Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday introduced a $152.7 million funding to remodel Fifth Avenue from Bryant Park to Central Park right into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard.
The redesign will increase sidewalks by 46%, cut back site visitors lanes and add greenery, making a safer, extra walkable house, City Hall mentioned. The challenge goals to fortify Fifth Avenue’s financial output, which generates $44 billion in wages yearly and helps 313,000 jobs, the mayor mentioned.
“Fifth Avenue has and can at all times be the financial engine of our metropolis for the previous 200 years,” Adams mentioned through the announcement. “And as we speak, we’re placing high-octane gas in that engine to take us the following 200 years.”
The revamped hall will characteristic 230 new bushes, 20,000 sq. toes of planters and improved lighting and seating, impressed by different iconic streets like Paris’ Champs Élysées, the mayor’s workplace mentioned.
In an announcement, City Hall mentioned the challenge will “pay for itself in lower than 5 years by elevated property and gross sales tax income.”
Fifth Avenue presently accommodates as much as 23,000 pedestrians per hour throughout peak instances. The redesign will double pedestrian house and shorten crossing distances by a 3rd, City Hall mentioned.
“This historic funding is the beginning of a brand-new chapter for Fifth Avenue that can see this iconic road remodel from an outdated and over-crowded highway, into a fantastic tree-lined boulevard that places pedestrians first, befitting of probably the most well-known avenue on the planet,” mentioned Madelyn Wils, interim president of the Fifth Avenue Association and co-chair of the Future of Fifth Steering Committee. “Every vacation season, our sidewalks are heaving with folks spilling into the roadbed and Fifth Avenue can merely now not accommodate the folks on it.”
Construction will start after design completion in 2025, with underground infrastructure upgrades included, Adams mentioned.
