Times Square, ‘Crossroads of the World,’ is at a – Latest News
This week’s defeat of the Times Square on line casino proposal got here at a tipping level for the “Crossroads of the World.”
We’ll by no means know whether or not the project led by developer SL Green and Caesars Entertainment would have been a godsend or a catastrophe for the metropolis’s cultural and symbolic coronary heart.
But one factor’s sure: Times Square is more troubled than it’s been in 20 years, and the prospect of a seemingly Zohran Mamdani mayoralty portends solely more bother.
Times Square’s situation is more precarious than cheery pedestrian counts and largely full motels recommend.
It definitely isn’t the free-fire, mugging and pimping ground of the Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties. But neither is it as thriving and healthful as in the golden years earlier than and after the 2000 millennial.
The tectonic plates are ominously shifting beneath the ft of 220,000 day by day guests.
Much public infrastructure is in terrible form. The sprawling Times Square subway station turns grungier by the week.
Whatever the on line casino proposal’s deserves or flaws, it might have supplied $250 million in direct funds for transit and pedestrian enhancements.
Office buildings are hemorrhaging tenants, empty shops proliferate and nominally high resort occupancy conceals decrease room charges needed to draw vacationers.
Unlicensed distributors promoting doubtful items have the run of sidewalks.
The forty second Street block between Seventh and Eighth avenues — the “Deuce” — is blighted by vacant showplaces and ugly, block-long concrete sidewalk barricades put in by the metropolis for no logical purpose.
A project to reopen the long-dark Times Square Theater is going nowhere.
The former home of BB King’s Blues Club, closed since 2018, stays darkish.
The solely purpose giant crowds proceed to get pleasure from the Red Steps at West forty seventh Street and pop-up entertainments in the pedestrian plazas is confidence in the bowtie’s low crime price.
That is, low severe crime.
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A mayor inclined to shackle the NYPD and provides free rein to “misdemeanors” and quality-of-life nuisances will encourage worse crimes citywide — and no place is as susceptible as Times Square.
Murders have been nonexistent there this yr and fewer felonies have been recorded than 10 years in the past.
But I worry to suppose what would occur if a Mamdani-chosen, woke police commissioner dissuades the cops from doing their jobs.
Times Square hasn’t been the similar since the Toys ‘R’ Us store with its indoor Ferris wheel closed in 2015.
Complaints to 311 about uncollected rubbish and psychotic homeless have skyrocketed.
Visitors, theatergoers and staff cringe over public dysfunction, from harassment by aggressive “Elmos” to flagrant shoplifting to uncommon however terrifying shootings — like one which despatched three people to the hospital following a 1:30 a.m. struggle final week outdoors a chicken joint.Unlike elitist New Yorkers, I love Times Square. I stroll its size each week.
Every time I take its temperature — a subjective measure, however knowledgeable by my 25 years of reporting on its real estate and restaurant scene — the warning on the thermometer goes up a little bit more.
Perception not solely outweighs information in the public thoughts — it usually presages the grim consequence that many worry.
And notion in late 2025 is not a pleased story.
The proprietor of a number of Times Square-area cafes advised me, “The crowds haven’t left yet. But they’re nervous. My customers and my employees tell me every day they were frightened by raging lunatics or hustlers trying to sell them CDs. Who buys CDs anymore?”Office towers which might be essential to assist shops, eating places and theaters are in bother: Times Square’s 27% emptiness price is a lot larger than the Manhattan average.
The sense of random chaos helped to chase out Conde Nast in 2014, and each ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS Mornings” this yr, and has spooked others from transferring there.There’s so little demand for space at 5 Times Square — one of the circa-2000 quartet that proclaimed the space’s rebirth — that it’s being transformed to flats.
At 1515 Broadway — the proposed on line casino website — sole workplace tenant Paramount Global, which merged with Skydance final yr, is anticipated to put off tens of 1000’s of workers.
The workforce discount will depart Times Square with fewer day by day guests to spend money.
All’s not misplaced. The Times Square Alliance does its best to arrest the decline, and not too long ago helped boot a dozen unlawful pot retailers.
This fall, a spectacular guests’ middle, Broadway museum and viewing deck will open at the redesigned One Times Square, website of the New Year’s Eve ball drop.
But what is going to guests see from the prime ground?Let’s hope it isn’t a scene of bloody mayhem — presently solely a worry, however one which a Mamdani mayoralty may make all too actual.
