Association for a Better New York
The Association for a Better New York (ABNY) is an organization established in the city of New York in 1971 with the stated aim of improving living conditions in the city.
As the Times described it, "The Association for a Better New York, whose goal is to preserve New York's position as the country's business and financial capital, wasted no time yesterday in rebuffing the CPS call for help in the anti-layoff drive. ... Whatever the reason, the CPS was left stranded: "Yesterday, Mr. McFeeley said he was 'unable to believe' that the Association for a Better New York was unwilling to honor what he understood to be a commitment to support the 24 unions in their contention that no public-safety officers should be dismissed in the budget crisis.[1]
The talk was all about the condition of the city and what to do about it when the Association for a Better New York, or ABNY, first took shape in the early months of 1971. Rudin, then forty-four, wearing his familiar vintage pilot's glasses, sat down for breakfast at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue one cold January morning, together with a small gathering of fellow businessmen and friends. Writing on the back of an envelope, they framed out an organization that would grow to encompass 125 business leaders.[2]
It serves as a forum where elected officials and private sector leaders come together to explore potential solutions to New York City's economic and social problems.[3]
History
The Association for a Better New York (ABNY) was formed in 1971 by Lewis Rudin and other prominent figures in real estate and business with the stated aim of retaining New York's status as "the prime corporate headquarters in the world".[4] The ABNY represented over 300 CEOs in finance, real estate, and hospitality and was funded by the individual donations of its members.[5] In its first few years, it played a large role in privatizing NYC and lobbying for further privatization.[5] In 1972, shortly after the founding of the association, a New York Magazine piece described it as "basically a grouping of Manhattan's biggest landlords", identifying Rockefeller Center president Alton Marshall as its "dominant influence".[6]
In 1972, ABNY sponsored an advertising campaign celebrating public safety agencies, donated bulletproof vests to the NYPD, and partnered with City Hall to create the New York City Police Foundation to privately fund police initiatives.[5] Over the next few years, the ABNY played a large role in revitalizing Times Square.[5] In 1972, the ABNY began a program supported by police and municipal officials wherein policing in Midtown was supplemented by private security: it expanded the domain of private guards to the streets surrounding their buildings and paid for training for building staff in reporting crimes and suspicious behaviors to the police.[4] Next year, ABNY announced it would extend its network of guards, some armed, from 50 to over 300 and expand its patrols to more streets and renamed the program "Operation Interlock" as it included a radio network connecting the guards to the police.[4] The Association also installed an antenna on the Exxon Building to link the guards in Midtown with private guards across the city with the aim of spreading the network across the city.[4] By the early 1980s Operation Interlock operated non-stop and connected the private security of over 300 buildings.[4] In 1973 the ABNY funded the city's first CCTV system in Times Square.[5]
The ABNY would also fund the Urban Park Rangers Program to privately supplement the City Park Department and provide a "a highly visible presence" in high-profile parks for "tourists and visitors" such as Central Park, Prospect Park, and Flushing Meadow.[5] They also helped form the Business/Labor Working Group, later renamed to the New York City Partnership, an organization chaired by David Rockefeller and made up of major financial executives that would advocate for the business and real estate sectors.[5]
References
- ↑ Miriam Greenberg, Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World (2009), p. 138.
- ↑ Seymour P. Lachman, Mr. New York: Lew Rudin and His Love for the City (2014), p. 45.
- ↑ Jessica Montesano, "Association for a Better New York", in Kenneth T. Jackson, Lisa Keller, and Nancy Flood, eds., The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition (2010), p. 70.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Holtzman, Benjamin (2020). "Expanding the Thin Blue Line: Resident Patrols and Private Security in Late Twentieth-Century New York". Modern American History. 3 (1): 47–67. doi:10.1017/mah.2020.1. ISSN 2515-0456.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Merton, Joe (2019). "John Lindsay, the Association for a Better New York, and the Privatization of New York City, 1969-1973". Journal of Urban History. 45 (3): 557–577. doi:10.1177/0096144218765465. ISSN 0096-1442.
- ↑ Reeves, Richard (September 18, 1972). "The City Politic: Convergence Of Interest". New York Magazine. Vol. 5 no. 38. p. 8.
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