Beautification

Over the past five years, the East Midtown Association has put increased resources into improving the attractiveness of the district’s streetscape. We believe that through beautifying our neighborhood we can have a significant impact on the quality of life in East Midtown.

Currently, almost 90 hanging floral baskets on district street-poles bring greenery and color to our district streets. The EMA Beautification Committee, working with our horticultural and maintenance vendors, has designed a series of extremely attractive seasonal plantings, which we supplement with occasional short-term displays, such as our vibrant baskets full of yellow daffodils in April.

We also brighten up district streets with decorative wreath displays throughout the winter holiday season. Over the past year the EMA once again added another ten 60-inch wreaths to supplement the existing ten 60-inch and twenty-five 48-inch wreaths, allowing us to rotate the smaller wreaths to the side streets for greater visibility. Ten more large wreaths will be added to our holiday display during the upcoming season.

Improving our streetscape and making it more aesthetically pleasing is a priority for the next few years. By adding even more greenery and reducing visual clutter, we intend to make East Midtown a more pleasant, inviting place to live, work, and visit.

One proposal the EMA is finalizing would move disorderly municipal parking and directional signs from street poles and place them in free-standing frames. This approach has been successful in other Business Improvement Districts – including our neighbor, the Grand Central Partnership – and significantly neatens the streetscape. As an added benefit, by removing the mishmash of signs from the street poles, this project would further enable us to beautify the community by opening up even more street poles for use in our hanging floral basket program.

We are also investigating the feasibility of introducing a ‘way-finding’ project to the district, by installing signs directing pedestrians to mass transit and major points of interest.