Times Square Alliance Plans Redesign For Crossroads Of The World
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Times Square's pedestrian plazas will be getting a sleek redesign. The $27 million plan will head for final approval and is expected to be completed in 2014.
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The Times Square Alliance said the redesign is intended to simplify, de-clutter and create a unified identity for Times Square.
Among the crowds in Times Square, you'll find plenty of New Yorkers who think sprucing up the area is a fine idea.
"As long as they don't screw up traffic, I don't mind it," Fernando Vierra, of Rego Park, told CBS 2's Kathryn Brown.
The just-unveiled re-design plan shows the new face of the Great White Way. The blue sidewalk paint and flimsy furniture that now covers what used to be Broadway will be swept away. The street will be stripped down and replaced with dark concrete pavement and large, sturdy benches.
The entire project is designed to bring back the gritty, urban feel of old New York .
Michael Keane, of Community Board 5, told Brown the plan is meant to "make this more of a place where once you get to this bow-tie intersection you know you've arrived -- that its separate from the rest of the city."
The Manhattan firm Snohetta unveiled its preliminary plan at a community board meeting Monday night.
"Times Square is the image maker for the rest of the city but there's also a helluva lot of New Yorkers that work in this neighborhood everyday and we want to make it a nicer place for them to sit and eat or just pass through on their way to a Broadway show," Tim Thompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, told 1010 WINS.
The plan is part of a redesign that began in 2009 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned cars from parts of the square and pedestrian plazas were installed.
"Currently what we've got is a little bit of lipstick on a pig," Thompkins said. "This is really turning it into a world-class design and a world-class public space that reflects the best of New York."
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