What is the proper use and protection of public space?
This question confronts all Market businesses, vendors, visitors, and preservationists. It has been dealt with or ignored in cities all around the country.
Here at the Market this universal urban issue took the form of the double-faced benches under the pergola north of the slabs on Pike Place. They needed repair and were removed in May, but never replaced by the PDA. In September the PDA asked the Historical Commission for permission to remove the benches permanently.
The benches were not the problem. It was who was using them. After shoppers and tired Market people dispersed in the afternoon, an assemblage of street people, transients, druggies, and "rough sorts" gathered there for a few hours. They were hostile to shoppers and business visitors, scary to some young mothers and old folks, and resistant and antagonistic to Market Security when asked to move on.
These were not the friendly and picturesque "old timers" and talky winos of Mark Tobey and Victor Steinbrueck's romantic Market of the 60's. These are hostile, young and angry people with no fear of authority.
At the Commission meeting Sept. 8 the PDA presented its case to remove the benches to solve the problem of the occupation by threat. The Market Historical Commission's guidelines on Public Ways and Amenities (3.8.1. "Public seating is a desired amenity for visitors to the Market") centered the discussion.
Since the benches were taken out for "repair" the "problem" had moved across the street to the brick bench surrounding the tree bowl in front of the Habits store. This meant that different businesses out of the Market boundaries, then had the sight and impact of this unruly squad on its employees and customers. The businesses that face such "congregations of undesirables" futilely sought relief. These businesspeople were not present at the meeting, but their concern and outlook was represented on the Commission.
Within the past decade the PDA had commissioned artist/craftsman Brian Swanson to create and install five sites in the Market for new public seating which has proved both useful and aesthetically pleasing. So the PDA has a history of investing capital and imagination in addressing Market seating amenities.
Billy King spoke for the Friends of Post Alley to keep the benches. He said public safety is a neighborhood issue and needs constant attention and enforcement, and if the benches are removed the site will still be the locus of illegal acts and behavior. Passages was present and suggested broader community solutions that would not diminish public seating.
The Commission discussed the issue and voted. The application to remove the benches failed by one vote of the seven Commissioners present. The PDA, the decision implied, should repair and replace the benches. It had not done so at press time, nearly two months after the Commission decision.
In the late 1970's artist Buster Simpson installed a long wooden bench on First Avenue at Pine, by the bus stop. It was a late-night collecting point for visitors who were clearly not bus riders. The Inn at the Market confiscated the bench. Since it was "guerrilla art" lacking approval from either the Historical Commission or the Arts Commission there was no basis for appeal. A lot of bus riders ended up standing longer each day.
This issue has arisen elsewhere in the city. At Third Avenue and Bell Street a small quarter-block park with a basketball hoop and benches was closed and reopened by the Parks Department as a fenced dog run. It was being ill-used by the same kind of behavior that caused the PDA to remove the north pergola benches. But, this solution reduces a public park with multiple uses to a single use for dog owners.
In New York City, two parks different in size and location, but both demeaned by illegitimate social behavior and bad reputations, have been renewed by visionary civic cooperation. These are Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library and Central Park. Both are now partly managed and supported by non-profit, non-governmental entities that understand the competing needs of a great city, and accommodate them with real, viable solutions
Public open space is civic equity. When we eliminate these amenities, whether they are bubbling fountains, viewpoints, grassy meadows, or park benches, we sell off some of the value of our civic treasure. New Yorkers did not surrender their parks to scores of druggies, drunks, transients and "rough sorts," and neither should we.
Mayor Nickels wrote neighborhood leaders in October about his new budget. Though it is again $20 million short, he said, "we are increasing investments in neighborhoods." The letter went on to describe increased support for neighborhood collaborative efforts to clean, beautify, and protect. He plans to "fund business district grants." In an attachment there was a brief note to "improve and update Freeway Park." Why can't the Market neighborhood seek some city support for a collaborative, creative solution to the problem the PDA attempted to solve?
The PDA's new organizational structure includes public forum discussions bi-monthly. It should soon set an agenda for wider public interaction on the issue of open public space and amenities in the Market's pedestrian ways.
All of the North End businesses, social organizations and homeowners associations, plus parks, police, and the mayor's Department of Neighborhoods, the PDA, and all other Market organizations could join in a user consortium to fund and support a permanent resolution of this continuing problem. Creative solutions abound.
Removing the benches is not one of them.
Paul Dunn can be contacted at: fessdunn@aol.com[[In-content Ad]]
