It's Wednesday, you deserve a treat, like an episode of the Hell Gate Podcast! Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
New York City has millions of square feet of plazas, terraces, and arcades that are for the public's enjoyment, but managed and owned by private landlords. These 600 or so privately-owned public spaces, or POPS, offer New Yorkers the equivalent of nine Bryant Parks of space to frolic, or to rest on hot days, like the ones we're having this week.
POPS are born out of a process that's been in place since 1961: Developers get special variances and waivers to build more commercial space, which makes them more money, and the public gets a piece of the land. Per City rules, POPS are supposed to be "high-quality, accessible, and inviting," but—are you sitting down?—landlords don't always follow the law.
A 2017 audit by the City's comptroller found that more than half of POPS weren't holding up their end of that bargain, and that same year the City Council passed a law putting more stringent signage requirements in place. Since then, the number of POPS has only grown, but enforcement is still a problem. A 2023 New York Times investigation found that 1 in 5 landlords with POPS were in violation of their agreements; the standard fine for a violation is $5,000, which is literally nothing to a global real estate developer.
So it often falls to members of the public to become the last line of defense for these public spaces. It might even fall to guys like one Instagram user calling himself "780_lord_of_bench," who posted a video last week appearing to show building staff at 780 Third Avenue in confrontation with people trying to use the public plaza in front of the building to take a load off. The video garnered over 200,000 likes, and gained his account 11,000 followers, all incensed by the idea that the landlord isn't holding up their end of the bargain. That video intersperses footage of, for example, an elderly man with a shaking voice beseeching security ("It says welcome—why do you have it carved in the granite, if we're not welcome?"), and irritated staff members arguing with the person who is filming. One representative commenter promised to have his cafecito and smoke a Cuban cigar there the next time he passes the building (the plaza has signs up prohibiting smoking).
Lord of Bench, who asked that we not include his name in this article because he feared retaliation from the staff at 780, said in an interview that he started the account because of "bullying" from staff last August when he was taking a break from a job assignment at the Marriott. "It's the most peaceful place to sit if you're trying to catch a break there." But the reverie was broken, he said, when the staff cursed at and threatened him.
The POPS at 780 Third Avenue is pretty nice, and indeed a popular place to sit, with its leafy and shady design overlooked by a gaudy mural of Albert Einstein riding a bike emblazoned with "peace equals heart squared." It's owned and operated by Sovereign Partners, who reportedly got a pretty good deal when they bought the joint in 2024. A posted sign, which was required by that 2017 law, states that this POPS must be accessible to the public for 24 hours a day.
On two consecutive afternoons that Hell Gate visited, we saw that they appeared to be holding up their end of the deal, not stopping any of the contractors or deliveristas who needed to beat the heat from relaxing. One woman, Angela, who was aghast when Hell Gate showed her Lord of Bench's video, said that she probably rests in the plaza once a month or so. "That's terrible," she said, "but I've never seen anything like that."