What's Next for Quisqueya Plaza?

Back in 2020, the city shut down a stretch of Dyckman Street between Broadway and Seaman Avenue, creating a car-free zone that’s now called Quisqueya Plaza. The NYC Department of Transportation has funding allocated to help make the plaza a permanent fixture on Dyckman.

This all sounds nice. But restaurant owners on the block have soured on the arrangement, and some residents say noise levels in the plaza can be unbearable. The plaza has also stoked tensions between the two groups, with some residents blaming the restaurant operators (who have helped oversee the plaza) for the noise problems. 

Now local leaders are making moves to reimagine Quisqueya Plaza — and perhaps shut it down.

Council Member Carmen De La Rosa told me the plaza had “sprung up,” during the pandemic and then stayed. “It matters that that plaza came to be without much community input,” she said.

In August, De La Rosa and other local elected officials — including State Senator Robert Jackson and U.S. Representative Adriano Espaillat — sent a letter to the DOT asking them to consider alternatives to a permanent plaza at the site.

What happens next? Here are a few of the options I’ve heard people float:

• The plaza gets an overhaul from the DOT and remains closed to cars year-round, and policymakers take more steps to reduce noise.  
• The plaza goes back to being a normal street for most of the year, with cars and parking spots. But it reverts to being a car-free Open Street during some portion of the warmer months, with gatherings and events.
• The plaza just goes back to being an ordinary street, all the time.  

Many local leaders are coalescing around the second option: normal street most of the time, seasonal plaza. At a Community Board 12 meeting on Tuesday, restaurant owners advocated for a version of that approach. The board then narrowly passed a non-binding resolution backing that option.

When we spoke on Wednesday, De La Rosa stopped short of endorsing that plan. But, she told me, “it doesn’t make sense for us to just keep a plaza there year-round.”

Not everyone's convinced that's the right path. During the Community Board meeting on Tuesday, many local residents urged the board to hold off and wait for more community input.

A few consistent themes emerged from their comments. Some blame the city for doing too little to enforce noise rules in the plaza. The quality-of-life issues are serious. (“This is harming people. They are moving away,” one meeting attendee told the board.) And some residents do want a year-round, car-free space there — just one that’s designed and overseen in a way that better limits large, loud gatherings. 

Along those lines, I’ve seen arguments that the seasonal-plaza-only plan prioritizes the wishes of the restaurant owners, but not other people in the community. 

Some people don't think the seasonal plan will even fix the noise issue. “Making Quisqueya Plaza operational only during the warm months only maintains the status quo, because that is exactly during the summer months when the noise disruption occurs,” one speaker told the community board.  

During our conversation, De La Rosa acknowledged those concerns. “It’s one of those issues,” she said, “where I feel like I’m never going to make everybody happy.”