Transcript: Mayor De Blasio Announces Lower East Site Late-Night Quality of Live Improvement Plan

October 22, 2019

Mayor Bill de Blasio: You have a flair for the dramatic, Alyson.

[Laughter]

Alyson, thank you so much. If you haven't seen BETTY perform – I'm going to do a little plug here – if you haven't seen BETTY perform, you haven't lived, because this is a great band, it's been around for a long time. You have the punk spirit alive and well, in true Lower East Side spirit. And I love what you said about this community and I really thank you for both celebrating the community and also remembering we all have to live together, which is another thing we do in New York City pretty damn well in the final analysis, but it's something we all have to work on.

Unknown: It's true –

Mayor: So, everyone, let's just thank Alyson for all she does.

[Applause]

And I feel like my life is taking me in the right direction if I'm now behind the bar at Max Fish. This is career advancement, definitely.

[Laughter]

And what a classic and legendary place. And we're here because we are celebrating everything great about the Lower East Side. It is both the epitome of cool and one of the neighborhoods that really pulls together everything we love about New York City. And when people all over the world think of New York City, this is one of the places they think about. And we are blessed to have this thriving, energetic neighborhood. And yeah, the nightlife is one of the amazing things about it. But Alyson is right – she loves the nightlife, she loves her neighborhood, and she also knows, like we all do, that there's some things we have to deal with, and that was a lot of why we created a nightlife office to begin with, because it should not be a choice between a vibrant, exciting nightlife industry or livable neighborhoods – that's not the choice we should have to make, that's a false choice. It should be possible to have both in this great city and that's exactly what this office is all about.

And today, we heard the concerns of residents being acted on. We've seen with our own eyes outside the actions being taken to address real concerns that residents have, just like Alyson was talking about. You wake up in the morning to a whole lot of trash – that's not a way people want to live. If you wake up in the morning and you see people hanging around from the night before on the street, that's not the way we want to live. We don't want noise in the middle of the night, that's not fair to the community. We want to make sure traffic is managed. It can be done, but it takes not only a village, it takes a whole lot of different parts of the City working together to get this done. And that means agencies ranging from Department of Transportation, to TLC, to Sanitation, to NYPD, to the Office of Media and Entertainment – all of them got together to put together this plan and to make sure it's going to work for the community, working very closely with local elected officials, with Community Board 3, with the local business improvement district, and with concerned residents to figure out what would work – to really hear people's concerns and figure out what would work in action. So, this has been a team effort to make the Lower East Side better, and I want you to look around at everyone who has been a part of this, and please give each other a round of applause.

[Applause]

Now, I want to thank some of the leaders of this effort for all they have done. I'm glad we're identifying her leadership role in the Office of Nightlife rather than calling her "night mayor," which they used to because that sounded like after 8 o'clock I went off-duty or something – that's just not right.

[Laughter]

I want to thank Ariel Palitz for her extraordinary leadership of our Office of Nightlife; our Sanitation Commissioner, Kathryn Garcia; our Commissioner for Media and Entertainment, Anne del Castillo; Commissioner for the TLC, Bill Heinzen; and special credit here to the executive officer of – and for everyone at the 7th Precinct of NYPD, because they worked with MOME and really worked on a smart awareness campaign to make this community safer and quieter – so, thank you to Captain Aaron Edwards, and everyone at the 7th Precinct.

[Applause]

I have lots of cards – I want to thank from the community, from Community Board 3, the Chair, Alysha Lewis-Coleman, thank you.

[Applause]

And, of course, our host at this extraordinary and famed establishment, I want to thank Ulli Rimkus, of Max Fish.

[Applause]

And I want to give – you're going to hear in a moment from the Borough President, but I want to also give credit where credit is due. Our Council Member Margaret Chin couldn't be here, but she did – and this is very, very important in life – she allocated funds to the BID to help keep the streets cleaner, and that includes capital money, which is very, very important to all this. So, let's thank Council Member Chin for all she did.

[Applause]

A couple of other things I want to say – you know, we're here for a very tangible reason. This is not any accident that this is a place where this very intensive effort was put together. Because right here in this ZIP code – 10002 – this is of all the zip codes in New York City, this was the second-highest in terms of 3-1-1 noise complaints. That was true last year and this. So, we're a city that's still too loud and we've got a lot we have to do about that, going forward, but of all the places in the City, this is literally according to those 3-1-1 complaints, this is one of the loudest. And this is why it's so important to start here and address these concerns in a very real way.

We need to understand for everyone who comes here – and again, I want to always say how much we love and respect our nightlife industry and we love that people from all over the country, all over the world come and enjoy this, and we want people to come to the Lower East Side and enjoy it. But remember, for everyone who comes here to visit and it's a night out, remember the people for whom it is a night in – the people that actually live here and who we have to respect because it's their community. That kind of respect, that kind of balance that Alyson talked about is so important to achieve. And for everyone who comes here to enjoy it, here's a simple message – just because you had a great party, doesn't mean the Lower East Side should be left with a hangover.

[Laughter]

Okay? So, respect your neighbors and respect what they need too.

[Applause]

So, what will this mean? All these agencies, working together with the community – it's going to mean quieter streets, less honking, fewer people who are partying on the street as opposed to inside, it's going to mean trash being picked up more frequently, and, a really exciting part of this equation, because the streets can be really dirty, as we heard, on Saturday morning, Sunday morning – so, overnight, there will be power washing so the streets will be clean in the morning when you walk out. Power washing – doesn't that sound exciting Kathryn? Power – it's not just washing, it's power washing.

So, everyone, the whole idea – it always comes back in everything we do to fairness. We said our goal is to be the fairest big city in America. That means, respecting community members, making sure their lives are good, their concerns are heard, people know that if they've got a problem, someone's actually listening and doing something about it. And I want to thank everyone who's been a part of that, because that's what people are going to feel in these coming weeks, and it's going to make such a difference.

Let me just say a couple of few quick words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

So, we listen to people and work to solve their problems.

And now, I get to introduce someone who for her whole public career has done a lot of listening to people – this is one of her great strengths. She goes out into the community and listens to the concerns and believes that something can actually be done about it by government – still a believer that government can actually get something done – Borough President of Manhattan, Gale Brewer.

[Applause]