HELL'S KITCHEN — A shuttered food kiosk inside a small Ninth Avenue park shouldn't reopen unless the luxury building that owns the neglected public plaza agrees to restore it to its former state, local leaders said.
Members of Community Board 4 asked the Department of City Planning to deny a request from West 57th Street apartment complex The Sheffield to renew its permit for the food kiosk in Balsley Park, unless the building promises to clean the park four times a day and carry out repairs and renovations suggested by the landscape architect who designed it more than a decade ago.
Since the kiosk closed several years ago, neighbors claim that pigeons and rodents have taken over and that The Sheffield has failed to clean up droppings and empty liquor bottles strewn around the plaza, or maintain its landscape and appearance.
Sheffield Plaza in 1997, compared with the redesigned Balsley Park in 2002. Photos courtesy of Thomas Balsley Associates.
The landscape architect who originally designed the park, which spans a third of an acre, echoed residents’ sentiments Friday.
“When that kiosk closed down, you could literally see the slow decline of the state of affairs… and just the general kind of negligence,” Thomas Balsley told DNAinfo. “I told them way back in 1998 that that was the linchpin of the success of the park — to have that in place.”
Before it became Balsley Park, the space — known then as Sheffield Plaza — was a “notorious failure as a privately owned public space,” the New York Times reported in 2000, noting that a resident of condo next door was stabbed in the "downright dangerous" park.
On Friday, Balsley himself described the former incarnation of the park as a “barren plaza filled with whiskey bottles and pigeons.”
The redesign changed that, but when the kiosk shuttered, its absence “invited... negative forces,” Balsley said.
Although the Department of City Planning has the final say on the kiosk application, CB4 has asked the department to deny The Sheffield’s application unless the building consults with Balsley and completes a list of tasks he outlined after a recent walk-through, including replanting the gardens and repainting the walls.
A manager at The Sheffield did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The board also requested that The Sheffield install additional signage about behavior in the park — including a more prominent sign asking patrons not to feed the pigeons — and asked the building to consider installing a security camera focused on the kiosk “to record anti-social activity.”
A restaurant located just down the street from the plaza, Kilo, planned to manage the kiosk, offering sandwiches, burritos and Asian-style bowls with vegetarian and gluten-free options, a rep from the restaurant said at an earlier meeting.
Balsley said he felt confident The Sheffield has “good intentions” for the park and will start repairs and renovations in the spring.
“I think the kiosk is such an important component to this, and I’m glad that it’s tied into the restoration of the park back to its glory,” he said.
“Because that’s what people remember, and I think that’s what we’re going to have once the kiosk is open and running and successful.”
