Chatham Square in Chinatown

If all had gone to plan, Chinatown’s Chatham Square would look rather different from what you see today. The Department of City Planning wanted a design that would have made the area somewhat more gentrified and pedestrian-friendly. But this was met with considerable opposition from the locals, who felt that it would harm their businesses.

Although the mayor’s office has not entirely ruled out some modification of the important public thoroughfare, any such plans are on hold for at least the next few years. As things stand now, in any case, Chatham Square at the confluence of Park Row and the Bowery, with its noble statue of Confucius, remains one of the better conceived parts of Chinatown, a part of the city singularly lacking in any evidence of urban planning. [more]

Rather than spend $30 million to reconstruct Chinatown’s Chatham Square, already victimized by extra traffic thanks to the Brooklyn Bridge construction that reroutes traffic to the Manhattan Bridge and spills over to the area, the city said it would invest the money elsewhere. According to DNAinfo, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. did not want the two projects going on simultaneously, and instead will use the funds to manage extra traffic expected from the Sept. 11 memorial and improve sections of Water Street. [more]

A planned reconfiguration and renovation of Chinatown’s Chatham Square has been put on hold once again, this time for two years, according to a city Department of Transportation official. The widely unpopular $50 million project, which would connect East Broadway to Worth Street and Bowery Street to St. James Place in the current seven-way intersection, has reportedly been halted due to imminent Brooklyn Bridge construction. Luis Sanchez, DOT’s Lower Manhattan borough commissioner, said that the confluence of those two projects would create an untenable traffic morass. While Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, maintains that the DOT won’t back off its plan for Chatham Square, community activists said they hope this delay will give more time for community input on the plan.