not entitled:
WHEREAS, The New York Times and Empire Entertainment (the “Applicant”) has submitted an application to have a ticketed food festival in Bryant Park from Wednesday, October 2 through Monday, October 7, 2019 (the “Event”); and
WHEREAS, The Event would take place between the hours of 11:00 am and 6:00 pm on both Saturday and Sunday October 5 and 6, 2019, with set-up beginning at 8:00 pm on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 and breakdown to be completed by 8:00 am on Monday, October 7, 2019; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant will be setting up no fewer than (70) tents of various sizes from 8’x’8 to 65’x49’, including tents for vendors, production support, VIP areas, the sale of alcohol, sponsorship opportunities, and cooking demonstrations in addition to (1) 44’x24’ stage, (18) 12; standing tables, and (80) picnic tables; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant has not yet completed signing up sponsors, but expects to be complete in August with the sale of sponsorship opportunities; and
WHEREAS, The Event will require substantial infrastructural support for food vending and cooking demonstration kitchens as evidenced by the more than two day set-up time and the de facto closure of 41st Street parking and loading zones for private use by the production company and its vendors for deliveries, restroom trailers, VIP trailers, food storage & prep trailers and tents, refrigeration trucks, miscellaneous production vehicles, forklifts, EMS trucks, ice trucks, and other miscellaneous tents and vehicles; and
WHEREAS, The Event will feature numerous food vendor stalls which encompasses an enormous footprint of the lawn of Bryant Park, similar to the Bryant Park Holiday Market (the “Holiday Market”) which commences just a few weeks subsequent to this Event and lasts several months; and
WHEREAS, The lawn of Bryant Park will be closed to prepare for the annual ice rink and Holiday Market directly after this Event; and
WHEREAS, The signage presented to date is both large and ubiquitous and there is a remaining significant amount of intended signage that has not yet been fully identified and presented by the Applicant as the sale of sponsorship opportunities is ongoing; and
WHEREAS, There will be several sources of simultaneous and discordant amplified sound, including microphones and subwoofers for live music, recorded music, and demonstrations with video and audio repeaters for the cooking stage as described by the Applicant as J Series D&B public address system with sub woofers for the main stage as well as a mix of Meyer UPM and Vurtis CS-1000 with sub woofers for the cooking stage tent, satellite stage, and hospitality tents; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant has presented commendable sanitation and security plans; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant has indicted that this event is meant to be the “First Annual,” thus indicating an intent to repeat this event on a similar scale and with comparable impact annually, an issue of long-standing and considerable concern of CB5; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant expects attendance of upwards of 4,000 people per day; and
WHEREAS, Applicant intends to film the Event and use the resulting footage for both Press and commercial purposes via the use of blanket legal disclaimers that may or may not be viewable by members of the public who will not have the change to affirmatively consent to such exposure, another issue of long-standing and considerable concern of CB5; and
WHEREAS, The Parks and Public Spaces Committee used the matrix assessment tool, as intended for events of this type, to analyze this proposed event, and found the Event to be wholly inappropriate for this location; and
WHEREAS, The Parks and Public Spaces Committee requested the Applicant to consider fully sponsoring the event (a cost of at most $200,000 given attendance limitations and the $25.00 ticket price) or proposing an alternative solution to revise the event details to make the event entirely gratis such that the public would not have to pay to access public space, but perhaps only buy a ticket to access a much more constrained and confined area for cooking demonstrations or reserve a free ticket online to assist in limiting overcrowding; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant left the committee meeting having agreed to review and propose scenarios to make Bryant Park entirely publicly accessible, but came back to the committee noting that they believe that such a scenario of keeping the Bryant Park publicly accessible is impossible; and
WHEREAS, The Applicant has subsequently noted that they have the intention to add another 13-15 food and beverage stands in addition to those already proposed and presented at the committee meeting; and
WHEREAS, CB5 has noted that there has been an onslaught of similar events with numerous food vendor stalls encroaching public space within CB5’s boundaries; and
WHEREAS, While CB5 commends both the Applicant and Bryant Park for planning this event well in advance and bringing it to public review for constructive input, CB5 endeavors to keep the limited areas of parks and public spaces in New York City free and publicly accessible to all New Yorkers and visitors, in particular green spaces such as the Bryant Park lawn, and that this Event is scheduled to occur on the last weekend of the season before the lawn is covered by the annual ice rink and the Holiday Market; therefore be it
RESOLVED, Community Board Five recommends denial of the application from The New York Times
and Empire Entertainment for The New York Times and Empire Entertainment for The New York Times
Food Festival, a vendor event in association with Bryant Park Corporation, to take place from October 2
through October 7 in Bryant Park.