Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This episode of the New Yorkers podcast is brought to you by new york100.org recognizing excellence across New York City's five boroughs. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the New Yorkers, a podcast by New York City Cop. I am your host, Kelly Kopp, published photographer, New York City tour business owner, real estate content creator, podcaster, and above all else, a New Yorker.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, the next Brooklyn bound train in Mount Biden.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Stand clear of the closing. Do please transfer his shovel to grand the sacral.
And the music.
I like the intro. It has like the subway.
Please stand clear of the closing doors and clear the closing doors, please. Okay, here we go. With me today, I have civic leader Madeline Wills. She was on the Tribeca community board, head of the Hudson River Park Trust, and is now overseeing the $400 million overhaul of Fifth Avenue here in New York City. But above all else, she is a New Yorker. Hi, Madeleine, welcome to the show. How are you today?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: I'm very well. How are you, Kelly?
[00:01:42] Speaker A: I'm. I'm great. You know, I'm super excited to talk to you. Jay is super excited.
You have so much amazing New York City information. You are such a part of New York City in New York City history as well. And everyone will learn this.
What were you gonna say, though? I'm sorry?
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Because when you say that, then I realize that I'm old. So it's.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I always say the word old is a good thing because I'm old too. Because I always say. I've said some in previous podcasts, like why is young good but old bad? You know, I'd rather be old because we have all this wisdom and, you know, we won't. We'll act silly like the young kids anymore, you know, maybe we do sometimes. Well, tell us a little about. A little bit about yourself. You know, were you born in New York City and where I was born.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: In New York, in Fort Washington Avenue.
I was born in Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital, which is no longer so. I was raised uptown and then I grew up in Flushing. My parents bought a nice little tiny house in Flushing and we lived there until I.
Until.
Until I grew up.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Can I ask you, the Cross street.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: On Fort Washington, I believe it was 181st Street.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: We would be neighbors today.
That's amazing.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Maybe you're in our old apartment, right?
[00:03:06] Speaker A: You never know. That's incredible.
So you grew up here in New York City then and you went to school in Washington Heights?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: I moved when I was two and a half and to Flushing.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Okay.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: To 175th place, three blocks off the LIE.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: And it didn't have numbers at the time, but I think it's exit 26.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: And I grew up there, went to Francis Lewis High School. So I've been in New York my whole life. I went to Queens College, then I went to University of Arizona.
I have no idea why I went to University of Arizona.
I think I had never been west of Pennsylvania.
And I went to visit my cousin in school, and I thought, wow, this is what the rest of the United States looks like.
I'd like to stay here a little while. So that was it.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Wow. And then you moved back to New York City?
[00:04:05] Speaker B: I moved back to New York because I was an actress.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: So I acted for a couple of years. I did a few gigs. I was generally cast mostly as a dumb blonde, and I.
I got a little tired of it. I did a few off Broadway plays. I.
I performed in Lincoln Center.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Oh, very cool.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: But then I went into television production and so who.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah, tell us about that. Who were you? Who did you work or for or with or something?
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Yeah, my very first. Well, not my very first job. My first job was as a media planner. I was just trying to make a living.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: And.
And I. I was an assistant media planner. You know, you sell advertising time.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: And then.
Or I bought it for clients, and then I went on to sell television shows. I was actually the first woman salesperson on the road in television syndication.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: A really long time ago. So I have a lot of interesting, not fun stories about being the first woman being Jewish, going down to the Deep south. This is 40 years ago.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: And, you know, and I had, you know, it was a. It was a tough job. I was really good at it. I sold a lot. I became the top salesperson, but it was a tough job I had. All those things happened to me. Being locked in a room, being, you know, chased around desks, all those things.
Being really sexually harassed and even assaulted once. So it was a very interesting time. I always thought I would write a book about it, but I didn't.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: And what year, can I ask you, what year is this?
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Oh, this is about 1919.
You know, early 80s.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Right. That's what I was thinking.
A different time.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a different time. And these are the things. If you wanted to be in a man's world, you could not complain about it.
They just thought you weren't tough enough if you couldn't.
They used to say to me, if it can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I was not going to get out of the kitchen.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Right. Interesting and sad to hear that you know what women have to do.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: But it toughened me up and made me realize that you have to keep your self respect and you just have to continue and press your case.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: I had to be smarter than anybody. I had to have more information than anyone.
I had to show them that I was there to do business and nothing else.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Right. I love your drive. It inspiring, you know, to me and I'm sure other, you know, women. But I mean, as a man, I'm super inspired by your strength in general.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Then you went into TV production.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: I went to TV production. I was hired by Time Inc. Who owned HBO at the time. You know, it's, it's a chess game now. Everybody's buy sells companies. So at that time, Time incorporated had a television production arm. We did a lot of BBC of the Masterpiece theaters, if you remember those. But we did a lot of television syndication work for HBO.
So I did some MayFit TV movies there. I did, I did some game shows.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: That's.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: And, and then, and then I was hired by the Washington Post company, which was at the time the most important television company at the time.
And I sold the first show to cable television. I was the first woman executive vice president of a television company.
So I, you know, I had broken some of the glass ceilings.
It was hard at the time because frankly, even though I had that position and I still had to deal with a lot of negativity towards the fact. How did you get there?
You're too pretty. You're, you know, what did you do? And like.
So it was a constant having to show people that I belonged.
But I got a lot done and, and then I got married and I went on to open my own television production company.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Wow, good for you.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: I did the first parenting show on Lifetime television. I did that for four years. I did some syndication work.
I sold a pilot for a drama series to Paramount and cbs. But president CBS got fired. So it never, never went on.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: What was the show about?
[00:09:21] Speaker B: It was the first show about forensic medicine.
It was called Married to Murder. It was about a cop and a scientist and how they married solved murders together. But this was before.
This was before there were any of those forensic shots that like the ID.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Discovery Channel type stuff.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: But that's what you're a trailblazer.
This is fascinating.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: I don't really talk about that time in my life anymore, but it's truly fascinating. Claire knows about.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: But did you so you or a television producer? I don't want to. Am I jumping ahead too far for Larry King and Charlie Rose?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Larry King on the. And Charlie Rose on the air. So now really see how old I am then.
And. Yeah.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Jay, do you know who these people are? I've heard of them.
This is what makes me sad when I ask him questions.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: I worked with David Susskind.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Major producer at the time, director.
So that was interesting.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: How was it like working with Larry King?
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Larry. Larry was very nice, but he was physically extremely awkward.
We had to get him a body coach to teach him how to actually walk onto a set because he was in such bad physical shape.
And, you know, I had to, you know, fix his shirt, you know, his jacket all the time. It was interesting to me. He went on to be a, you know, a big hit, marry a lot of women, but he was, you know, he was a. He needed to be put together.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Wow, that's really interesting.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: But he was a very nice man.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Oh, nice to hear.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Charlie Rose.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Charlie Rose.
I would say that Charlie, very interesting character.
Charlie liked women.
At the time that I met him, he and his wife just split up. I don't think he ever got married after that.
But super intelligent.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: And read all the books before the shows.
Never always knew exactly what he was doing.
Not the funniest guy in the world. I mean, when he tried to be like, I'll remember we had Donny Osmond on the show once.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: And he said, so, Donnie, tell me the difference between you and Marie.
And Donnie said, well, Charlie, I'm a boy and she's a girl. And he was like, he didn't know where to start.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: That's exactly what the first thought I had in my head, how I would answer the question.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: He's a more serious.
Yeah, but also just really smart. Really smart man.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: And so at this point time, were you living in Tribeca? Because tell us about. So you. You started basically, in a sense, your adult life in Tribeca. Is that from what I understand?
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I lived on West 70th Street. I've been married 42 years. I met my husband. He was a Tribecan at the time. And, you know, it was called the Washington Market. Just said, started being called by Madison Avenue, Tribeca.
And my husband had the last food business on Duane street because it used to be the Washington Market. Had all these food businesses down there, and he didn't want to move. He just kept it there until it could not be there anymore. So we've lived in the same place now. He's lived there longer. He was living there in a raw loft 50 years ago.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: And I moved in 40. 44. 40 years ago.
40 years ago, right before the birth of my first son.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Wow. So you've been in Tribeca, we'll say 40 years.
Yeah. I can add really well, can I?
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: And then you were a community volunteer. Correct. And that's.
Is this at the same time you're working in television as well?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: It was interesting because I was still in television.
Someone who represented small businesses downtown asked me if I would be on the community board to represent small businesses, because nobody was really representing you, representing residents or big businesses, but no one was really representing small businesses. So I.
So I applied. I got put on the community board. I found it very interesting. They were just building the northern part of Battery Park City at the time.
It wasn't really my background, but I got very engaged with civics, and I learned that you could get a lot done if you know how to advocate.
Advocate properly.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: And I learned how to do that.
So as time went on, I became the chair of the tribeca committee, the Parks Committee.
I led a rezoning of tribeca. We came up with a new zone for contextual zoning called C62A, and we got city planning to pass it, and I got involved in the landmarking of the whole area, and I was chosen to chair an advisory committee to get all the park system in Bowery Park City built. So it became very interesting to me. People thought I was a landscape architect, and I wasn't. When I left the community board, the president of Battery Park City wrote me a letter and said, I was so pleased to have a landscape architect of your caliber on the board. I said, thanks, Tim, but, you know, I'm a television producer, but okay. But, you know, I learned to build sets. I learned to have an eye for design.
So, I mean, that was.
So my metamorphosis has a background to it. Because what I find very interesting is as I got much more interested in land use and building and transforming, I could take my television production skills as an executive producer. I had to build sets. I had to, you know, design. I had to put it together. I had, you know, 5,000 people working for me always.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: So I could take those skills and use them to negotiate a deal with a developer or think about building something.
And what I learned is that I started to really take to the public. Public realm. I started to really, in the middle of the night, some parents and I went to PS234 downtown, which did not have a playground.
And we broke in, broke the lock.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: I read that you did that and I loved it.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Took it over and put a new lock on it. These are the things you could do in the 80s and not get arrested.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: When I read this, I was laughing. I loved it.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: And guess what happened? We got that playground.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Good for your dog run.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Yep.
Protest or.
How did you get the playground?
[00:17:33] Speaker B: The school did not have enough room for a playground. And it was an elementary school. What do kids do if you don't have a playground?
So there was an empty lot next to it. Right. Next to it, that the city owned, but they weren't going to give it to the school.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: So we took it.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: You just went and did it?
[00:17:52] Speaker B: We did it.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: What was the decision?
You know, you just spearheaded this decision to just.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: There are three of us.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: And just. We just said, let's do it, you know, let's just take it.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: I love your drive. You have such an amazing drive and passion, you know, for what you do in this city to make it better. It's incredible, you know, and it's really admirable. You're inspiring me to thank you to, you know, to, you know, go cut some chains and do something.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: I think you get arrested for that now. I mean, that was still the time where things were just a little not so serious.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: It's fascinating, though.
So, Madeline, can you tell us about 911 and the aftermath of what happened?
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So, well, what happened is that I was the chair of the community board in 200911 happened.
And I was outside by this PS 234 taking my child to school and also giving out leaflets for someone who is running for borough president.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: And that's three blocks north of the World Trade Center. So I saw it all. All came down. I was in the middle of it.
I ran for four days, took my kids. My husband was in all the bizarre places, Las Vegas at the time.
I tried to retrieve all three of my kids, which was very hard.
I got two of them.
One had to stay in Brooklyn for four days.
But I came back to the city after four days.
I ran and someone took us in, right?
Because I had this feeling that if I didn't come back and help with this mess, who would?
So I came back. We put together a meeting in the Canal street playground at the time to see who was there, what people needed. We had the elected officials there.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: I started asking you this, how was this? Right. Like within a week of 9 11. Like how did this five days later? Five days later, yeah.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: People couldn't get into their apartments. Their pets were missing. There didn't. No one knew if their houses, apartments were still intact.
The air was terrible.
Nobody knew what to do.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: And there was no direction from the city.
So we had to take, take it upon ourselves. So we put together a daily meeting with all the elected officials.
Rudy Giuliani had his OEM team at Pier 94.
We got one chance a day to put all our questions in there.
Okay, fast forward.
Things are not going well.
Rudy Giuliani cares about the victims and victims families. You couldn't care less about the people who were stuck with no electric, no water, no phones. You couldn't care about the older people, couldn't get their medicine.
He couldn't care about anybody. So we broke up. We knocked on doors, we tried to help people, we brought them water. They needed medicine. You couldn't. There were no deliveries downtown. Everything was shut below Houston Street. So you can get any food or water, you couldn't get anything. Someone couldn't get their medicine.
So it was a very bad time because there was nobody working for us. So we had to take it into our own hands, basically. And that's what we did. I put together all these scientists because I thought this air is bad.
You couldn't breathe it, it stunk.
Got my council member at the time these scientists gathered at my house at midnight, this is two weeks later.
And the council member used her credentials to get into the red zone. Got them all into the red zone. We had identified three apartments by the World Trade Center. One in Bathory Park City, one fidi, and one right north in Tribeca. And we got them into the apartments, they took the samples and as you suspect.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: So the interesting part here was that when we had asked Rudy Giuliani for help, he said, well, we'll let you test, but the results have to come to us, not you. And we said, no.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Right, Good for you.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: New Jersey Department of Health sent us a truck because new. One of the scientists, scientists came from the Midwest, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, very educated environmental scientists, as it turned out. You could imagine what was in the air was PCBs, was all sorts of bad stuff.
And that forced. The issue with the city is how do we clean our apartments. People were living in there with dust up to their knees and no one, have never. No one helped. No one, no one helped. So it was just a bad time. We put together this meeting downtown and where Cipriani used to Be a Hotel.
Over 2,500 people jammed in.
I had all the agencies, federal, state and city there. People wanted to know what to do and it was just a very bleak time.
So anyway, I got appointed by Governor Pataky to be one of the founding members of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation which I was happy about that I could actually put, be useful with money and influence where that money went to rebuild Lower Manhattan. I was the chair of the off site committee.
I was on the, the redevelopment of the World Trade center site. On the committee that picked the architect and the plan.
I was on the cultural committee.
So I had. And I chaired the transportation committee. So I, I was in it.
I was in it.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Do you, you know, this is, you know, I always ask people this. I know it's probably a question for you that, I mean you were obviously right there when it happened.
Can you tell us your experience of when it, you know, when 911 happened? What, where were you specifically? Were you at home? Were you. Did you saw everything right there? Correct?
[00:25:13] Speaker B: I was in front of 234.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: If it's okay to talk about. For you, yes. And if not, I understand.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Still very raw. I can only imagine people who come from war zones, how it must be for them because this for me is still very raw.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Whatever you're comfortable.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: No, I was standing in front of PS234 after dropping my 8 year old off and I hear this enormous noise. I look up, I see this enormous plane and then all around I hear gears go like pulling back up gears. And then the plane which is no more than 200ft over my head starts to go up and then right into one World Trade Center. And it felt like being in a Die Hard movie.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Just good.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: But it was. Is this real? Is this not real? Am I in a movie?
It was like that. First you had to get your bearings and everybody said, oh, that was a small plane. That was a mistake.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember. You know, until we all were told.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: That was no small plane.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: You knew it was a huge, it was huge.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: But it was shocking. So shocking. We all just stood there.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Did it, did it, did it process, you know, did you process that it was deliberate or just what you just couldn't even.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: I felt it was deliberate. People will say, we're saying, oh no, what happened to that small plant?
But then the next plane.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: And then, and that was actually a bigger explosion.
First was more of an implosion and the second was much more of an explosion. And then people just started to run and all havoc Broke loose and we went into school to get the kids into the basement because we didn't know what was going on.
And then after an hour or so, when the building started to come down, we got the kids out the building and just ran north.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Oh my gosh.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: And that's basically what happened.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Terrible. And you know, we're in September now, just a week and a half away or whatever from the anniversary.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: And do you go to the 911 memorial?
[00:27:34] Speaker B: I did for the first 10 years.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: And then I said, this is enough. And now it's really should be the families, this is really their time.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Understood. Thanks for sharing that with us. That was, you know, I know that's emotional. And so Madeline, after that, that time of, you know, rebuilding after 911 in Lower Manhattan, where did life take you after that?
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Well, after people were telling me that I should run for borough president, that I had made a name.
But I was approached by the Tribeca Film Festival and that blended some of my interest in. In politics and civics with my interest in film.
So I became the president of the Tribeca Film Festival Film Institute.
I was to create a bigger not for profit platform for the institute, make it more of a year round programming. So I worked to do that. I was there for only two and a half years and then I got a.
But it was fun. I mean, I have a lot of great stories, but that's, you know, that's another time. But.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Well, we'll do another program.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: I did a great program in Marrakesh with the King of Morocco.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Fascinating.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: The students at Hunter Film School and I brought them together for two weeks for a course with Marty Scorsese.
So it went, you know, it was.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: What's it like? What's like to work with him?
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Very nice man. A little nervous, but very nice man. Yes.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Oh, very cool.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: He's very enjoyable. Good sense of humor.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Oh, nice to hear.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: And a real New Yorker.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Super New Yorker. Little Italy. Grew up in Little Italy.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know that.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Okay, so then try the Tribeca Film Festival.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: And then I got a call from someone in the Bloomberg administration and said, we have this new job at the Economic Development Corporation. It's executive vice president. We want you to spearhead all our large scale rezonings.
And that was like, wow.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: That sounds like a huge job.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And it was nothing I had ever done. But the person who hired me, Bob Lieber, watched me during my time at lmdc. He.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: And what is lmdc?
[00:30:10] Speaker B: The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. He watched Me with large groups of people get things done. So he called me and he said, I want you to come over here. It wasn't the job interview. It was just like, this is the job.
Thinking about, I'd like you to have it. So that was a total shock to me. A great shock. It was. And that really.
Because after 9 11, I realized I wanted to do some public good.
I just came away with, okay, I've done television enough, but this is more important.
So one of the great things at that job was I had all five boroughs. I had the planning department at the development department.
I had maritime, all the waterways.
I created the ferry program.
I, I did the, all the, the large scale rezoning and put the amusement park back in Coney Island.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: You know, I did the rezoning, the first rezoning for Willetts Point. That was painful. I did Hunters Point south with all that parkland there.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: It's so beautiful.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: The Bronx Greenway, the Staten island home port.
I did the ferry program, which we were told would never happen at the NYC ferry. Ferry. The NYC ferry.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: One of my favorite things to do.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: My last day at EDC was launching the East River Ferry program.
So I got to be in the middle of the.
A lot of it in all five boroughs. And it was really fascinating.
And when I got tired of. Oh, and then I took on.
I took on Seward park, which had been in a race dispute for 40 years.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Can you explain what that is? Because I'm not.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Seward park, which now is Essex Crossing, is that big development at the head of, of Williamsburg Bridge. Oh, I got you empty parking lots. For over 40 years, it was the.
An urban renewal plant. And all the people were, it was torn down. They were told to leave properties.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: That's on the Manhattan. Manhattan side.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: It's on the south side mostly, but of Manhattan.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Right. It's beautiful. I was just there.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So. But it always turned into a war of the, of the Latin community with the Jewish community because they both lived there.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: And there just was no peace around this piece of property.
But we managed to.
Working with the community board and really taking it slow, we managed to do a massive rezoning of that area.
And now you see, it's incredible. It's all built up.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: It's amazing.
I mean, you have just every facet of New York City. You have beautified or improved in some way, shape or form. I think that's incredible.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I did the east river waterfront. The first, you know, the park area There.
Yes. And then I had been on the board from 1998 to 2007, 2005 of the Hudson River Park Trust.
And then I got a call asking me if I'd come back as president, that the park was only half built, it had no money.
They had to figure it out.
And it was a big challenge.
So I decided to go, go back, go back to the park that I had always loved.
550 acres, huge.
Somehow I figured out not only how to take it out of the red, but to triple its income by building new restaurants, by building new concessions, by really trying to balance commercial with park. Because we were self. Nobody knew that we were self sustaining. We had no money for maintenance.
We weren't getting any money from the city or state, even though it was a state city park. But because it was not a park within the city or state system, we had to manage to get all the revenue and pay for everything. And there was no money to maintain.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Unlike Central park, which is like donations and everything.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Correct, Donations. Plus they do get money from the city, right? As well.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: But you did not.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: We did not get any money from the city except to build it.
But at that point we were.
We had no money left, period.
So I spent the next 10 years figuring out how to get hundreds of millions of dollars.
I got Barry Diller into this deal to build what is now Little Island. 260 million, what Time magazine called one of the 100 wonders of the world.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: I got Google into Pier 57 and RXLR to develop that.
It was. I did Pier 26, did the design for Gansevo Peninsula, where we put a Beach, Pier 97, Chelsea Waterside Park. So I think in the 10 years I was there, we built about a billion dollars worth of amazing.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: And everything you've mentioned, I've watched built here in New York City. And it's incredible.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: So really what I.
And then I left there in 2001 Covid and I thought I'd retire, right? And then after a year of retiring, I realized that I was not ready to retire.
I wasn't at all ready to retire.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: And you had more visions for the city.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: So then I had. I opened up my own business called Public Realm Strategies. I decided that what I really liked doing was building.
I like coming up with an idea, getting it built.
And then I got a call about fifth Avenue, right?
And a couple of people called me and said, listen, there's this idea to take Fifth Avenue and to.
To bring it into the 21st century, because economically it's having A harder time. Now. It was the number one street in the world for so long, number one revenue maker in the city, and something has to be done. And I thought, oh, well, that's interesting. A lot of people came to me with projects, I said not so interesting.
But this one hit me because I thought, who would not want to keep New York great? New York should be for everyone, but you also have to have.
You have to keep on to your history and also keep your great streets great.
And what was sad about Fifth Avenue is it's way overcrowded.
[00:38:13] Speaker A: True.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: So I find what's interesting in 1907, in celebration of the cars that were being made at the time, the street that had just been finished, Fifth Avenue in Midtown, went all the way through Harlem, but was just completed there.
They decided, the Fifth Avenue association, the city decided to, to make it into the, this, that the, the United States first driveway. By making the sidewalks narrower.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: And making the roadbed wider by two lanes. So they actually made the sidewalks narrow.
Thus, hundred and almost 20 years later, that project was finished, by the way, in 1915.
Now we have too many cars, too many buses. And what's happened since 2015 is as it got more crowded and then the city started to put more buses down Fifth Avenue. And then in 2017, they made it into two bus lanes and the avenue saw a 3% decrease in sales.
Why? Not because people don't need buses. But we had so many buses at that point that people did not want to cross the streets.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Between the cars and the buses, people felt unsafe. So when we surveyed people, they don't cross east to west, they don't like to cross north to south. And people said they were spending less and less time there.
And that's a problem.
You know, it's a problem. In 2019, Fifth Avenue accounted for 5% of jobs and 5% of income to New York City.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: So let's say you don't believe that you should spend any money on Fifth Avenue. You don't believe money should go elsewhere. As you go the poorer neighborhoods, you need that revenue from Fifth Avenue so you can build in lower income neighborhoods. People have got to understand there's a balance here.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Right?
[00:40:38] Speaker B: So for some of us who do believe Fifth Avenue should get a second chance because it does still account for 4% of revenue and 4% of jobs. And a lot of those jobs are blue collar jobs. Those are jobs in the service area that are the highest paying service jobs in the city.
Why? Because it's in a more expensive area.
So you get paid more, you get more tips. It's higher income for people who live in the Bronx, who live in Queens, who live in Brooklyn and Staten Island.
They get higher paying jobs. They don't necessarily have to go to college for these jobs.
And so you can make a good living on Fifth Avenue without having an mba, you know, so there are people in the offices, but it's a huge job for the service industry, for hotels and retail.
So if you want to keep that income and you want to keep New York a great city, you should not give up your number one most important street in the world. You can have it all.
You can have Fifth Avenue and then you can have the money you need to build up other communities that also need it. So this is not about, you know, you hear.
What I hear in the last, particularly 10ish years is that we should not pay attention to one part of the city because this part of the city has never been, never had attention. And the truth is we need to pay attention to all of it because New York has to be a great city for everyone.
And that means it not only has to serve people who are less fortunate, but you have to keep it a great city because we need the tourists, right? We need all the income that comes into New York because we are the biggest city, the most expensive city and have the highest budget.
And if you want to run this city, you need that money.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: So it's fascinating.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: We need people. People have a lot of small mindedness about all this.
So people say, oh, we need a bike lane, we need more buses. We have more buses on Fifth Avenue than any other street in the town. They put. Now we have 250 Deadhead Express buses going down 5th and 1300 or more express buses since 2017, 10% full.
And then when you hear that DOT and the MTA want to put a third bus lane in because traffic is too slow.
What I say is get rid of the buses that should not be empty on Fifth Avenue before you think about putting more buses. Keep all the local buses, people use them.
But the politics of putting, oh, we'll put more buses here from the Bronx and Staten island because they're the loudest communities.
We don't need those buses, but we're going to put them there anyway because those communities say they need them and we just don't want to have a fight with them.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Right?
[00:44:16] Speaker B: But that's not a good enough reason to make our streets overcrowded, over congested.
You need to, right size the buses and then you need to put Them in Queens, in Brooklyn, where you need more buses. Spend that money, put that money where it's needed.
Don't put it down here, because politically it's a safer issue.
So we don't need more buses down fifth Avenue and we don't need a third bus lane down fifth Avenue. We need less buses and more efficient buses, express buses down fifth Avenue, and then also put them down some other avenues. Why did they all have to be down fifth Avenue?
[00:44:59] Speaker A: I walk Fifth Avenue often.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: When you have the most expensive real estate and you need the stores generate the most revenue of any store around and it has the highest rent in the world and it pays the highest taxes in the world, it all works that way.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Well, people need to understand the entire city is interconnected.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: So that.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Exactly. So what's so interesting is that on a Thursday afternoon at 4:00 clock on one street on Fifth Avenue, on one block, we have approximately 5,600 people.
On a Saturday or during the holiday, in one hour on one block, you can have 23,000 people, which is more than you can stuff in Madison Square Garden.
We will have that on one block in one hour.
Those sidewalks have the capacity for about 4,000 people.
And through the years there has been continued obstructions. Bus shelter signage.
You have vendors, you have to walk around. You have to negotiate how to get from point A to point B. No wonder people don't want to spend more time on the streets.
It's so hard to get around. Our city has made it to so difficult for people to get around. And pedestrians is the number one transportation mode in Manhattan. It's not buses, it's not bikes.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: That's how I get around.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: Please put a bike lane.
You have 148 bikes and you have 5,700 people.
You need to take care of the people walking.
I and I appreciate if there were room, if we had more than 100ft, sure, put a bike lane, but we don't have it. So a bike lane just needs to go on to another avenue. And not because we don't want it. People go, you don't want it. You're an elitist. No, I want people to walk.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: The least elitist type of transportation there is your feet taking you from point A to point B. We need to make more room for pedestrians in our city.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: I completely agree.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: So the city wanted us to look at renovating from 40th street to 60th street, which is called sort of, it's called upper fifth, even though it's not the residential portion. Of fifth. But that's really where the stores are. And that's where St. Patrick's the Library, Central Park, Grand Army Plaza. You have all these wonderful 19 landmarks just in that little area there. Maybe more than 19.
And the idea is to narrow the road bed to three lanes, have one car lane, one and a half bus lanes. The way it really is now it's two bus lanes. But you also right now get to make a right hand turn in a car. We're not changing that. You still have your two bus lanes operating in the same manner, but we're reducing it from three car lanes to only one. So it's not like the car people are taking over. No, it's just enough to get some traffic there for people who actually need to go to Fifth Avenue. Right now we have a lot of people using the avenue just to get north to south.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: We just want people who want to come to Fifth Avenue, but there's no room for a bike lane. That means. And what we're doing though is increasing the sidewalks from 23ft each to 33 and a half feet each. That was the most. We could have gone to 40 if for the amount of people that we have. But we don't have the room to go to 40. So we're going to 33 and a half. We're going to green it with trees. There are barely any trees. We're going to put seating plants.
We're going to make places for place making.
There'll be a plate, enough room for an outdoor cafe to really elongate the day. Right now on 5th Avenue closes at 6pm this will allow people to stay on the avenue longer, enjoy it longer. The idea is to not only bring people to Fifth Avenue, but to keep them there, keep them shopping, keep them going to all the cultural institutions.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: Did I also read that they're spending money? Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes. So no, I did also read that they're going to continue like the Art deco style of architecture throughout the Fifth Avenue. Whatever. However they redo it, it could be wrong. I don't know. Something like that.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: For the buildings, you mean, or just.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: In general, Just the feel of Fifth Avenue, you know?
[00:50:27] Speaker B: Yes.
So a lot of the details that we're using are in fact details from all the historic landmarks.
The tree pits will be covered with brass.
Brass will be in the seating with an Art deco design. Everything has an Art deco design in these details. But then you'll have the planter and the planter walls. That will be fairly simple, beautiful plants that will bloom 12 months a year.
And this is something that when you beautify a street, a park, a street, the High line, Brooklyn Bridge park, whatever it is, people come. If you build it, people come true. Field of dreams.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: Field of green.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: It's from Bryant park at 42nd Street. Correct.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: 40Th street, all the way up to.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: 60Th street, up to Central Park. Right there, 60th Street.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: So the design itself is 350 million.
There's another 52 right now for new water mains. There'll be a lot more money. The street infrastructure is super old.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: And because it had. No one's touched it in 150 years. Yeah.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: From 1958.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: So we have. And. And even beyond. I mean, the earlier parts started in the 19th century.
[00:51:55] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:51:56] Speaker B: And then went through probably another 20 years to get to Harlem. But the infrastructure is amongst the oldest in the city. So we're looking now to see the money for this project. A lot of is going to go towards the infrastructure.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: So. And the infrastructure has to be done no matter what.
So.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: So it's a really tear the street up.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: You're going to tear it and make it beautiful, not tear it and make it look the same way.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Exactly. They're going to tear it up, make it beautiful above ground, but also update what's below ground.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: That's amazing. And so this starts when we believe that will be.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: The design will be ready in 2028. Because right now, it's all about underground.
[00:52:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: We have a design for above ground, but below ground is really where we have to spend a lot of time and energy with Con Ed, with Dep and Verizon. And it's a mishmash they call it. We always used to call it in building.
It's the spaghetti below.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: I'm gonna say that now. I love that.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: Spaghetti is old.
[00:53:08] Speaker A: It's the perfect phrase.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: Old, stale spaghetti.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna put that in my back pocket now and use that. I love it. I love it. Well, this has been fascinating. We could talk for hours, but we have to go. Is there anything else you want to add quickly that you think. I know you have. You have such an interesting life and so many things to talk about.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: But I just love this city.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: And I have been really fortunate in being able to. Being able to touch a lot of it and see what this transformation has meant for people.
When I go to Hudson river park or East River Waterfront or any of the parks I had any hand in Coney island.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: To see people smile and to watch them enjoy themselves.
For me, that's. That's what I get out of all this.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: I love that. And also now, when I am all over the city every day, I'll be thinking of you in every place I go to, so you'll be with me.
So, one last project you want to talk about, Madeline. What is that?
[00:54:20] Speaker B: I'm working pro bono on a project to build the largest subsidized dance rehearsal studios in New York City.
That will be in the Old Boys club on East 10th street for the Joyce Theater.
So we're.
We're going to be starting construction in 2026. This is largely funded by the city of New York and with lots of funding also from the state and private fundraising, we're going to really do this because in order for New York to stay the dance capital, it cannot just be a few of the big companies that have places to rehearse and create their work. We need to find more places that are affordable. And so the Joyce Theater is going to subsidize these Studios. They'll be 10 to 25 dollars an hour, and people will be able to create work and make a name for themselves and do work not just in New York City, but then take it all over the world.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: It's amazing what you're doing for all of us New Yorkers. I'm very grateful and thankful for you.
You've made this city so beautiful, and I love that you. You know, everywhere we go now, we'll be thinking of Madeline.
Thank you for being on the show. Truly amazing.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: Thank you, Kelly.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: Thank you. You're amazing. Awesome. So, Madeline, before we let you go, we here at the New Yorkers Podcast want to know what it means to you, Madeline Wills, to be a New Yorker.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: I have always felt that New York was the greatest city in the world. And I love the arts and I love culture, and I love parks, and I think New York has the best as well as the worst.
And the worst makes you want it to be the best, and the best just wants you to keep it the best. It's a challenging time in our city, in our state, in our country, in the world, and I think we all need to be hyper focused on what is meaningful to us and what is useful to us.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: Beautiful. Well said, Madeline. Thank you for joining us today for this week's episode of the New Yorkers Podcast. It was really fascinating. Once again, I'm your host, everyone. Kelly Kopp, also known as New York City Cop, across all my social Media.
Please like and subscribe to the New Yorkers Podcast and you can follow the New Yorkers on social media. At the New Yorkers Podcast you can leave a rating or a comment to let us know how you are enjoying the show. We read through all your comments and DMs so please, please we would love to hear from you. Thank you Yang, Sandra and Italian lion for your kind words on the last episode. If you want to be featured at the end of an episode, leave a rating on Apple Podcast or comment on Spotify.
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Have a lovely day and we will see you next time. Bye.
Thank you New York 100 for sponsoring this episode.
To learn more about them visit ny100.org.
[00:57:53] Speaker B: This is the last stop on this train. Everyone please leave the train.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: Thank you for riding with MTA New York City Transit.
