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Jeffrey LeFrancois, executive director of the Meatpacking District Management Association, the neighborhoods business improvement district, has a mantra about urban life. If the city’s not changing, the city’s not healthy, he says as he strolls down the 14th Street Promenade, the name for two pedestrianized blocks of the crosstown street that the BID inaugurated in June. Taking the place of parked cars are five curbside decks, each measuring around 18 feet long, furnished with public seating; tall trees in weathered steel planters that bookend loading zones; and granite boulders that pinch the roadway into two lanes. LeFrancois crosses the street from deck to deck in order to show me the ideological shift that these interventions represent: pedestrians rule the road. Elsewhere in the Meatpacking Districtroughly eight square blocks bounded by 14th street to the north, Gansevoort street to the south, Hudson street to the East, and Hudson River Park to the westthere is ample evidence of the power shift that has been taking place on the streets: lots of seating streets with colorful murals on the pavement, and landscaping that offers a leafy buffer between busy thoroughfares and bustling plazas where people are drinking coffee, taking phone calls, and meeting friends. [Photo: BrakeThrough Media] The neighborhood is unrecognizable from 30 years ago, when delivery trucks for slaughterhouses rumbled down the road, carcasses hung from loading dock awnings, and it was the center of queer nightlife. While its high-end retail, influencer-filled restaurants, and luxury condos are the most visible elements of the Meatpacking District’s transformation into a mixed-use shopping and culture destination, its pedestrianized streets and public spaces have steadily become the most powerful. And the most ambitious. The district bills itself as the first pedestrian-priority neighborhood in New York City and has been among the most ambitious in adopting experimental streetscape ideas. The neighborhood today proves that prioritizing walkability and deemphasizing driving is a winning formula for a balanced public realm and offers an example of what could be achieved elsewhere in the city when the right forces align. [Photo: BrakeThrough Media] Designing a Pedestrian Priority District The Meatpackings European-style pedestrian turn is a response to new development in and around the area that has increased the volume of foot traffic tremendously. Not to match that on our streets is a missed opportunity, LeFrancois says. The Whitney Museum opened in 2015 and now sees one million visitors annually, up from 300,000 to 350,000 guests per year when it was on Madison Avenue. Little Island, which opened in 2021, attracts 1.5 million visitors a year. Then 2023 saw the opening of Gansevoort Peninsula, a 5.5-acre expansion to Hudson River Park, and Pier 57, a market hall with a popular rooftop park. These destinations joined the High Line, which opened in 2009 and now receives eight million visitors a year. Jeffrey LeFrancois, Executive Director of the Meatpacking District Management Association, welcomes attendees to the unveiling of Gansevoort Landing on Sept. 28, 2023. [Photo: BrakeThrough Media] Not only is the Meatpacking District a destination in and of itself, its also a space people walk through on their way from the subway to these new public spaces on the west side. And the BID wants to entice these walkers to lingerand spend a few bucks while theyre at it. It’s all about flow, porosity, and access, Le Francois says of the heart of the strategy. We see that as a major driver for why people want to be here . . . It’s not just a one-off visit that we want to have happen; we want to make sure people are thinking about their return as well. This philosophy has driven incremental streetscape improvements that began as temporary tactical measures before becoming permanent fixtures. This included leveraging the Bloomberg-era plaza program to reclaim traffic lanes along Ninth Avenue for public space, a process that began with barricades before leading to a $28 million capital project that was completed in 2019. In collaboration with DOT and the landscape architecture firm Ken Smith Workshop, the BID widened sidewalks, installed 40 movable planters that measured 10-by-5 feet each, furnished plazas with hundreds of chairs and dozens of tables, and integrated smooth granite slab bike paths down the center of the cobblestone street. [Photo: BrakeThrough Media] Then, in late spring of 2020, after becoming one of the first neighborhoods to participate in the citys Open Streets program, the District began studying how it could become a true pedestrian-priority neighborhood. LeFrancois and his team had already been thinking about how to build off of the successful plaza program but the pandemic, and the sudden citywide interest in rethinking public space through programs like open streets and outdoor dining provided the flash point, the water in the hot pan to allow it to happen, he says. All of this culminated in the 2022 Western Gateway Public Realm Action Plan. Developed by the design firm WXY and TYLin, the plan identified opportunities to rightsize the neighborhoods infrastructure for the wide array uses it now sees: pedestrians, buses, cyclists, delivery vehicles, taxis and ride-sharing, and personal cars. David Vega-Barachowitz, an associate principal at WXY, says that as New York City districts like the Meatpacking transition from industrial use to a mixture of uses, infrastructure plans have privileged patterns of movement that are out of date or misaligned with policy priorities, but also ossified this very autocentric perspective on how we think about streets. While land use and movement patterns have changed, streets havent kept pace. The Public Realm Action Plans suggestions included building a new crosswalk where Gansevoort Street meets the West Side Highway; pedestrianizing east-west streets in the neighborhood; making 10th Avenue, which remains the most industrial of the neighborhoods streets and serves as a back-of-house, more pleasant to walk down; and untangling the intersection between 14th street and 10th Avenue since its a major crossing to Hudson River Park. [Photo: Meatpacking BID/Cherry Orchard] Its rethinking the right of way in a more comprehensive way, says Lian Farhi, a senior associate and director of urban planning and design at TYLin. Many of these projects have been completed or are underway. In late 2023, the new crossing across the West Side Highway at Gansevoort Street opened as did Gansevoort Landing, a pedestrianized portion of 10th avenue between the Whitney Museum and the new crossing. We call it a landing because it’s on the edge of the West Side highway, LeFrancois says. It’s not the most appealing place to spend time and sit and have a cup of coffee, but when you leave the museum and you see this nice little respite with seating, maybe you’re going to open your map for five minutes then figure out where to go. People will utilize weird spaces if you give them the chance to do so. And this emphasis on a good experience works. Claire Weisz, a founding partner of WXY, frequently visits outdoor events in the neighborhood and notices similar conversations happening. I literally overhear people saying, I come here now because nothing like this in the city, she says. And very rarely do they say, because there’s no cars, right? But they’re implying it in the way they say it . . . Meatpacking is just such a great poster for why you should consider not letting cars just do whatever they want in any district. It was really brave of them. [Photo: Meatpacking BID/BrakeThrough Media] A Cohesive Neighborhood Vision To redesign the neighborhood, the BID works step by step, tackling small projects one by one so that the whole will be radically transformative, LeFrancois says. And now the district is at a point where pedestrians can experience the result. Its an approach that has involved figuring out which city policies and programs it can leverage, then working closely with the myriad stakeholders in the neighborhoodbusinesses, cultural institutions, community boards, preservation groups, city council offices, developersand aligning them on a vision. It helps that its an attractive one. In 2022, Street Plans and TYLin developed a tactical materials catalog for streetscape improvements. The biggest question for us was how do we create pedestrian spaces that respond to the city and to the material fabric of the neighborhood? says Veronica Rivas Plaza, a senior project designer at Street Plans. [Photo: BrakeThrough Media] These landscape elements reference the neighborhoods architecture and historythink durable natural materials with an industrial finish like steel wood, and stoneand help beautify and unify the interventions, from temporary installations all the way to permanent fixtures. To wit: the blackened steel, wood decks, and lounge chairs that comprise installations within the 14th Street Promenade, custom built by the Nordic outdoor furniture maker Vestre, nod to the High Lines language. The BID looked to three DOT programs to develop the promenade. The Curb Management Action Plan, a 2023 initiative to diversify how NYC allocates space on the curb, informed the redistribution of space. Because the BID wanted to keep the seating areas public, it worked with DOT to designate portions of the curb lanes on 14th street as plazas. [Photo: Meatpacking BID/BrakeThrough Media] This framework will allow them to do more with the space, such as programming concessions and enabling year-round outdoor seating. This policy lever is a notable difference between BIDs roadway installation and other street furniture; Dining Out NYC and Street Seats are seasonal. The team referenced outdoor dining guidelines to determine a few key features for the parklet design, including aligning the deck flush with the curb for accessibility, leaving room beneath it for stormwater to flow unobstructed, and specifying removable decking. But there are a few key departures, porous perimeters so pedestrians can access them from the street sidea subtle detail that encourages mid-block crossingand seating options that vary from parklet to parklet. We follow guidelines, but we also break them a little, Rivas Plaza says. Visitors to the 14th Street Promenade will notice that the experience within each parklet is different. Street Plans furnished an installation underneath a tree with lounge chairs thinking that tired shoppers might want to kick their feet up in the shade, while another parklet closer to the stairs leading to the High Line riffs on stools at a bar thinking that folks who are entering or exiting just need a quick landing spot while they figure out their next move. [Photo: Meatpacking BID/BrakeThrough Media] Other parklets have tiered benches interspersed with planters that offer privacy while another features a dining tablea great spot to bring lunch from food trucks down the block. We wanted to see different kinds of seating because within New York City we have a very strict palette, Rivas Plaza says. We have foldable tables and chairs, which are great, but how do we make spaces that allow us to do different activities? That said, the overarching mantra of the streetscape is comfort. Shes seen people sit on the granite boulders that separate the new pedestrian zone from traffic, which signals to her that the design is successful since people feel safe and welcome to hang out. [Photo: Meatpacking BID/BrakeThrough Media] Compared to the rest of the city, the Meatpacking District has fewer traffic collisions, and these experience-driven elements extend an invitation to feel at ease. Its like an outdoor living space, Rivas Plaza says. High-quality design has helped to convince more businesses in Meatpacking to want these features on their blocks. Washington Street, for example, was reluctant to receive public realm improvements. That changed after the BID temporarily relocated the planters in 9th Avenue in order to make room for the Great Elephant Migration sculpture installation. We love being flexible, the idea to stand something up, see if it works, and if it doesnt explore how we can change it, LeFrancois says. Over the next few weeks and months, hell closely observe how visitors to the District use the parklets and make changes accordingly. Eventually, he hopes to build a beer garden under the High Line. [Photo: Meatpacking BID/BrakeThrough Media] Can This Work Expand Across the City? The Meatpacking District is rare in that it has a powerful, active, and well-funded BID that is able to build coalitions necessary to avance streetscape improvementsand has been doing so for more than a decade. Through high-quality design, extensive engagement with stakeholders, and an interest in experimenting and iterating, it shows what is possible when there is the rare alignment of progressive ideas, political will, and budget. But this work is expensive. LeFrancois says that the BIDs FY 26 operating budget is about $4.4 million ($3.6 million of which comes from a special assessment levied on property owners) and just over one third of that goes to operations and the public realm, which includes landscaping, pedestrian management, and sanitation. Plaza activation and programming revenue also helps pay for public realm improvements, which is not included in that figure. [Photo: BrakeThrough Media] The BID paid for the planning, design, and construction of the promenade, which came to nearly $1 milliona sum that is out of reach for most neighborhoods, even those with BIDs. According to LeFrancois, the Meatpacking is considered medium sized compared to the 77 other BIDs in New York. Meanwhile, the geography of the neighborhood lends itself to pedestrianization work. Its off to the side relative to the rest of the city and has busier streets, like the West Side Highway and 9th Avenue, around its perimeter but none that slice through its centera physical condition that makes plazas easier to build. Additionally, its narrow one-way streets dont align with the grid and they are often paved in cobblestone, a bumpy material that encourages slower driving and that pedestrians enjoy for its charm. When it wants to fully pedestrianize the neighborhood for special events, the BID only has to close four intersections to car traffic. Plus, the 14th Street Busway, which limits traffic on the crosstown street between 3rd and 9th Avenues, has also encouraged more pedestrianization. Last week, the agency announced a public-private partnership with the Meatpacking and Union Square BIDs to pedestrianize more of 14th Street, bringing the philosophy of their neighborhood-focused work to a whole corridor. And recently, it expanded the groups that can partner with them beyond BIDs through its Public Space Equity Program. [Photo: Meatpacking BID/BrakeThrough Media] The success of pedestrianization programs in the neighborhood has helped DOT understand how collaboration with private organizations can help encourage more public realm improvements. Recently, it expanded the groups that can partner with them beyond BIDs through its Public Space Equity Program. To Vega-Barachowitz, a crucial element of the public realm work is reorienting the conversation about rebalancing streets from one about business to one about experience. It sets a paradigm and provides a cue to other places that this is more than just about creating space for restaurants to have overflow, he says. It’s about creating more space for pedestrians and for people to sun themselves on a wooden deck in one of the most beautiful places in New York City. The 14th Street Promenade arrives at a thrilling moment for the city, as congestion pricing has led to a mass decline in traffic. With fewer cars on the street, what comes next? The big messaging here is you sometimes just need some pilot programs going into effect and learn from them, Farhi says.
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Watching the side of a mountain get blown to bits in the new documentary Architecton, the shock is not just from the explosion but also from the quotidian end result of such brutal force. The film by director Victor Kossakovsky shows the industrialized violence involved in creating concrete, the most widely used building material in the world, tracing it backward from building to mountain source. [Image: courtesy A24] Released in U.S. theaters on August 1 by A24, Architecton is a mostly dialogue-free film that documents the often-unseen production chain of concrete. It turns the process of creating concretethe quarries, rock crushers, conveyor belts, and glowing furnacesinto spectacle. But it’s a spectacle with a high cost. Kossakovskys dazzling shots have almost no measurable scale or frame of reference. They are reminiscent of the classic 1982 documentary Koyaanisqatsi or the photography of Edward Burtynsky. Like those works, Architecton uses its stunning visuals to comment on humanity’s remaking of the planet, revealing what it takes to create the modern world we inhabit. A short-term solution The scenes in Architecton that show the slow transformation from mountain to rock to concrete are counterbalanced with shots of buildings made of raw stone. Roman-era marble columns and rustic stone buildings in centuries-old villages serve as Kossakovsky’s rebuttal to the modern way of building with concrete. Typical concrete buildings can last less than a hundred years. Kossakovsky calls them ordinary and ugly. “We have a history of architecture [dating back] thousands of years. We can open a book and say that’s a beautiful building. Why don’t we put it in our city?” Instead, he says, “We build strange rectangles from cement.” Kossakovsky says the film was inspired by the Alexander Column in the main square of his hometown, St. Petersburg, Russia. Made from a solid, monolithic piece of red granite measuring more than 83 feet and weighing 600 tons, the column was erected in the 1830s in a feat of human engineering. The filmmaker says he asked architects around the world why we don’t build things this way anymore, and walked away disillusioned by their focus on speed, economy, and subservience to the will of developers. One architect, Italian designer Michele De Lucchi, stood out. A member of the famous Memphis design group of the 1980s, De Lucchi is a proponent of building with stone, and he plays a kind of starring role in Architecton, which features him having a stone circle built into the ground of his backyard and visiting massive stone megaliths from ancient history. [Image: courtesy A24] An unsustainable cycle Architecton presents stone building as one solution, but the main focus for Kossakovsky is the problem: heavily polluting, energy intensive, and short-lived concrete. “The two biggest poisons of our time are sugar and concrete, in my opinion,” Kossakovsky says. To underline the problems he sees with concrete, Kossakovsky’s film shows cities around the world where concrete apartment blocks have been turned to ruins, from earthquake epicenters to war zones. The film opens with a long sequence of aerial footage in bombed-out cities across Ukraine, including one devastating pan showing the side of an apartment building ripped open, exposing floor after floor of bisected living rooms. Concrete is not the perpetrator of this particular brand of war crime, but Kossakovsky’s film hammers the idea that buildings made from concrete simply aren’t able to withstand the ravages of time. Tearing down these buildings after a few decades only to rebuild them for another few decades, the film argues, is part of the reason the climate has gotten so out of whack. [Image: courtesy A24] One poignant scene shows caravans of trucks hauling the wreckage of demolished buildings into a dump site that sits immediately adjacent to a mountain being quarried for the raw materials that will be used to rebuild. The cycle is not sustainable. But concrete is cheap to build with, and Kossakovsky says that’s what keeps the cycle in motion. “For whom is it cheap? For us it’s cheap. For our grandsons it’s expensive, because our grandsons will demolish it and build again,” Kossakovsky says. Building from stone, he argues, may cost more up front but will last for generations, and create a deeper connection between buildings and the people who inhabit them. The impact on the Earth will be less violent than what’s required to build the world with concrete. “If you build something from stone,” Kossakovsky says, “you only demolish the mountain once.”
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Since its founding in 2004, the trampoline-based indoor play space Sky Zone has turned the idea of going into a room and jumping around into a thriving business. Through franchising, the company has expanded to more than 200 locations and has more than 40 million visitors per year. But recently, executives at the company have been hearing from parents that while the jumping, bouncing, and inevitable falling is great for energy-filled kids and adolescents, it’s all a bit of a hazard for the youngest children. “Something that kept popping up was parents of the littlest of our Sky Zone jumpers being a little uncomfortable at times in our parks,” says Caitlin Shufelt, SkyZone’s former head of strategy. Sometimes trampoline parks like Sky Zone can be more than uncomfortable. Thousands of injuries have been reported at trampoline parks, from bumps and bruises to broken bones and brain injuries. Some personal injury law firms even specialize in trampoline park accidents. Sky Zone does have safety regulations, including minimum weight requirements, for its attractions, but accidents happen. This got Sky Zone’s leadership thinking about how to better serve the toddlers who might not be ready to ricochet off an angled trampoline or do a backflip into the Foam Zone. That led the company to create Cloudbound, a new indoor playspace for children 6 and under. A spinoff company now led by Shufelt, Cloudbound will open its first two locations later this year. There appears to be room for growth in the indoor playspace market. A report from Allied Market Research estimated the global market for trampoline parks at about $885 million in 2023, and growing to $1.5 billion by 2035. Family entertainment centers are expected to be a $100 billion market by 2032. Focusing on providing open, unstructured play that’s developmentally appropriate for very young children, Cloudbound’s playspace is a whimsical jungle gym with spaces and structures that small children can crawl through, climb up, and slide down. Shufelt calls it “a playground crossed with a children’s museum.” To come up with the design approach, Sky Zone’s team worked with museum and experience designers JRA Design, part of the entertainment-focused design group RWS Global. Together they developed a concept and theme that imagines children playing up in the sky. [Rendering: Cloudbound] The playscape has four zones, each with elements that will be accessible to children across the 6-and-under age range. The first area is referred to as Rising Above the Clouds, where children enter the cloud theme through a hot air balloon. There’s also a climbable treehouse, a “weather zone” featuring sensory experiences like a wind wall, and an obstacle course they call the Castle in the Sky. The space will have no trampolines. The overall design aesthetic is clean, pastel, and modern, which Shufelt says is an intentional difference from the more activity-centric indoor playspaces on the market. It’s also a design choice that aims to appeal to an often overlooked customer base: parents. “Between snack times, nap times, and temperamental little kids, parents are looking for an option that they can spontaneously drop into, and then also not feel miserable while they’re there, with chaos, wall-to-wall older kids jumping around, and a vomit of primary colors on the walls,” Shufelt says. Cloudbound’s design prioritizes safety, sightlines, and crowd control, and augments the parent experience with a café and abundant seating both inside the play area and on its edges. The space includes party rooms, nursing rooms, family restrooms, a quiet room, and stroller parking. Cloudbound’s playspace makes up about 60% of the space. Rather than segregating activities by age range, Cloudbound differentiates its offerings by four developmental stages, each of which may be reached at different ages, depending on the child. Shufelt refers to the stages as crawlers, walkers, little climbers, and confident climbers. “As long as they have the physical ability to do it, they can,” she says. “It’s safe for any age.” This approach was developed in consultation with Jennifer Jipson, a professor of child development and psychology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who advises companies like Nick Jr., Fisher-Price, and Magna-Tiles. “We have to trust children and families to kind of find their own path in those settings. If an area feels overwhelming or unsafe, they’re going to gravitate towards a different area,” Jipson says. “It doesn’t have to be the designers who regulate that.” Cloudbound’s design is intended to create opportunities for children to play and explore while pushing their own limits. The sky theme is a layer on top of the physical play elements, rather than a set storyline or sequence children must follow. “It’s a very hard thing to be intentionally unstructured,” Jipson says. “With younger kids, I think it’s very, very important to think about subtle behind-the-scenes guidance, so that it’s guided, playful learning in a way where the guidance isn’t suffocating.” The first two Cloudbound playspace locations are now under construction, in New Rochelle, New York, and Washington D.C., and should open this fall or winter. Two other projects have signed leases, but the company isn’t yet revealing their locations. Like Sky Zone, the plan is to refine the model and then franchise the Cloudbound concept across the country. Pricing hasn’t yet been finalized, but will likely run on a monthly membership. Shufelt says the hope is that Cloudbound becomes a place families with young children come to again and again, instead of just as a one-off for a birthday party. “Novelty grabs attention but familiarity drives skill progression. The more comfortable a child feels in a certain setting, the further they’ll push themselves,” she says. “We’ve designed Cloudbound to be inviting for all developmental maturities and stages.”
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E-Commerce
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