In the 90’s metal and plastic containers distributing newspapers, magazines and ads were scattered all over New York contributing to the sense of chaos and social disorder in public spaces. While newsracks are no longer the issue they once were in most downtowns, the process by which we organized and informally regulated them might be instructive as to how apparently impossible problems can be addressed. It takes a deep knowledge of the regulatory and legal environment, creativity, flexibility and persistence – the last being the most important.

In response to my last post about street vending, the thoughtful and wise downtown observer and consultant, David Milder, sent me a note concluding that improving the street vending problems in New York City is impossible. My response to that was that while improving the vending situation was complex and difficult it was by no means hopeless. If someone were to take on the task, had the capacity to keep at it over a period of years, and some resources to contribute to whatever solution might be worked out – eventually they were likely to be successful. Folks can say no a million times, I wrote David, but you only need them to say yes once. This was certainly the case with all of the streetscape issues we faced at the midtown Manhattan business improvement districts in the 90s.

There were three types of publications that utilized stand-alone containers for the distribution of printed material at the time we worked on this issue. Daily newspapers (like the New York Times and the New York Daily News) sold their publications through coin operated metal machines. Weekly publications (like the Village Voice), most of which were free also mostly used metal racks, while some also used lighter plastic dispensers. A range of advertisers also used plastic racks to distribute materials. The most ubiquitous of these was something called the Gotham Writer’s Workshop (which ultimately was one of the two or three publishers that chose not to participate in the program).

Racks were mostly located at or near corners; some chained to lampposts, some free-standing. A majority of midtown corners had a least one rack; some had a dozen or more. A majority of the racks were also poorly maintained and often derelict, empty and/or broken. We did a census of all of the racks within the Bryant Park, Grand Central and 34^th Street Districts and counted close to 400 individual racks at some 60 locations (if I recall correctly). I was assigned by Dan Biederman to try to solve this problem in 1991, and my recollection is that we developed the outline of a program and began to persuade the various stakeholders to participate in it the next year. From that point it took three or four years to actually fully implement our program.

We started with an understanding that the newspapers clearly had the benefit of First Amendment protection for the distribution of their product – which requires that any regulation of that activity be limited to time, place and manner and be subject to a reasonableness standard under applicable case-law. All the other publications claimed the same rights. Because newspaper distribution rights were so broadly protected and well-defined we determined that a voluntary, consensual program was the best way to proceed in the long run – in order to avoid years of litigation with a strong possibility of loss no matter how well our proposed program was structured.

We decided that the optimal manner in which to address the problem was to design a better-looking distribution mechanism that required less sidewalk space. We started with the premise that at the end of the day the number of available corners and the number of distribution points (racks) would have to be at least as many as were then in existence. That way we would not be asking the papers and distributors to be giving anything up in terms of distribution points. At that time, the circulation departments of the daily papers were charged with maintaining every single reader. It was their view that if a person regularly purchased a paper from a certain newsstand or newsrack, it was a matter of survival for them to maintain the ability to distribute the paper from that location.

I sat down with our then Director of Capital Projects, Arthur Rosenblatt – one of the city’s most experienced project managers of public building and public space, and also an entertaining, cynical and curmudgeonly character – to try to design a replacement multi-vend rack. Sketching on a pad of legal paper Arthur came up with a schematic design of a multi-rend rack with two rows of four machines set one on top of the other, standing on a double pedestal. This became the basis for our proposal.

Our idea was to propose to the City and the publications that we put out multi-vend racks at the 60 corners that currently had single vend racks – with no more than one on a corner. Each publication that had a rack on a corner would get a slot in the multi-vend racks. The multi-vend racks would be paid for by the BIDs (we had substantial capital capacity as a resulting of having issued tax-exempt bonds). The publications would stock the racks and the BIDs would maintain them – relieving them of the expense of doing so. The quid pro quo would be that any publication that participated in the multi-rack program would agree not to put out single vend racks within the BID boundaries. As a result the racks would take up less sidewalk space, appear more organized and be better maintained.

We took the idea to our colleagues in City government, Seth Cummins, General Counsel at the Department of Transportation, which regulates sidewalk use and Gabe Taussig at the Law Department, the long-time head of its Administrative Law bureau. Our ally at DOT was Frank Addeo, who was decades ahead of his time, advocating from within DOT for improved sidewalks and art in public spaces. We also had an ally in City Hall of Craig Muraskin, who worked for David Klasfeld, Chief of Staff to Deputy Mayor Fran Reiter – both of whom empowered Craig to smooth the way for us when problems arose. Identifying sympathetic insiders in city government was absolutely essential to our success.

We presented our proposal to them, asking if DOT would grant licenses to attach the proposed multi-vend racks to the sidewalks, if we could get the publishers to agree to use them. We thoroughly discussed both the constitutional issues and those regulated by the city’s rules about sidewalk uses and how our plan threaded the needle of fitting within them; eventually persuading Seth and Gabe over a period of months, with assists from Craig and Frank, that our proposal was an improvement over the current chaotic situation. They agreed to allow us to move forward and approach the publications. Seth and Gabe liked the idea of getting control of sidewalk use and, I think, didn’t believe we’d be able to persuade the publishers to participate anyway and were unlikely to be successful.

We then contacted all of the publishers and invited them to a meeting for a presentation of our proposal. The New York Times sent its First Amendment expert, George Freeman, as well as a circulation manager. The Village Voice sent it’s outside counsel, Victor Kovner, a former Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, a long-time New York political fixture and an eminent First Amendment attorney. Almost all of the publishers of any size sent someone. George and Victor played a leading role in representing the publishers – and Victor in particular understood the public benefit of our proposal. We had many individual meetings with the dailies and weeklies, as well as with the more ubiquitous of the organizations that used racks to publicize their services. Again, over a period of months, with many phone calls and several all-hands meetings, and following the lead of the Times, News and Voice all but one or two of the publishers agreed to sign on.

We then moved to a two-pronged implementation process – actually creating the multi-vend rack and doing a more complete census of the existing single vend racks. The daily papers put us in touch with their fabricator, Sho-Rack of Shiner, Texas. Sho-Rack sent a sales representative to us to discuss our idea. They were highly skeptical at first. Sho-Rack was concerned about the reaction to the proposal of their big customers – the newspapers. They were also wary of cannibalizing their existing business. It took almost 18 months to cajole them to produce a prototype multi-vend rack that they eventually had delivered to our office. At the same time, we needed to secure approval from DOT and the City’s Art Commission of the design, which progressed on a parallel track. The prototype was installed out on the sidewalk and we kicked its proverbial tires. The trial run of the prototype persuaded us to put a slanted top on the rack, to keep people from leaving trash on it. Once everyone had signed off, we ordered about 60 racks from Sho-Rack.

Our staff and I performed a census of the districts racks; creating a spreadsheet of all of the corners identifying every location where publishers had racks. I took that spreadsheet home and spent a weekend on the floor of my living room with a map, placing racks on corners (making sure they fit, given City siting criteria for street furniture) and assigning racks to publications. We also decided during this time that free publications being generally narrower then the dailies and weeklies and not requiring a coin mechanism, could go in a half rack space. My distribution scheme was circulated first to the City, and then to the publications. DOT had to approve the locations we proposed for the racks – and there was some back and forth about clearances and bus stops (a new wrinkle – while the publishers had put their racks wherever they wanted, we had to follow the rules – and there could not be racks in bus stops), and eventually we all agreed upon a map.

The publishers were given the opportunity to claim any empty spaces in the racks – so at the end of the day, several publications ended up with additional distribution points. After a bit of negotiation, and a lottery the empty spaces, also run on the floor of my apartment, a plan was agreed upon and forwarded to Sho-Rack for fabrication of the doors – with the logos of the various publications on the them – and the proprietary coin mechanisms of the dailies installed on their doors. Around this time my colleague, Dan Pisark, who worked closely with me on the project (and whose Dad had worked in a newspaper circulation department) and I hired Kathy Khang, out of one of the newspapers’ circulation department to manage the program.

Sho-Rack delivered the 60-odd racks and one of the BIDs contractors installed them in the sidewalks. The publishers removed their individual racks from corners. We were off to the races with a program that continues to this day, and has been copied in downtowns all over the country. Several designers have improved on the look of our original, clunky but functional, multi-vend rack, including the BIDs talented in-house industrial designer Ignacio  Ciocchini – who has done two improved iterations of the rack. New York City later enacted legislation regulating the maintenance of racks and requiring participation in the BIDs’ program, in the districts where they existed.

The purpose of this long narrative is to describe how complex and long the process was to solve this highly visible, but at the end of the day not earth-shaking, urban problem. It is instructive that once the program had proved itself as a voluntary scheme, the City made it mandatory. It helped that we had the financial capacity to pay for and maintain the racks. It took the assistance of sympathetic city government insiders, the good will and seriousness of purpose of the City’s attorneys and the leadership of counsel to the Times and the Voice. But we were also flexible and worked hard to address stakeholders’ objections and problems. We tried to be as well-informed on the law, the design elements and the mechanics of distribution as all of the counterparties – because that’s what it took to be able to address their concerns. We kept at it for years – as we did with sidewalk vending, phone kiosks, newsstands, and automatic public toilets – because that’s what it takes to solve these knotty public space problems. The result was worth it.

 

*Crazy He Calls Me

     Billie Holiday

I say I’ll move the mountains
And I’ll move the mountains
If he wants them out of the way
Crazy, he calls me
Sure I’m crazy
Crazy in love, I’d say
I say I’ll go through fire
And I’ll go through fire
As he wants it, so it will be
Crazy, he calls me
Sure I’m crazy
Crazy in love, you see
Like the wind that shakes the bough
He moves me with a smile
The difficult I’ll do right now
The impossible will take a little while
I say I’ll care forever
And I mean forever
If I have to hold up the sky
Crazy, he calls me
Sure I’m crazy
Crazy in love am I