NYC Greenway

I finally got outdoors to run yesterday (I'm running the NYC marathon in November!) and I thought, what a great idea it would be to run down the greenway along the East River. FALSE.

I took the E to Lex/53rd thinking I could access the greenway every couple of blocks because, you know, the greenway is for pedestrians and cyclists so surely there's a bridge/ access point to cross FDR Drive  somewhere in the 50s. FALSE. 

I walk to the edge of the island on 53rd, get to Sutton Place Park and see this: 

So then I search for maps of the Manhattan Greenway on Google and find out a giant gap exists in the greenway along East River:

So for thirty blocks, no one is able to access the river on foot or bike but they can in a car on FDR Drive.  

So much for livable cities for people. Maybe the next SummerStreets could pilot a total shutdown of FDR Drive... Or maybe just invest in a footbridge somewhere within those thirty blocks. Wouldn't that be great...?

Restaurants: A Key Ingredient to Downtowns

Last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the restaurant industry sales had surpassed grocery sales for the first time in history. Accounting for approximately 15% of all retail spending in Q1 2016, restaurants are making a strong return in both shopping centers and downtowns. A lot of this growth can be attributed to fundamental, cross-generational consumer shifts and also macro-economic changes. About 80% of consumers today find that dining out with family and friends is a better use of their leisure time than cooking and cleaning up, according to an NRA Restaurant Industry survey, and about 9 in 10 consumers say they enjoy going to restaurants.

ICSC and JLL recently put together an extensive report on the food and beverage industry that clearly outlines some of the food service categories popular today. I created the little table below which aggregates some of the information presented in the report to help downtown associations understand the various types of restaurants and food service operators, their customer bases, trading periods and dwell times, so that they are better equipped to assess current food service offerings and can make informed decisions on retaining and attracting new food operators to their downtown mix.

Read the full LOA blog post here! 

New York

The month has been quick and busy but being busy and running around also means I'm snapping photos from everywhere.

Bedford Stuyvesant - Lower East Side - Jackson Heights - Montauk - Morningside - West57 by Bjarke Ingels (Incidentally the series Abstract on Netflix is kind of artfully amazing)