Those looking to find fault with the DOT's pedestrian plazas in Times Square have another reason to be angry. The city has decided that this year the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is going to skip Times Square entirely because of "construction in Times Square,” according to the the Mayor's spokesman Jason Post (for the last two years it has skimmed the Square going from Seventh to Sixth Avenues at 42nd Street). What construction? Those pesky pedestrian plazas are to be reconstructed to “improve the curb lines and other features of the plazas.”
In the new route, the parade will march down Sixth Avenue from Central Park South to 34th Street. Another argument for the move is that Sixth Avenue is wider than Broadway, where the parade used to go down.
The decision was made despite the pleas of Times Square businesses to bring it back to the center of the universe. “This is a huge issue for businesses in Times Square that cuts across every category—hotels, sign companies, theater folks, restaurants and shops,” Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, told Crain's.
Interestingly, one of the major concerns comes from the Times Square Advertising Coalition which thinks of the parade as "an important factor" in what advertisers will pay for a spot (the parade brings a lot of media exposure). At least they still have New Year's Eve.
"We are baffled," Tompkins, told DNAinfo, which broke the news. "After two successful years on Seventh Avenue, we have yet to hear a sound reason from Macy’s on why a world famous parade should go through a corridor of empty office buildings on Sixth Avenue rather than Times Square, a globally recognized symbol of New York’s dynamism and energy, where thousands more people can enjoy it both on the ground and from their hotel rooms."
In our mind, the Thanksgiving Day Parade is all about Central Park West, though. And anyway, we wouldn't want another M&M incident.
