A Radical Plan to Revive Pandemic-Stricken SoHo: Remove Cars

While parts of Manhattan have started to show signs of pandemic recovery in recent months, there's no dispute that there has been a lasting economic toll on the city that will take years for certain neighborhoods to recover. Chief among those is SoHo, one of the city's most affluent areas, and a commercial district which became a boarded-up ghost town during the first months of the pandemic.

A loss of international tourism has led to more than 40 stores closing—over 30% of all businesses in the area—and more than a quarter of the offices are currently vacant. As the NY Times put it recently, "perhaps no commercial district in the American city hardest hit by the pandemic’s financial devastation has been hurt more." But some local groups see this as a unique opportunity to reimagine the neighborhood both to jumpstart its recovery and allow it to thrive in the coming years—by embracing more pedestrian space for locals and tourists alike.

The SoHo Broadway Initiative BID, which covers a portion of the area including Broadway between Houston and Canal, has proposed a "Public Realm Vision" plan (in conjunction with Street Plans and Karp Strategies) which would reduce traffic in the neighborhood and turn that stretch of Broadway into a pedestrian, bus and bike-friendly route; increase sidewalk space and pedestrian amenities (including seating) along Broadway and Broome Street; and establish public plazas along Prince Street and Howard Street.

Broadway is being asked to handle too much traffic—from the Holland Tunnel, local vehicles, deliveries, buses and the rest—according to Mark Dicus, the executive director of the SoHo Broadway Initiative. So the plan relies on diverting non-local traffic around the edges of the "super block" that makes up SoHo, NoLita, and Little Italy.

"There are streets surrounding that super block that are designed to handle that traffic, but the neighborhoods within the super block are local neighborhoods," Dicus said. "Prince Street is a one-lane street. Broadway is a one-lane street. They weren't designed to handle regional traffic that needs to get uptown, downtown, or across town. And by filtering off that traffic, which we think is a credible approach, we can create some really great public spaces within our neighborhood along Broadway that addresses some of those long-standing issues around traffic congestion, sidewalk congestion, and business operations."

One model for their plan was the area on Broadway near and above 23rd Street in Manhattan, where the city has diverted traffic away: "If you go to 23rd Street now, north and south of 23rd Street, there's some really great pedestrianizations that have happened that are basically using the Open Streets plan and creating plaza space."

The plan already has the backing of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who says it is "exactly the kind of forward-thinking designs that the SoHo Broadway neighborhood has always needed, but are especially important as we begin our recovery from the pandemic.”

DJ Williams, head of business development at Boxed, an online retailer with two offices in SoHo, also thinks that the plan can help accelerate the neighborhood's commercial revitalization: "We spend a lot of time thinking about where our offices should be as we grow—is this a neighborhood people want to go to, and our vendors and business partners want to go to?" he said. "We have been in SoHo for the last eight years for that reason. For me, the Vision Plan says that this is a place we can stay, a place people will be proud to call home, a place people can work hard but then go outside and enjoy their time on breaks."

The genesis of the plan started with the release of the Envision SoHo/NoHo report, which identified a number of quality-of-life issues that needed to be addressed, in 2019.

Then during the pandemic, with stores closed and people staying at home, "we took that moment to really think deeply about those issues that were identified in the Envision SoHo/NoHo report: lack of green space, lack of open space," Dicus said. The city was beginning to truly grapple with the use of public space and the transformative potential of the moment, most acutely through the advent of Open Streets. "There was a very unique opportunity here to put the neighborhood on solid footing for sustainable growth going forward, through the recovery and beyond."

In addition to addressing the traffic and pedestrian issues, the plan would create new opportunities to bring amenities into the neighborhood that complement its "rich cultural history, especially in arts. By taking over these parking spaces and providing amenities, this is going to create opportunities to put public art into the neighborhood. And I'm real excited about that. I think that's something that is difficult to do, and this creates a great opportunity to pay homage to SoHo's rich cultural history."

Dicus noted that the plan was developed independent of the city's efforts to rezone SoHo and NoHo, areas which have not undergone a major rezoning since the early-1970s. The de Blasio administration is looking to add thousands of new apartments, including hundreds of affordable housing units, in an area which is predominantly white (80% white, according to recent census figures) and where rents are around 60 percent higher than the median in Manhattan.

As expected, the rezoning plan has caused a backlash among some locals who want to preserve the neighborhood as is, and it's unclear whether the plan, which has been under review for months by the city, has enough support in the City Council to pass. But either way, Dicus said that their vision for SoHo, which started before the city announced the rezoning, "compliments those changes," if they come to pass.

Still, there is no avoiding some people's resistance to change, whether it's longtime residents dead set against skyscrapers or drivers unwilling to give up their parking spaces. This is the reality that any group trying to reimagine public space use will face, and it has led to fights in neighborhoods all over the city, whether it's about outdoor dining or "messy" open streets.

"I think that change is always difficult, and there's a diversity of perspectives in every neighborhood, but the goal of this plan is to make the neighborhood better for everyone, including those who live there, work there, and visit," Dicus said. "If you come to SoHo today, it is frequently a traffic-clogged traffic jam, which no residents like. We get complaints about honking, we get complaints about idling. There's lots of complaints, right? Our plan seeks to address those issues—we're going to add green space, we're going to add public art, we're going to create better pedestrian flow. I'm hopeful and optimistic that all SoHo stakeholders will like this plan better than the current status quo."

Williams, whose company Boxed has over 100 employees in SoHo, said it was vital to the neighborhood's future as both a commercial district and a residential one to continue growing: "I think anytime you suggest something new, people get a little scared," he said. "People are afraid of change, but if you're not changing, eventually you're going to fall behind. How people are shopping, working and living is evolving, and I'm glad to see SoHo is thinking about that and trying to adopt to that. Because if you don't, you turn around and you've been left behind."

For now, the SoHo Broadway Initiative will look to get community feedback on the plan, talk to the next mayor and City Council members on how to advance it, and get traffic and parking studies done. In the meantime, there will be a temporary public demonstration pilot project on Prince Street during Saturdays in October, nicknamed “Little Prince Plaza.” It will run on Saturdays on Prince Street, between Broadway and Mercer Street, and will be closed to vehicular traffic.