that last post was snarkier than i meant it to be, but look:
for decades, all over Manhattan, public plazas and "community spaces" have been:
a) built, then gradually taken out of public use
b) promised, then scaled down during the building process
c) never allowed to materialize because no one held developers accountable.
it's not just those things, either. developers have promised to install/maintain subway escalators that they actually own, and they stay "out of service" for years at a time (FiDi, 53rd street). it's a shell game and the public loses 99 percent of the time.