Winston Fisher swims with the sharks on Park Ave.

Landlord sponsored design competition to reimagine boulevard’s medians

55 East 52nd Street and Winston Fisher (Creit: Fisher Brothers)
55 East 52nd Street and Winston Fisher (Creit: Fisher Brothers)

On ABC, Barabara Corcoran is one of the “shark” investors on the show “Shark Tank.” On Park Avenue, Fisher Brothers partner Winston Fisher is judging actual sharks.

The lobby of the Manhattan landlord’s 55 East 52nd Street will display entries submitted to a design competition that Fisher Brothers is sponsoring, which asks artists to reimagine the medians along a nine-block stretch of Park Avenue, the New York Times reported.

Among the 17 finalists are a minigolf exhibit and an aquarium.

“There’s a tongue-in-cheek connection,” said architectural designer Eric Spencer, who proposed the fishy idea. “You know, the classic stereotype, guys and gals on their phones, sharks, doing their thing.”

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Fisher Brothers doesn’t control the stretch of Park Avenue’s median between 46th and 57th streets, but hopes the competition will ignite imaginations.

“Can the city do it? The city can do anything,” he said.

“You can fill in what your vision is, but we really are hopeful that this will be the spark, very much like what they did with the High Line,” Fisher added. “That’s not what got built. But it allowed people to dream and see the potential.”

A panel of judges will select the winning entry, and the artist will receive a $25,000 prize. [NYT]Rich Bockmann