Menin Threatens to Join Legal Fight Against Guastavino’s

The City Council is looking into joining a class-action lawsuit against Guastavino’s, which alleges that the restaurant has spent decades commandeering a public plaza located under the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge for private gain.

Specifically, the suit charges Guastavino’s with bilking “up to $300,000” at a time out of individual “clients,” which apparently believe that they are paying to use the restaurant’s private “garden” for one-and-done events.

According to the suit, this garden is actually free-to-use public space—including for the less-wealthy local residents that have otherwise been prevented from accessing it, with changes being made to that end as early as the year 2000.

Since the filing of the suit on August 24, Guastavino’s has taken steps to indicate that the plaza is indeed public space, including removing some signage that suggests otherwise.

Yet that may not satisfy City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who represents the Upper East Side. She has now written a letter to Guastavino’s owner Luis Rose about supporting the lawsuit, which included a call to meet one-on-one.

“Removing the signs was an important first step, but now we need a clear and lasting resolution that ensures this plaza remains open to the public and that there is no ambiguity about its use in the future,” Menin said on September 8.

“I am requesting that Guastavino’s meet with us to come to an agreement that resolves this issue. If that cannot happen, the Council is prepared to consider what additional action may be necessary,” she added.

The suit in question, which was filed on behalf of an array of local residents, made the following blunt claim against Rose and Guastavino’s: “This case is about the brazen and illegal seizure of public space by a high-end private event company and commercial real estate developer who, on a daily or near-daily basis, evict the general public from a public plaza in Midtown Manhattan.”

Lawyers note that the site occupied by Guastavino’s, which used to be entirely open to the public, was leased in the 1990s after the restaurant struck a deal to preserve “a small outdoor lot for public use as a sitting area and garden.” Yet lawyers for the plaintiffs, which include (among others) a college student and a veterinary technician, allege that the deal has been all but reneged upon.

This ongoing “illegal seizure” of public space has been conducted, the suit continues, in a variety of ways; this includes “erecting physical barricades,” hiring security guards to keep people out of the plaza, installing misleading signs, and even “making a deal with the local police precinct.”

Many such barricades were reportedly erected by Guastavino’s between the turn of the century and 2020, which the suit describes as “not authorized by the Landmarks Commission, nor other city agencies.” This included the installation of trellises and planters for the “private garden” used by clients, as well as reneging on an original promise to install public benches.

The result, lawyers wrote, is that an “illusion of exclusivity” has been created for both misled “clients” and strollers-about-town alike.

According to the suit, Guastavino’s has apparently been successful in getting the NYPD to “evict” people from his public space and charge them with trespassing, sustaining this alleged mirage of private property. Indeed, multiple NYPD officers are listed as defendants in the civil suit alongside Guastavino’s.