A fight over the restaurant inside Bryant Park, the lush, green six-acre patch in the heart of Midtown, is proof positive that real estate in Manhattan is still a hotly contested commodity.
Late last year, Ark Restaurants, which owns the popular Bryant Park Grill, lost a contest to lease the space on the west side of the main branch of the New York Public Library between 42nd and 40th Streets.
In the time-honored tradition of New York tenants, Michael Weinstein, Ark’s chief executive, has refused to leave. The lease expired on April 30, but the Ark staff is still serving jumbo lump crab cakes and Caesar salads to guests.
Mr. Weinstein, who has run the 1,000-seat restaurant for 30 years, contends that the bidding for the lease was rigged for a rival, despite a better offer from his Bryant Park Grill, one of the highest grossing restaurants in the country.
The modestly-priced Grill, Mr. Weinstein argues in a lawsuit filed after he lost the lease, contributed to the transformation of Bryant Park. A haven for drug dealers and muggers in the 1970s and 1980s, the park is now a leafy respite that attracts tourists, secretaries, lawyers and executives alike from the surrounding office towers, an estimated 19 million visitors last year.
“We’re going to take every opportunity,” said Mr. Weinstein, 81, “to show that the bidding process was unfair and that the result was not to the benefit of New Yorkers and tourists who come to the park.”
But Daniel Biederman, the longtime executive director of the Bryant Park Corporation, a private, nonprofit that oversees the park, is moving to evict the Grill, and its satellite operations, The Cafe and The Porch. The eviction will make way for the winning bidder, a partnership of Jean-Georges Restaurants and Seaport Entertainment Group. Jean-Georges is a brand that is synonymous with high-end dining, where a six-course dinner runs $298 per person, before cocktails, wine, taxes and tip. The restaurant company, however, does have a range of restaurants with less pricey menus.
Mr. Biederman describes Mr. Weinstein as a sore loser who did not complain about the process until he lost. Mr. Weinstein, he said, had done a good job running the Grill for the past three decades, and Ark was in the running until the very end. Ultimately, he said, Ark tied for third place among the four finalists. “The process was completely fair,” said Mr. Biederman, 71, who considers the restoration of Bryant Park to be his life’s work. “He should’ve made a better case for himself.”
John Bryson, a self-described regular at the Bryant Park Grill who works in a nearby office tower, is not so sure there is a need for change. The Grill, he said, is “accessible.” “It’s not a million dollars,” he said. “They have a good menu without being over the top. And the staff is top notch. I’ve come for business deals and on my own. Secretaries can come here and eat. The problem I have with a high-end restaurant coming in here is that it sends a different message.”
Betsy Gotbaum, a former parks commissioner, is a fan of Bryant Park Grill. “This is a park that is extremely popular with a lot of people who don’t necessarily have a lot of money,” she said. “People go to the Grill on their 30-minute lunch breaks and the food is good. No matter what happens, I hope that situation continues.”
The Bryant Park battle has attracted widespread attention. The dispute involves the New York Public Library, the city’s Parks Department, City Hall and the local community board. So far, Mr. Weinstein has been unsuccessful in getting a restraining order barring his eviction until his lawsuit can be heard.
There is no question that Bryant Park has become an urban oasis in Midtown, a district bereft of green space. The park’s great lawn is a perpetually clipped green, surrounded by London plane trees, under which there are hundreds of metal cafe tables and chairs, as well as food kiosks and the restaurants. There are free concerts, dance parties, beekeeping classes, yoga and courts for boules, drawing a constant stream of visitors. During the cold weather months, the lawn is replaced by a skating rink and a corporate-sponsored Winter Village with 180 booths selling gifts.
But it was not always so.
Five or so decades ago, New York was in the midst of a recession, losing population and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Bryant Park was then a no-go zone overrun by crime. Office workers and visitors avoided the park that had briefly served as a potter’s field in the 1820s and as the site of the World’s Fair in 1853. It was subsequently named after William Cullen Bryant, a newspaper editor and poet. Around 1933, its current landscape came into being.
When it became one of the many neglected corners of the city in the 1970s, the sociologist and urbanist William H. Whyte wrote in a 1979 memo to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund that drug dealers were not the cause of the crime problem. “The basic problem is underuse,” he wrote.
Mr. Whyte estimated that during the noon period on a sunny day in the 1970s an average of only 1,000 people could be found in the park.
Beginning in 1980, Mr. Biederman, an acolyte of Mr. Whyte, followed Mr. Whyte’s recommendations by making the park physically more accessible to passers-by, beefing up the maintenance and security crews, and creating a roster of programs that would draw people into the park. “We brought crime down steadily,” Mr. Biederman said, “and increased the appearance of safety by installing ticket booths and holding concerts that drew people into the park.”
The park officially reopened in 1992 after a three-year, $8.9 million renovation funded by public and private sources. In an unusual move at the time, governance of the park was turned over to the Bryant Park Corporation, which was made up of nearby property owners as members who were assessed a special tax for the park, generating about $2 million a year.
Given the park’s still iffy reputation in 1995, Mr. Weinstein said he took a huge risk in opening the Bryant Park Grill. “All five of my board members told me I was out of my mind,” Mr. Weinstein recalled. “You had to have a lot of faith in the survival of New York City.”
Eventually, Mr. Weinstein also opened an outdoor Cafe on the north side of the restaurant and a second cafe, The Porch, at the southwest corner of the park.
Last year, Mr. Weinstein’s Grill, Cafe and Porch chalked up $31 million in gross receipts and employed nearly 250 people, half of whom have worked there for more than a decade. He paid the corporation about $3.1 million, in rent and a percentage of gross sales.
Unlike the Central Park Conservancy, the corporation does not get money for the park from the city, nor does it solicit large donations. But it raised about $29 million last year from restaurant rents, kiosks and corporate sponsorships, like the Bank of America Winter Village.
In his lawsuit, Mr. Weinstein highlighted Mr. Biederman’s lofty salary, $517,000 for a reported 25-hour workweek in 2023. The 34th Street Partnership, a business improvement district he also heads, paid him another $417,493 for a similar number of hours.
In addition, Mr. Biederman heads a private consulting firm, Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, that takes him to West Palm Beach, San Francisco and Berlin, Germany.
This is not the first time someone has taken issue with Mr. Biederman’s multiple roles. He was ousted from his post at Grand Central Partnership in 1998, after then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani questioned his arrangements.
Mr. Biederman stayed in his other positions. The turnaround of Bryant Park is almost universally attributed to his leadership, even as members of the corporation’s board do not find Mr. Biederman’s hard-charging personality endearing.
Two years ago, the corporation decided to solicit proposals for operating the park’s restaurant, rather than simply renew Mr. Weinstein’s lease. During an interview on NY1 on May 2, Mr. Biederman was asked why he would get rid of the popular Grill.
“After 30 years, some of the neighbors are telling us, maybe it’s time for a change,” Mr. Biederman responded. “Menu, design and the like.”
“Neighbors” in this case, means building owners and the New York Public Library, Mr. Biederman said, not the people using the park.
Mr. Biederman appointed a five-person committee to pare 38 applicants down to a final four, including Mr. Weinstein’s Ark and the partnership of Jean-Georges and Seaport, a real estate company that owns a good portion of the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.
Mr. Biederman and Richard H. Levy, a member of the selection committee and a real estate developer and owner, vehemently deny that the fix was in.
“We all went in with no dog in the fight,” Mr. Levy said. He said Jean-Georges was selected for its “concept, credibility, the vision,” adding, “and the sense that they’ll do the numbers that will make this a viable, ongoing restaurant.”
But in the NY1 interview, Mr. Biederman conceded that Jean-Georges had made a “lesser” offer than Jean-Georges. “Sometimes,” he added, “you have to make decisions whether to go for the top financial offer, or the top performer. We chose the latter.”
Mr. Weinstein offered about $1 million more in “guaranteed rent,” but he projected that his gross receipts would rise by the rate of inflation to $35 million after several years. Jean-Georges projected $40 million or more, which would have netted the corporation revenue from a percentage of gross receipts.
In the subsequent negotiations between the corporation and Jean-Georges and Seaport, the partners offered to spend $10 million on renovating and expanding the restaurant, with the corporation chipping in an additional $2 million and giving the operators free rent for the year the restaurant would be closed for construction. Those were two concessions that might have prompted other operators, including Mr. Weinstein, to make sweeter proposals.
“They knew who they wanted from the beginning,” Mr. Weinstein said. “Despite the fact it was supposed to be an open process, they didn’t give the other bidders the opportunities they gave Seaport Entertainment.”
Projections can be a tricky matter. Seaport Entertainment, which owns a 30 percent stake in Jean-Georges Restaurants, recently completed a breathtaking renovation of the decrepit Tin Building at South Street Seaport, creating a food hall of various Jean-Georges restaurants and food markets. But the concept at the Tin Building, which has lost tens of millions of dollars, is currently being revamped.
Mr. Biederman was not fazed by the problems at the Tin Building, saying they were related to its “location,” and Bryant Park is a far better location. But it is hard to see how the Jean-Georges-Seaport partnership will be able to generate higher revenues without raising prices. The average check at the Grill is $50, according to 24/7 Wall Street, a financial news service.
Mr. Biederman expects to issue eviction papers in the coming days. There will be a court hearing, Mr. Weinstein said, and an appeal if it’s necessary.
It is unclear how long Mr. Weinstein will be able to fend off his pending ouster.
Though a judge rejected his request for a restraining order to stop the eviction, he has kept the Grill’s doors open and much of the staff working. But it will be nearly impossible, he said, to book the most lucrative part of the business — weddings, corporation events and private parties.
Charles Bagli has been a reporter at The Times for more than 20 years, covering the intersection of real estate and politics.
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