City Council Speaker Julie Menin is threatening to have the Big Apple join a lawsuit against a luxury events venue under the Ed Koch-Queensboro Bridge for allegedly hijacking a public plaza.
“We must ensure that this public space remains genuinely accessible to all New Yorkers and that the legal commitments governing this space are enforced,” Menin said in a Sept. 3 letter to Louis Rose, chairman of Rose Group Hospitality, which operates the Guastavino’s venue in the plaza under the iconic span.
A recent suit alleged that Guastavino’s has illegally claimed the public city plaza as its own for the past decade — repeatedly excluding citizens from the space — while charging venue customers up to $300,000 a pop to rent it for private events.
Luxe NYC venue hijacks public plaza under iconic bridge to rake in up to $300K a pop using shocking enforcers: suit
The city-owned plaza — part of a massive parcel first purchased in 1900 for the construction of the bridge — was meant to be “a sitting area accessible to the public,” the suit said…