Still A Laughingstock, In Just Three Short Years

Widely heralded DOT pedestrian plaza in Meatpacking District continues to impress:

Street plazas with stone barriers that distinctly resemble breasts have become the laughingstock of the trendy Meatpacking District, and businesses are poised to give them the heave-ho, The Post has learned.

. . .

The city Department of Transportation installed the odd open areas between Gansevoort and West 14th streets in one of its first experiments with public plazas. The promenades have since become a DOT obsession, spreading all over the city.

“The plazas look neglected, dirty and unkempt. No one is taking care of them,” said [the] executive director of the Meatpacking District Improvement Association, a nonprofit spearheading the $500,000 overhaul. The tab is being split between the city and the business group.

The Meatpacking District Initiative, another local group that pledged to maintain the areas when they were first built, claimed the city stiffed them out of $40,000 and their funds dried up in 2009.

Clubgoers have taken to loitering in the plazas in between bar-hopping, and filling them with trash.