By Paul Bisceglio

With Occupy Wall Street’s one-year anniversary celebration in the Financial District scheduled for Sept. 17, New York city officials are wondering if OWS protestors might have anything else in the works to commemorate their inaugural occupation of Zuccotti Park.

Another takeover, perhaps?

Michael Levine, professor of urban planning at Pace University and director of planning for Community Board 1, doesn’t know when the next wave of public advocacy groups will move in, but he can say where in lower Manhattan the occupation is most likely to occur.

Levine recently challenged his students to venture out into the city to find its most vulnerable Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS), publicly accessible outdoor plazas that, like Zuccotti Park, are owned by commercial companies, not the city.

POPS have been ubiquitous in Manhattan sincea 1961 zoning resolution introduced a program that allowed developers to construct taller buildings if their plans included outdoor plazas. They tend to be more occupation-friendly than city-owned parks because some are open 24/7, don’t display concrete rules and regulations and are owned by the large businesses that public advocacy groups oppose.

Levine’s students rated 28 POPS south of Canal Street on a scale of 0 to 4, from invulnerable to highly vulnerable. They based their rating on four categories: convenience, size, signage or lack thereof and reputation of owner. The following three plazas scored over 3.0, making them the top of the POPS—the three privately owned public spaces in lower Manhattan most vulnerable to occupation.

140 Broadway
Owner: HSBC
Area: 3,347 square feet
Score: 3.1
Student Nellyn Caraballo gave this plaza across from Zuccotti Park major points for its high-traffic location along Broadway and its big-time corporate owners, but noted that it is too small and busy for group occupancy—plus the owners have been clever enough to post a sign prohibiting camping.

388 Greenwich St.
Owner: Salomon Smith Barney
Area: 51,635 square feet
Score: 3.2
A huge, visible area with benches, grass and trees makes this Tribeca park ideal for group gatherings, according to student Arlida Bucaj, and the park’s corporate owners make it all the more enticing. The location lost points for clear signage, though nothing is posted to prohibit sleeping.

59 Maiden Lane
Owner: Amtrust Realty Corporation
Area: 32,604 square feet
Score: 3.5
This capacious plaza surrounds part of the New York City Finance Department at the intersection of Maiden Lane and William Street. The plaza scored big on size, absent signage and its suit-wearing owner. The majority of the plaza is open concrete, however, with scatterings of trees and benches on the ends, so student Erin Hanraty deducted points for convenience and comfort. The plaza might be a great place for gathering, but protestors had better be sure to bring some chairs and padding, as well as watch out for trampling commuters.

1 Chase Plaza. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

By Paul Bisceglio

The wire fence that blocks access to One Chase Manhattan Plaza has been a source of controversy since it was erected around the 60-floor Financial District skyscraper’s outdoor square last September for a yet-to-be-seen construction project. Now, the city’s newly formed Urban Planning Committee is adding its voice to demands that the bank reopen the plaza to the public.

The committee met for the first time last Thursday in the Community Board 1 (CB1) office on Chambers Street. Following a presentation by Michael Levine, CB1′s Director of Land Use and Planning, and his Pace University students on Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS), the committee addressed  the Chase plaza’s closure, which they considered a significant obstruction in the daily lives of the Financial Districts 28,000 residents.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said committee member Ro Sheffe, arguing that the plaza – “the major open space in the center of the financial district” – was essential for reducing pedestrian traffic in the area during what he called “the largest urban renewal project ever.”

Jeff Galloway, the committee’s chair, agreed. “It seems to be to be extraordinarily unneighborly,” he said.

The problem the committee faces is that One Chase Manhattan Plaza is not a Privately Owned Public Space – it’s just private. The building was constructed before POPS zoning laws were made in the 1970′s, so the bank has no legal obligation to keep the square open to the public.

The committee echoed general public speculation that the plaza’s alleged construction project is a guise to ward off Occupy Wall Street protestors. One man has even sued the New York Department of Buildings for refusing to disclose Chase’s construction plans, but One Chase Manhattan Plaza’s place on a Police Department list of  buildings potentially vulnerable to a terrorist attack has allowed the bank to guard the details of the project from public scrutiny for security reasons. Levine mentioned that the legality of the fencing could come into question if Chase were proven actually not to be engaging in construction.

The committee agreed that if no legal imperative exists to make Chase open the plaza, a social one still does. A preliminary vote unanimously passed a resolution to tell Chase that the plaza should be opened as quickly as possible, that security concerns should be accommodated in a way that has minimal impact on the public and that the bank should provide a timetable for the construction project’s completion.

Chase had not responded to the CB1 staff’s attempts to contact them about the fencing at the time of the meeting, but the bank has since agreed to send a a representative to the CB1 Quality of Life Committee meeting on Thursday, July 12 to discuss the issue. Chase has not responded to New York Press’s requests for details about the construction project.