Watch out for Cookie Monster... (Getty Images)

When meeting the costumed characters at Disney World, tourists often get hugged. When meeting the costumed characters in Times Square, tourists often get harassed.

If you’ve traipsed the flashy, crowded sidewalks of Times Square in the past year, you’ve seen them: Cookie Monsters; Elmos; SpongeBobs; Dora the Explorers—(kind of creepy looking) costumed characters who pose for photos with tourists in exchange for tips.

But lately, these characters have been anything but cuddly. Take last Sunday, for example, when Osvaldo Quiroz-Lopez—dressed up as Cookie Monster—reportedly shoved a two-year-old boy and shouted at his mother when the latter didn’t tip fast enough. Other reports from the past year tell stories of characters punching, cursing, and inappropriately groping customers.

NYPD Sgt. Ed Mullins, President of the Sergeant Benevolent Association (S.B.A.), wants to do something about it. His solution? Requiring the costumed characters to get licensed. “Let them get licenses and let the city council pass a law that allows us to enforce the law and summons people," Mr. Mullins told Gothamist. "Let them submit their fingerprints. They're dealing with kids, they're taking pictures with tourists. It's a reflection on New York."

Under Mr. Mullins’s vision, the characters would be treated like food vendors, and would be taxed on their profits. “If you license them, we have accountability for their tax revenue,” he said to Gothamist. “You know, let them pay with their tax stamp.”

But despite Mr. Mullins’s ideas, controlling these Cookie Monsters won’t be as easy as ABC. Members of city government have stressed the difficulty of classifying the costumed creatures—Are they street performers? Are they vendors, of a sort?—and henceforth, the difficulty of finding a law to regulate their behavior.

"There are anti-mask laws, but you need at least two people working together,” City Councilmember Peter Vallone told Gothamist. “There are 'blocking the sidewalk' laws but they're difficult to enforce in this situation. They claim they're street performers and don't need licensing."

The complicated issue reached the ears of Mayor Bloomberg, who seems to see no clear solution.

“We have tried at various times to regulate people who dress up and then get you to take a picture with your kid and then demand money or harass you in other ways,” said Mayor Bloomberg, according to The New York Post. In regards to the characters earning money, the mayor said, “It’s not against the law. So I’m sorry. Maybe it should be.”

Until regulations are passed, we suggest you steer clear of the Times Square characters. Trust us—you don’t want to be around when SpongeBob drops his squarepants.

Fieri.

In January of 1968, the beginning of a year when the world caught on fire, Guy Ferry was born in a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. And in that moment, though America would not realize it for years to come, she had welcomed into her heartland perhaps her greatest homegrown besmircher, the seed of her undoing. A baby then, now a middle-aged man, Ferry would go on to gain weight, change his name to the more ethnic-sounding Fieri, frost the tips of his hair blond, wear his sunglasses on the back of his head, become a Food Network star and open, at the beginning of September, Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar in Times Square, a restaurant that would be indicted for crimes against humanity, if only that crime fell within the Department of Health’s purview.

It would be disingenuous to claim that Times Square represents anything but a regurgitation of the American dream, monetized, metastasized, made blindingly bright by light-emitting diodes and shoved back down the gullets of those souls unlucky enough to have mistakenly stumbled into the red zone, or worse, like moths to the incinerating flame, have actively sought it out. To deride Mr. Fieri for opening his restaurant there as if he’d taken a dump in the Louvre is silly. He pooped on a pile of bright shiny poop, Jeff Koonsian poop, Guy Debordian poop. But public defecation is still a crime in New York City (Health Code Section 153.09), and his offenses rest not in their location but in their very nature.

Mr. Fieri not only serves truly horrible-tasting food, an awkward origami of clashing aleatory flavors, but he serves this punishing food emulsified with a bombastic recasting of deep-fried American myth. Mr. Fieri’s most egregious transgression isn’t what he puts into his fellow citizens’ stomachs, it’s how the cynical slop interfaces with what he puts into their minds.

The conflation of Guy Fieri with America itself begins as soon as one can discern his storefront signage, just west of the dying Daffy’s sign and just east of the benign Bowlmor Lanes guy. Above the threshold of the 500-seat restaurant sits a massive eagle crest, clearly an allusion to the Great Seal of the United States. The breast feathers of this eagle, whose head is covered in metal stars and stripes, are made of vintage license plates; its tail feathers are tiles of flattened beer cans. In place of the escutcheon, traditionally a blue chief with vertical red and white stripes, are a series of stacked car grilles. And across its chest, written in red neon, is the expletive “Guy!”

The space, which used to be a Heartland Brewery—Jonathan Bloostein, the owner of Heartland, is a partner in the new restaurant—is a massive and multilevel exercise in megalomania. Mr. Fieri’s taglines are scrawled on the wall. “Welcome 2 Flavortown” is written in large type above the hostess stand. A mammoth reproduction of one of Mr. Fieri’s tattoos, featuring Botticelli’s Venus with “Namaste” written above it and “Morgan,” the name of Mr. Fieri’s deceased sister, below, hangs next to the bar. There’s a chandelier made of his old pots and pans. Pictures of the chef’s favorite cars, old guitars, and stars and stripes hang on faux clapboard walls. Embedded in the bar are vials of Mr. Fieri’s semen. [Note: Only one of those things isn’t true.]

You are led by a cheery hostess—everyone who works at Guy’s American is very nice—past giant television screens showing an endless loop of Mr. Fieri opening his goatee-framed sphincter-mouth to welcome a panoply of fried matter, to a table or a booth built of such proportions that your feet dangle and you are infantilized by the scale. Immediately you will meet a tall dark stranger, and he will say to you, “Hey guys!”—a brilliant piece of linguistic co-branding. He will smile and you will order a drink that costs $15. This drink may be a Manhattan, which is surprisingly okay, or a spicy margarita, which is goonishly spicy and not okay at all.

To begin your meal, you’ll be directed to some of Mr. Fieri’s signature items, such as Vegas Fries, which according to the very large menus, are “extra crispy, natural cut fries tossed in house made Buffalo sauce, served with bleu-sabi dipping sauce,” though you’ll wonder what natural cut means, if anything at all. When they come, the fries are a sticky supernatural orange simulacrum of a former potato, fried to paralysis. “We had to figure out a way to maintain the crispness with the sheer amount of buffalo sauce we put on them,” explained a manager. You may be urged toward the Malibu Oysters, which shouldn’t exist but do, or to the Sashimi Tacos ($14.50), which, your server will say, are “out of this world.” When they arrive, they will seem out of this world, but from a weird, not-very-good-Ray Bradbury place where wasabi and sweet soy sauce looks like mayonnaise, goes with tuna and tastes delicious.

But if you are like the majority of the patrons, you’ll start with something like the Pepperoni Mozzarella Stix with Marinara ($11.95) or, from the Ain’t No Thing Butta Chicken Wing section, “sweet and sticky firecracker” wings ($13.50), which constitute a fate not even the most embittered wolf could ever wish upon a hen. You’ll quickly move on to the heartier fare, perhaps the Sangria Glazed Shrimp ($24.95), which is inedible, or Guy’s Big Bite Burger and Rojo Ring, made with Pat LaFrieda beef, once a shibboleth for good food and now just another four syllables of nonsense. In all fairness, this burger, which is ingeniously pressed so hard upon the griddle it becomes more of a beef pancake that hangs over the bun like a meat skirt, is genuinely tasty. You may even order the Cajun Chicken Alfredo ($22.95) which, per the server, has about 10,000 calories. Calories are not listed on the menu, by the way, since New York City law requires only chain restaurants to do so. “Thank God,” your server will say, grinning like Mephistopheles and refilling your water.

Mr. Fieri has built his career valorizing deeply unhealthy eating habits, rhapsodizing about all that is fried, caloric and meaty in his cookbooks and on his Food Network shows, which now include not only Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, but Guy’s Big Bite and Guy Off the Hook. And though, statistically, many more people will be exposed to his television shows than his restaurant, there seems to be a fundamental moral difference between advocating for an unhealthy lifestyle and actually providing it. This, of course, is the point at which freedom of expression turns into a sin of commission.

There’s no question that obesity is not super kewl for the future of America. According to a recent study, F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future, by 2030, “obesity rates for adults could reach or exceed 44 percent in every state and exceed 60 percent in 13 states.” Those 13 states, by the way, are all either in the Midwest or the South, areas from which most of New York City’s domestic tourists come. This will translate into a tenfold increase in cases of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease and arthritis by 2020, and that will double again by 2030. Total cost? According to a 2012 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, “The projected increase in obesity is estimated to cost the United States $500 billion in health spending between now and 2030.”

It’s also not as if Mr. Fieri is completely oblivious to the dangers of obesity. Among his charitable endeavours, touted on the Food Network website, is a foundation to combat childhood obesity. But far from absolving or even ameliorating his general crumminess, this personal commitment makes it worse. For if he were truly ignorant of the effects of his actions, Mr. Fieri would simply be a fool. Instead, he’s a villain.

But what makes Mr. Fieri truly reprehensible is that he’s exploited a mythology that appeals to the downtrodden to deliver unto them cholesterol and all its long-tail misery. By advocating an America in which the symbols of our salvation—manufacturing (embodied in those classic cars), rock ’n’ roll (the old guitars), and a return to the rough-hewn America of yore (the vintage flags, the faux taxidermy mounts)—becomes linked inseparably with a place in which pepperoni and mozzarella deserve to be rolled in panko breadcrumbs and deep-fried, where the quantity of sauce on a fry demands even more frying, where chicken alfredo has many thousands of calories, Guy Fieri is using patriotism as a Trojan Horse for his infectious and insidious garbage.

Mr. Fieri, though, was not there to witness this crime. When I visited, the chef, whose net worth is valued at $8.5 million (though it may be much more), was on a family vacation in Italy, a country where they don’t have Vegas fries and where pastas are fresh and served with olive oil. In this disconnect, Mr. Fieri is the culinary equivalent of the gun lobby, which cloaks its self-serving interests in the garments of freedom and peddles them to an older rural white population (while it is young urban black men who suffer disproportionately from gun violence).

Closer to home, Mr. Fieri finds kinship with the New Yorkers for Beverage Choice, an astroturfed front for the soda industry, designed to fight Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban not out of the sort of Patrick Henry-esque belief in freedom that informs its marketing materials but out of simple concern for the bottom line. With Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, Mr. Fieri joins these deeply anti-American Americans in shouting out, “Give them liberty and give them death.”

Brett Cohen, fooling the world! (YouTube)

"Normal guy" Brett Cohen punked a bunch of Times Square tourists recently when he hired a crew of cameramen, bodyguards and assistants to follow him around 42nd Street and pretend like he was somebody special. It totally worked! People thought he was famous and tried to get his autograph or have him pose for a picture while pretending to know who he was or why they should care about him. Because, you know ... sheeple.

Except, here's the thing. Well, here's the video, and then here's the thing.

http://youtu.be/XYU1a0lTTTw
From the description on YouTube:

He dressed up like a typical celebrity and was accompanied by an entourage of two professional bodyguards, two assistants, and photographers pretending to be paparazzi. While the assistants and photographers waited for Brett to exit the 49th street marquee at NBC Studios, they started a buzz that a "big star" was about to walk out, thus making it worth their while to wait and get a picture. Many asked the crew whom Brett was, and no answer was given. They were forced to either make something up, or just take a picture with him in hopes that their Facebook friends or Twitter followers might have a better idea.

This social experiment, of sorts, makes a profound statement about how modern culture is so attracted to pop culture, without any real credibility needed.

Ugh. No. Sorry, it's not a "profound statement" to grab the attention of hordes of people in Times Square, especially when you have scouts running around announcing the arrival of a famous person. We've literally seen crowds form 50-deep on 42nd Street to gawk at a horse taking a dump, or a small person in a foam outfit. In one unfortunate incident, foot traffic stopped entirely so everyone could crowd around a guy who they thought was some sort of magician/street performer but turned out to be a severely schizophrenic person who kind of looked like Criss Angel. You'd think that people would be able to tell the difference, but this is a patch of Manhattan where the Naked Cowboy is an attraction, not a deterrent, so there you go.

People in Times Square will literally stop and photograph anything. That's why it takes half an hour for your cab to get through Midtown, regardless of the time of day.

So what did this experiment actually prove? It proved you could get a bunch of gullible foreigners to look silly by having your cameraman ask leading questions about your hit single or your acting career. Though in all honesty, a number of people seemed to legit have you confused for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’s Reeve Carney. (Though a much more obvious celebrity lookalike would have been Andrew Rannells, or possibly Seth MacFarlane’s younger brother.)

Or maybe it proved that if you spend enough money on a fake entourage, you can be important to a bunch of strangers who won't remember who you were the next morning.

Or maybe you just proved that Andy Warhol was exactly right about the future of celebrity.

Or, most likely, you just proved to your parents that sending you to college was a terrible idea, since you just ended up pulling this shit with cash you could have used to pay off your student loans.

Stick to your back yard. (Durst Organization)

Leonine developer Douglas Durst might not be quite the public presence than his father Seymour once was—a regular in the letters to the editor column and on local talk shows, among other outlets for his restless mind—yet he still very much knows his way around a podium. Last week, he found himself in China, talking about New York, and he even seems to admit that the one investment his firm recently made just across the Formosa Strait might not have been its best.

"My experience is almost completely New York centric," Mr. Durst said at the China Alliance's US-China Investment Summit: Focus On New York Real Estate in Shenzen. "Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local."

He also, naturally, talked about his kids—it’s now a fourth generation business!—and how building sustainably not only provides better buildings, and thus better income, for them, but also a better world. There was talk of 4 Times Square and 1 Bryant Park, but nothing about the widely anticipated, mildly concerning West 57th Street pyramid. The full speech is below.

My grandfather and father were in real estate and my father had a strict policy of not buying anything that wasn’t within walking distance of his house.  I had the good fortune that he lived in mid-town Manhattan.

My experience is almost completely New York centric. Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local.

While some prefer to be diverse geographically, our diversity is over time. Our lease expirations are spread over time so that usually only 5 to 10 percent of our office portfolio expires each year, and the good years make up for the bad years.

This is not to say that one cannot invest over a diverse geography, but that to do so successfully you must have local talent involved.

I am very lucky to work in one of the most dynamic and challenging real estate cities.  My dad said to build in New York you need an architect, an engineer and two psychiatrists.

Today you need 2 architects, 2 engineers and 6 psychiatrists. The risk, competition and regulation is intense, but so is the reward.

New York has a unique formula for success.  For the past 400 years, from the earliest Dutch settlers to the 21st Century, the best and the brightest have come from across the globe to New York to make their fame and seek their fortune.

The city’s tolerance, openness, acceptance of newcomers and insatiable appetite for innovation and creativity has insulated New York from the stagnation that has plagued many of the older US cities.

In the past, workers moved to where the jobs were, but New York’s ability to attract young, educated talent has meant companies relocate here because New York is where the qualified employees are.

New York has always been a center for financial services, but the city also has thriving media, education legal, art and cultural sectors as well as a newly energized tech and new media sector.

The area south of the central Midtown business district was once a clothing manufacturing center, as these businesses left the area entered a dormant phase.

A few years ago, as tech start-up firms needed inexpensive office space they began populating South Mid-town.  Now vacancy is near zero, and rents are high.

This is the quintessential New York real estate success story.  Neighborhoods are transformed by the creative, talented and driven people that populate them creating opportunity for development.

New York’s critical mass of talent also provides opportunities for traditional development—more along the lines of “build first and the people will come.”

This is what my father and uncles did in the 1950s along Third Avenue and in the 1970s and 80s along Sixth Avenue.  Both thoroughfares were beyond the central business district when we began developing, but are now considered the heart of midtown.

Four Times Square and One Bryant Park are the Durst Organization’s two most recently completed projects comprising more than 3.7 million square feet of office space on the block bounded by 6th Avenue, Broadway, 42nd Street next to Time Square.

The site sits atop nearly a dozen subway lines and is within walking district of three of the largest intermodal transportation hubs in North America.

Besides the environmental benefits of locating close to public transportation these building will remain desirable for decades because of the simple fact that they are easy to get to.

***

We are a family-run company in a business that is well suited for family-run operations.  Our freedom from the disclosure dictates and need to demonstrate quarterly profits of a public company allows us to develop for the long-term.

We rarely if ever sell our assets and plan for our children and grandchildren, not for the next earnings report.

Our long-term investment strategy compliments our commitment to sustainability.

We build more efficient buildings not only because they use less energy, are less expensive to operate, and provide a more productive work environment, but because we are focused on providing not just an economic future for our children, but a healthy one as well.

Our latest investment epitomizes this policy.  Two years ago we purchased a $100 million equity position in One World Trade Center and also became the buildings’ manager, leasing agent and development adviser.

The short-term prospects for the building were challenging.   The building is perhaps the most complex ever built, the real-estate market has yet to recover and the competition for large tenants is intense.

When we became involved, the single tenant was Vantone’s China Center for less than 10% of the 3.1 million sqft. Despite these risks we believed that New York and Lower Manhattan is a great bet and the benefits of new and sustainable construction provide a critical edge.

With the recent signing of a lease by the US Government, the building is now over 50% leased 2 years before it opens.

The real estate investment world is rapidly changing. My father’s generation avoided partners and outside investors, but all of our recent developments include partners: The Port Authority at 1 World Trade Center, Bank of America at 1 Bryant Park, and Vantone at 855 6th Avenue.

In closing, I would like to say that wherever you invest, it is important to remember that real estate is a service industry, not a commodity.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you. I wish you good luck and am sure we will have a constructive and productive conference.

We first noticed it a week or two earlier, as the old lanes, on the outside of the parked cars, were ground off the asphalt, but it took a bit of time for the new parking lane to be painted, then that bright green strip. The lane used to stop south of 40th Street, but now would run all the way to Columbus Circle, with a sister lane headed south on Ninth Avenue.

Already, cars had moved into position, even though many of the markings still remained to be installed. Bikers would be zipping along the route any day now. Or not. When we saw the lane in day light, an unusual thing happened.

It is nothing new for an intrepid New Yorker, maddened by the insanity and inanity of Times Square, to walk in the bike lane. Even when it ran alongside the traffic lane, people would do it, especially at rush hour. It was a bit disconcerting, too, for it would only drive cyclists out into the onrushing cabs and cars to their right.

Still, at least there was forward progress. Protected bike lanes have been a boon everywhere, where they separate bike riders from cars, thereby providing added protection. Well, anywhere but here. On numerous occasions, The Observer witnessed dozens of pedestrians clogging the new bike lanes, making them virtually impassable. In more than one instance, a cyclist had to come to a stop, cease pedaling and do that slow walk astride their bike as people passed, the lane theirs.

Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for the city's Department of Transportation, noted that the little white bicyclists have yet to be added to the thoroughfare, so people not yet be aware of their actions. "There can be an adjustment period while we implement new projects and in this case we have yet to sign and stencil the new lane," he said in an email.

Yet these were clearly outta-my-way New Yorkers in too much of  a hurry to be slowed down by the line outside Shake Shack and the barkers handing out free passes to Lace next door (what a wholesome stretch). Will they really obey the rules of the road when the time comes?

Mr. Solomonow points out, quite rightly, that the lane is still a boon for bikers. "Protected paths elsewhere on 8th and 9th avenues have reduced injuries upwards of 40 percent," he said.

We have seen this before, on the fight for busy Grand Street and its bike lane, where once a baby was left, and people, or at least diplomats, still park in the lane. But mostly it works, so there is hope here, too. But at the same time, this is Time Square, one of the busiest corners of the planet. Every experienced rider knows it is a fools errand to try and bike down Broadway between 48th Street and Herald Square. Both Five Borough blowhards and tittering tourists use the bike lane as an extension of the sidewalk.

And maybe they should. This whole ordeal reminds us yet again of something Mitchell Moss is fond of saying, that what the city really needs to do is not implement congestion pricing or add more bike lanes but just extend the sidewalks. It will aid New Yorker's largest transportation constituency, the pedestrian (by far the majority of road users) as well as cutting down on road congestion because the conversion of traffic lanes into sidewalks will mean less room for vehicles, and therefore, less vehicles.

Eighth Avenue, one of the city's main transportation corridors, has already sacrificed a lane to bikes, so the odds that another will go to walkers seems impossible. Still, look at the transformation of Times Square when it was totally shut to cars. When the situation gets bad enough, it seems anything is possible.

Unbearable? (armisteadbooker/Flickr)

It's only a matter of time before the flashing signs and statue impersonators arrive. Soho is now so overrun with tourists, food carts, Mr. Softee trucks and promoters pushing everything from hair gel to dating websites that it is virtually uninhabitable, reports the New York Post, warning, "SoHo has become NoGo."

Residents are so angered by the impossible crowds that violence is flaring up. Last Thursday, a middle-aged New Jersey man in flip-flops bumped into two women walking the opposite way. The enraged women punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground and started kicking him.

A few days later a YoGo seller, fed up with vendor tickets, parked illegally on the crosswalk and shoved his ipad camera in a resident's face, ranting about harassment (you know you're in Soho when...).

The food trucks and cheap handbag vendors are flooding the streets, parking anywhere and everywhere and making everyone miserable by giving the tourists too much of all the things they want, say residents, just like all the chain stores clogging the once-artsy streets now that the area is cursed with more popularity than it can handle.

To make everything more miserable, companies are using the already impassable streets to shill their merchandise—from a hot-pink Kate Spade bus polluting the sidewalk with its diesel fumes, blaring music and fashion models to Pantene's glass-enclosed truck offering free blow-outs.

“It’s a horror. Everybody wants to make money down here, like we’re whores,” 78-year-old resident and filmmaker Camille Billops told the Post, apparently without irony.

Bob Gormley, the district manager of Community Board 2 says that he fears for people's safety as they take to the streets to avoid the clamor of commercialism.

Mega Times Square. (Getty)

According to notable English language scholar Homer Simpson, “mega” means “good.”However, the speakers and panelists at the Center for Urban Real Estate’s  conference on New York City megaprojects took a slightly more detailed approach when attempting to define the term.

“I think it’s scale,” said Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association. “I think it’s a project that’s large enough to essentially transform an entire district of the city.

“To me, what makes a project a megaproject is not to much the size of the project but the size of the impact,” said Seth Pinksy, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation partially agreeing with Yaro.

Stephen Ross, Related Companies chief, weighed in as well, saying that he thought “The most important thing is it’s transformative.”

While they may have differed in their semantics, several of the morning’s speakers did agree on one thing: if New York City wants to remain economically competitive, continuing to plan and build megaprojects will be essential.

“New York is the quintessential 20^th century city,” said Mr. Yaro. “I think we all want to see New York as the quintessential 21^st century city.”

The event, which took place in Midtown’s McGraw-Hill Conference Center, placed New York City in an international context right from its outset. Columbia Sociology Professor Saskia Sassen, one of two keynote speakers, spent much of her opening remarks comparing various aspects of New York—such as population density and ease of doing business—not just to old rivals like Chicago and Los Angeles but also to newer international players like Mumbai and Sao Paolo.

Sassen also emphasized that, in the new global economy, what truly distinguished cities was what they did with their surroundings, rather than their surroundings themselves.

“You need a certain kind of standardized built environment to do finance,” she said. “But how it gets used? Radically different.”

Messrs. Yaro, Pinsky and Ross took the stage after Sassen to discuss some of the broader issues and challenges typically surrounding projects that can often last through several real estate and political environments before actually being completed. Common refrains included working with both public and private interests and trying to prioritize the long-term benefits of these projects over the short-term inconveniences.

In other words, megaprojects tend to involve a lot of loud and messy construction work, meaning they also tend to involve a lot of protests from people in the communities where they’re being built. But, according to the event’s panelists, it is generally in the city’s and the country’s best interest to persevere.

“We are underinvesting in our nation’s infrastructure, and these megaprojects, when it comes down to it, are all about investment in infrastructure,” said Mr. Pinsky, speaking in front of a slideshow of completed megaprojects from across the United States. “It’s important to say that not every megaproject and not every investment is a good project or a good investment, but not investing and not building is inevitably going to lead you to real trouble.”

The following panel discussed one of New York City’s more successful megaprojects from its recent past: transforming Times Square from a seedy hotbed of prostitution and crime into the clogged artery of slow moving tourists and oversized neon signs that has become every true New Yorker’s favorite part of the city.

When discussing the process of redeveloping Times Square, the panelists provided concrete examples of many of the issues the previous panel had raised, namely dealing with conflicts between public and private interests and working on a project that lasted through multiple different mayoral administrations. And their thoughts on the completed Times Square provided evidence for the previous panel’s support of perseverance as well.

“I would urge a cost-benefit analysis of the 42^nd street project today,” said panelist Carl Weisbrod, academic chair of global development at New York University. “I am confident that it will turn out to be one of the, if not the single best investment the city and state of New York ever made in this city.”

“The city made money on this deal,” agreed panelist Gary Rosenberg, chairman of the real estate law firm Rosenberg and Estis.

The panelists all emphasized the importance of momentum when working on projects that can take as long as the redevelopment of Times Square. The second the project stops moving forward is the second completing it starts becoming less likely

“You can’t let inertia kill you because once you’re sitting there just doing nothing, you become the target for attack,” said Mr. Weisbrod. “It erodes and ultimately and frequently dies.”

If today’s event was any indication, the cost and length of megaprojects will not stop them from continuing to be an important part of New York City’s constantly changing landscape. But, as Mr. Yaro pointed out, trying to guess what exactly these projects will be and how they will change the city is virtually impossible.

In the late 19thCentury, he said, people believed that “the growth of London and New York was going to be constrained by our inability to get horse fodder in and horse manure out.

“Well,” he continued, “things changed.”

More economic output in its pinky finger than in all of Peoria. (Getty)

The most heavily trafficked neighborhood in New York also happens to be one of the biggest economic hubs in the United States, according to a recent study. The Times Square Alliance and HR&A Analyst Inc. teamed up on a report on the economic impact of Times Square. The report, which can be downloaded from their website, showcases the dreaded tourist district as one of the largest economic powerhouses in New York and all of the United States.

Here's some interesting facts:

• Times Square pulled in $110 billion in 2011 for New York City.
• Economic activity has increased by $20 billion ($90 billion in 2007) despite a sluggish economy.
• There are 170,000 jobs in the district—including workers in the 29 million square feet of office space within the blocks.
• Times Square's economy trumps that of both the Portland and Pittsburgh metro areas (individually, not combined).
• There were 48.7 million visitors to New York that generated $31 billion in income.
• 21% of hotel rooms in New York are in Times Square with 17,000 rooms.
• There are 230 advertising signs that bring in over $60 million a year.

The best part? The report notes that Times Square helps cut the gap between New York City and Orlando tourism. There was about a four million gap in 2006 and only three and change in 2010. (Don't tell that to Mayor Bloomberg.)

Watch out, Mickey Mouse. Lady Liberty and her parade of neon is out to get you.

mewing@observer.com

Times Square Lite? (JetBlue)

It was a big deal when JetBlue decided to move to Long Island City two years ago. The air carrier founded here would not be splitting town, and it would even be boosting a nascent business district that has never done much beyond the Citi back offices despite the one-stop subway ride to Midtown. But it turns out there might also be implications for the skyline.

No, JetBlue is not building a big new tower, it is still moving into an eight-story loft building beside the Queensborough Bridge. But there are plans for a big blue sign on the roof, a 40-footer. That is bigger than the GE sign atop Rockefeller Center, and that is kind of the point. "When complete, it will be easily seen from the east side of Manhattan across the river," the airline writes on its corporate blog, BlueTales.

This has some locals worried, and even though they like the sign, the community board representing the area voted the signs down for fear it would create a cascade of neon. “We don’t want the honky-tonk look,” Board 2 chair Joseph Conley told the Post.

Lights, camera, Queens Plaza! (ArchPaper)

It is not just bright signs and corporate tenants that are revamping Queens Plaza, either. A generous pedestrian plaza is also being finished around the bridge, not unlike the Broadway Boulevard that transformed Times Square. With that project wrapping up in the spring, the architects behind it now want to wrap the viaduct over Queens plaza in dynamic lights, according to The Architect's Newspaper.

Elevated about 15 feet from the ground, these bottomless, illuminated prisms will give visual identity to Queens Plaza. Similarly, the light lines will also provide illumination under the elevated subway. Potentially powered via solar energy, these LED light fixtures will be attached to beams at the lower level and will become “a well-lit canopy for pedestrians and drivers.” MPA co-founder Linda Pollak added that “the light lines are a way-finding device for the highly chaotic crossing of Jackson Avenue.”

They also hope to include a programmable multimedia screen, which could show movies. Or, in true Times Square spirit, ads.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

For the past four years, the Times Square Alliance has tapped celebrated architects to create giant Valentines for Father Duffy Square (site of the giant TKTS amphitheater). Entries have included glowing hearts and icy ones. This year, the alliance tapped one of the BIGgest firms in town, Bjarke Ingels Group, to create its installation.

The Dainish firm is using 400 special LED-filled tubes to create a heart cube that will react to the environment around it: "The transparent tubes refract the lights of Times Square, creating a cluster of lights around the heart. The hovering heart will appear to pulsate as its tubes sway in the wind.   When people touch a heart-shaped sensor, the heart will glow brighter as the energy from their hands is converted into more light."

The installation opens today and will be on display through the end of the month.

Update: We've added some photos of the installation from our intrepid intern Michael Ewing.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC