Evening Roundup: Manhattan Rezoning Approved, New Social Club For Coincidences, AG James Sues Parent Company of Zelle, and NYC Foot Traffic Tops Pre-Pandemic...

Title: Evening Roundup: Manhattan Rezoning Approved, New Social Club For Coincidences, AG James Sues Parent Company of Zelle, and NYC Foot Traffic Tops Pre-Pandemic Levels

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Stephen: Midtown Manhattan rezoning, new social club for folks who love coincidences, Attorney General Letitia James sues the parent company of Zelle, and a new report finds New York City foot traffic is back to pre-pandemic levels. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm transportation reporter Stephen Nessen, filling in for Janae Pierre.

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Stephen: Midtown Manhattan could get roughly 10,000 new homes and a busway on 34th Street under a rezoning plan the City Council passed Thursday. The plan covers 42 blocks between 23rd and 40th Streets and between 5th and 8th Avenues. City officials say almost 3,000 of the housing units expected to be added would be considered affordable. City Planning Commissioner Dan Garodnick says the rezoning will make it easier for people to live in the transit-rich neighborhood.

Dan Garodnick: Manhattan used to be the place where a young adult or a new New Yorker could start their journey. With this plan, we're making that dream a reality again in Midtown South.

Stephen: Officials say the planned busway would speed up buses by restricting passenger vehicle traffic on 34th Street. New York's Attorney General is suing the parent company of the Zelle payment platform months after the Federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau abandoned a similar case under the Trump administration. State Attorney General Letitia James sued Early Warning Services in New York State Court Wednesday. She alleges the company failed to protect Zelle users from fraud.

The lawsuit came after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dropped a similar case this year after the Trump administration moved to fire the agency's leader and many of its workers while halting much of the Bureau's work. A spokesperson for Zelle is calling James' lawsuit a political stunt.

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Stephen: Ever notice a charming coincidence? WNYC's Hannah Frishberg reports there's a new social club that delights in happenstance.

Hannah Frishberg: It's called the Association Association. You heard right. They meet monthly to find coincidences. Think meeting a birthday twin or wearing the same color as a stranger. The meetups are basically walking tours with an emphasis on being present and noticing the little things around New York City. Emery Snyder founded the group last year.

Emery Snyder: People are interested in connection. People are also, I think, intrigued by something that's not based on a particular interest that's a little bit more eccentric and unusual than that.

Hannah Frishberg: She says about 200 people have joined. They use games of chance to help pick locations for their next meets.

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Stephen: Up next, Manhattan foot traffic has finally returned to pre-pandemic levels. More on that after the break.

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Stephen: It's been five years since New York City went quiet during the COVID-19 shutdown. Now it looks like the city has got its groove back. A new report finds that in July, foot traffic in Manhattan actually returned to pre-pandemic levels. That's happening even with questions swirling about tariffs and what that might mean for tourism. WNYC's Arun Venugopal has been keeping an eye on the numbers, and he joins us now. Arun, tell us about the latest findings.

Arun: These findings come from Placer.ai, which is a company that measures foot traffic by figuring out cell phone ping data at office buildings all across the country, including around 100 here in New York. It said office visits in July were up 1.3% from where they were six years ago. That means in July of 2019, which is the first time this has happened since the pandemic.

Stephen: Wow.

Arun: Their press relief was kind of triumphant. Call it a comeback, they said. Obscure musical reference. Maybe you caught it, Stephen.

Stephen: Don't call it a comeback. We've been here for years.

Arun: That's right. No, but they're saying call it a comeback, as LL Cool J might have or might not have said many, many years ago, before some of you were born. All right. New York is actually head of every other big city in the country, according to this company. Actually, it's the only city that they surveyed across the country that has hit its pre-pandemic traffic levels. It's a pretty big deal.

Stephen: Wow. That's just based on cell phone data. It sounds like you're hearing similar things from other corners of the city.

Arun: Yes. This is coming from businesses. It's coming from business groups, from companies that study real estate. Avison Young is a big real estate consultancy. They say office leasing this year is the best it's been since 2018. I also spoke to business groups in various neighborhoods across Manhattan. What we're hearing in general is that pedestrian activity is surging, either it's equaling or nearly equaling its levels prior to the pandemic. They say this is being felt by all sorts of businesses, by restaurants, other retailers. This isn't just something that is organically happening, as some people might think is actually being actively encouraged by certain policies that are being put in place.

Stephen: Something like, say, congestion pricing that is encouraging people to take public transit and is making the streets nicer because there are actually fewer cars on the road.

Arun: Yes. The net effect, Stephen, is that the city feels a lot more like how it used to feel.

Stephen: I remember 2020, there was this raging debate over whether New York City was dead or not. Is this the end of New York City? Apparently not.

Arun: [chuckles] Apparently not. The New York Post headline in August of 2020 was "New York City is dead forever."

Stephen: Wow.

Arun: [chuckles] I think some of us have--

Stephen: We got a little tired of those essays, too, I think.

Arun: Yes. It felt a little, I don't know-- What's the word?

Stephen: Premature.

Arun: Premature for sure, but also there's a certain gloating quality. People are fleeing the city. It's like, New York, we abandon you. Take that.

Stephen: Like short-selling New York City.

Arun: Yes. [laughs] I like that. It's a nice little Wall Street reference of it. Totally, I was like, there were researchers who predicted this thing called a doom loop for New York.

Stephen: Doom loop.

Arun: Doom loop. Very catchy and also just really scary. People are not going to come back, and so that's going to really hurt the city's economic activity. It's going to feed into this vicious cycle that the city would never recover from. Things did get better. People came back, businesses came back. Some of them started mandating workers to show up back at their offices. This evidently made a difference in business districts that had previously felt really eerie and quiet.

One business owner who I spoke to who's in SoHo, Sara Schiller, she told me that as the storefronts began to fill up along that stretch in Lower Broadway, it started to change perceptions about the neighborhood into one that didn't feel so much eerie as a little less abandoned and a lot more welcoming, less of a doom loop and more of a virtuous cycle where some good economic news begets even more good news.

Stephen: Pretty much every afternoon, the streets of SoHo are just filled with tourists and visitors. I really do see that, but all this comeback talk comes as the city and the country are being hit with tariffs. We've got tough talk from the Trump administration with immigration policies that no doubt are likely scaring tourists away. How do you reconcile what's happening this very moment with this competing narrative of New York City's coming back?

Arun: The impact on tourism is real. We're seeing these images broadcast across the world going viral on social media of people who are getting apprehended by ICE. We think of that as a domestic issue, but it very much filters the rest of the world, and it's measurably changing tourism here in New York City, tourism and conventions. It's the group that is the primary tourism booster for the city. It downgraded its expectations for tourism spending, said the city would lose as much as $4 billion in tourism revenues this year, in large part because visitors from Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, all these countries, those tourists are staying away.

These are the international tourists who spend a lot more money than domestic tourists. That cost is substantial, and it's being noticed here in New York. I spoke to people who run museums and other sort of destinations for tourists. They are seeing these effects firsthand. At the same time, yes, we are seeing the city's resurgence happen despite the loss of tourism. Business leaders say they're wary of how federal policies are playing out, how talk from the Trump administration is playing out. At the same time, they're celebrating the city's comeback and how far the city has come so far.

Stephen: It certainly is a complicated picture that you paint. I guess we'll have to see how things play out in the coming months.

Arun: Lots of uncertainty happening, Stephen.

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Stephen: That's WNYC's Arun Venugopal.

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Stephen: Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Stephen Nessen. We'll be back tomorrow.

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