A Look At What The Occupy Wall Street Protesters Are Really Occupying

by: Peter J. Gallagher

The Wall Street Joural Law Blog had an interesting article — "Private Owners Of Public Spaces In 'Occupy Wall Street's' Wake" — on the property that the so-called 99%ers are actually occupying in the Wall Street area. Parks like Zucotti Park are known as "privately owned public spaces" or POPS, which are "part of New York’s incentive zoning program, under which buildings are granted additional floor area or related waivers in exchange for providing these spaces."  (Zucotti Park, formerly known as Liberty Plaza Park, is actually named for the chairman of the entity that now owns the park.)  The owners of Zucotti Park claim that they have not been able to clean the park since the day before the protests began.  This has led some to call for the Department of City Planning to create new rules for POPS that would allow the private owners to close the parks at a set time, which Stephen Spinola, head of the Real Estate Board of New York, claims would “add to security and allow maintenance.”  As a practical matter, the article notes, this might be difficult because each of the 516 POPS in New York City has its own contract with the City and its own rules.  Moreover, changing the rules governing the City’s POPS to allow the private owners to control access, even for seemingly benign purposes, would surely spark protests of its own.