The Great Lawn, the 12-acre oval of inexperienced area that is among the most well liked accumulating puts in Central Park, will likely be closed to the general public till April after it was once broken throughout a live performance past due remaining month, the Central Park Conservancy showed on Tuesday.
The live performance, the Global Citizen Festival, typically brings about 60,000 people to Central Park each and every yr. It was once held this yr on Sept. 23 and drew a crowd about part its same old dimension, regardless of a heavy rainstorm that dropped about an inch of rain at the park.
The heavy apparatus used to position at the live performance and the foot site visitors it attracted brought about intensive injury throughout the downpour, and “fully destroyed” a 3rd of the garden, the Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, mentioned in a remark.
“The Central Park Conservancy is very disappointed that the iconic Great Lawn is now closed and unavailable for New Yorkers to enjoy this fall,” the remark mentioned.
The Great Lawn is closed each and every yr from mid-November to April for regimen upkeep, however the injury from the competition induced the conservancy to near it a minimum of six weeks early throughout a stretch of temperate climate.
Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose district comprises Central Park, estimated the upkeep would price as much as $1 million, however the New York City Parks Department and the conservancy each mentioned that the wear had but to be totally assessed.
Global Citizen is an advocacy group with the function of finishing international poverty, according to its website. The competition in Central Park coincides with the United Nations General Assembly, which is held in New York in past due September, in hopes of pressuring global leaders “to defeat poverty, demand equity, and defend the planet,” the web page says. This yr’s tournament featured performances via Lauryn Hill, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Ok-pop celebrity Jungkook.
Ms. Brewer asked Mayor Eric Adams in a letter on Monday to transport the competition out of Central Park in years yet to come. In the letter, which was once first reported via the native news web page West Side Rag, the councilwoman criticized Global Citizen for going “full speed ahead despite torrential rain.”
In a remark, Global Citizen mentioned that it had labored carefully with town businesses to resolve whether or not to move forward with the live performance regardless of the elements. The team additionally mentioned it could paintings with the Central Park Conservancy to evaluate the wear and canopy the price of upkeep.
Ms. Brewer mentioned in an interview that due to a one-day tournament, New Yorkers can be averted from taking part in an outside area that was once designed for them.
“It’s fine to pay for it,” Ms. Brewer mentioned. “But what about the people who can’t use it? You can’t pay for that.”
Meghan Lalor, a spokeswoman for the Parks Department, mentioned in a remark that the dep. was once “confident any damages will be remedied expeditiously,” and added that it had a “positive relationship” with Global Citizen.
The live performance isn’t the primary tournament to reason injury to the Great Lawn. In 1991, Paul Simon drew a crowd of 600,000 folks to a loose live performance there. In 1995, the garden was once additional suffering from a sequence of occasions, together with a drought, a 100,000-person screening of the Disney film “Pocahontas” and a 120,000-person Mass officiated via Pope Francis, all of which resulted in its being closed for 2 years for a $18.2 million recovery.
In December 2005, the Parks Department presented a rule restricting the scale of public occasions hosted at the Great Lawn to 50,000 folks; the coverage was once met with complaint, and after 3 years of litigation, the dep. agreed to desert the trouble. The present most capability for an tournament held there’s 60,000, according to the Parks Department website.