Manhattan thoroughfare Park Avenue will be reimagined as a pedestrian-friendly destination with a walkable greenspace down its center — complete with benches and maybe even a bike lane, according to new renderings released Wednesday.
Images released by the Department of Transportation and Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed the busy Midtown traffic magnet turned into an oasis for walkers – with a nod to its 20th century roots.
“Park Ave. got its name because a century ago it had a literal park in the median,” city Comptroller Mark Levine wrote in a post to X Wednesday, sharing a vintage photo of Park Avenue before its sprawling medians were thinned out for through traffic.
New renderings for a revamped Park Avenue corridor were released by the DOT Wednesday, showing the bustling thoroughfare reimagined as more pedestrian-friendly. Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners“Now at last, the park is coming back,” he wrote.
Two versions of a plan for an 11-block stretch of the busy boulevard — spanning from East 46th to East 57th streets — depict expanded medians, wider sidewalks and an abundance of greenery.
“Our goal in this redesign is to put the park back into Park Avenue, and we want to transform Midtown Manhattan by providing residents and visitors alike with more usable public space,” the at an unrelated press conference Wednesday in The Bronx.
Both redesign plans remove one travel lane in each direction – making way for the wider medians and potentially a bike lane. New crosswalks would be installed to connect each median.
The project was made possible as a result of the MTA’s reconstruction of the Grand Central Terminal train shed, a 100-year-old structure that sits directly below the Park Avenue stretch.
The street redesign will take place in tandem with required repairs to the century-old shed.
The city released two final designs that New Yorkers are invited to vote on via an online survey.
