September 21, 2005
$1 Billion Street Furniture Deal to Cemusa
Cemusa, a Spanish outdoor firm, has won the $1 billion contract from the Department of Transportation to sell ads on New York City's street furniture. Ad Age calls Cemusa "little known," when compared with "outdoor giants" JC Deceaux and Van Wagner. Cemusa says 100 new jobs will be created (unclear how many will be in NYC) and Ad Age reports that Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, the firm that designed the new Fulton Street Transit Center, will be charged with designing new street furniture that will showcase the advertising. Deceaux, a French firm, was the early frontrunner as it donated money to the NYC 2012 bid, but Gothamist guesses when that fell apart, all bets were off. This will be a 20 year contract, and what we'd like to see is Cemusa asking the public to give our input on possible street furniture (we may not be happy about it, but at least it can work with our lives).
Check out the street furniture Richard Rodgers designed for Cemusa in Spain.
|
I hope Cemusa completely ignores suggestions from New Yorkers and does what they think is best. Whenever a committee of new yorkers is involved the lowest common denominator emerges. I recall that the new subway cars were designed to have individual seats, but then at the last minute this fat assed woman on the design committee had the seats changed to one long bench because the individual seats discriminated against the fat assed. For the rest of time we have to sit on warm up benches.