Gates for Washington Square Park? Public Divided at CB2 Meeting

At a Community Board 2 meeting, a divided crowd debated over whether to install permanent gates at Washington Square Park for nearly two hours on May 6. While some argued it will improve the appearance and safety of the park, others said it’s not the solution the park needs.

After five years of using police barricades to seal off the park’s entrance during its curfew, which board members said are both unsightly and ineffective, CB2’s Parks and Waterfront Committee was ready to consider other options. But the issue began long before they decided to revisit the idea.

“It’s a topic that’s been bubbling around for 20 years,” committee chair Rich Caccappolo said. “This is just an opportunity for the community to weigh in.”

However, the impassioned public outcry only reach one real consensus: nobody likes the police barricades currently blocking the entrances, but there were widely divergent opinions on what should happen next.

“Every entrance is a park experience,” said George Vellonakis, who was the Washington Square Park Administrator from 2017 to 2021. “When you look at the ugly chains, it’s not a really good image of what New York City should be, including police barricades.”

Every day, Washington Square Park closes at midnight and reopens at 6 a.m. When complaints of late-night crowds, drug use, and debris began increasing in 2021, the park started enforcing this curfew by blocking off its entrances with barricades.

This means every night, the police have to move the barriers into place, which is time-consuming and, therefore, tax money-consuming, as many at the meeting brought up.

To some, ornate gates would be easier to operate and more attractive. Others argued that gates would send the wrong message.

“To all the younger generations, this makes us feel enclosed and restricted, and changes the experience of what it is to be in this park,” community member Vanessa Rose said. “I believe we need to focus on making New Yorkers feel welcomed to a park that us, the taxpayers, are paying for.”

Many chimed in to agree with this point, rejecting hostile architecture an urban planning strategy that discourages groups of people, such as the youth and the homeless individuals who often sleep in the park. However, committee vice chair Susanna Aaron had a counterpoint to this.

“Anything that we’re talking about, first of all, could easily be jumped over,” Aaron said, attempting to steer the conversation to the appearance of the current police barricades instead. “People sleeping in the park—they’re going to do that if they really have to do that anyway.”

Former CB2 chair Tobi Bergman suggested a slack chain instead of a gate. “We can’t say they’re ugly because they are on almost every interior fence in the park,” Bergman said.

Bergman acknowledged that a slack chain could be easily jumped over as well. However, he said he thinks the need for infrastructure that blocks people from entering is not as necessary anymore, and that the park’s state has significantly improved recently, following the crackdown on drug dealers in the northwest corner of the park.

Several said that gates aren’t the solution to illicit behavior and debris in the park, regardless. To address this, they said that continuing security and maintenance efforts are the only way forward.

“Thanks to great work from the city, we’ve seen that we can maintain safety, cleanliness, and the curfew without erecting barriers in our neighborhood,” NYS Assembly District 66 candidate Ryder Kessler said. “Like Central Park and Riverside Park, Washington Square Park doesn’t need permanent gates, which would send a message contrary to the spirit of what Manhattan is all about.”

However, Vellonakis mentioned how many famous parks in Europe are gated and maintain a strict curfew.

“All our parks around the world are locked at night because landscapes are very sensitive,” Vellonakis said.

In fact, during the 19th century, the perimeter of Washington Square Park was gated. The fences were removed at the end of the 19th century when the city added a roadway through the park.

When the park was redesigned in the early 2000s, replicas of these fences with the gates were included in the design, which was approved by CB2 at the time. However, due to mounting controversy, the gates were ultimately removed from the plans.

Now, the board is facing that same controversy again. At the end of the meeting, the committee ultimately decided to draft a proposal to request some alternative designs to secure the park from the Parks Department.

Because Washington Square Park is in a historic district, the design of the new proposal would be reviewed by the CB2 Landmarks Committee. It would then have to go to full board for resolution.