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Herald Square already offers plenty of opportunities to lose sleep: traffic and sirens, to start. Now, a developer wants to add a four-story LED advertisement to the mix—and some neighbors would prefer to keep the lights down.
JEMB Realty, through an affiliated company, is seeking permission to install a roughly 2,333-square-foot digital billboard on Herald Center at 1293 Broadway, across from Macy’s Herald Square. Three connected panels would wrap around the building’s angled corner, starting about 60 feet above the sidewalk and rising another 40 feet.
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The proposal requires a zoning text amendment and special permit because current rules prohibit advertising signs at the property. Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Community Board 5 have both recommended rejecting it and the City Planning Commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Wednesday, October 28.
The biggest sticking point: people actually live here.
Across Sixth Avenue, Herald Towers contains roughly 690 apartments. The developer’s family also owns that building. According to the community board’s September resolution, the applicant hadn’t committed to specific brightness limits, proposing instead to determine appropriate levels after installation based on surrounding light.
For tenants bothered by the glow, the applicant offered to consider requests for blackout shades individually. The board found that inadequate, estimating the sign could be visible from 53 buildings within five blocks, an area with about 1,700 residential units. That measures potential visibility, however—not how much light would enter individual homes.
There’s also concern that approving an exception for one building could invite similar exceptions elsewhere. “To me, this is something I call Times Square everywhere,” Nancy Aber Goshow, chair of the board’s land-use committee, said at its September meeting, according to amNewYork.
JEMB argues that the billboard could help attract retail tenants and support a struggling shopping corridor. It also maintains that the display would face Herald Square rather than Herald Towers and wouldn’t materially increase the neighborhood’s ambient light. Hoylman-Sigal, meanwhile, wants a broader plan for illuminated advertising around Herald Square, developed with neighborhood input, rather than a zoning change tailored to this property.
For now, the billboard remains a proposal. The community board’s and borough president’s recommendations are advisory, and final approval hasn’t been granted. Macy’s still has competition for attention—but this particular addition isn’t plugged in yet.