Upper West Siders complain a lot about banks, because frankly we have a ton of them here.
People say the banks strip character from the neighborhood, and their well-lit but empty spaces are dead at night, leaving holes in the otherwise lively streetscape.
But TD Bank’s new 4,000-square-foot location at 88th Street and Broadway is plenty lively. In fact, its illuminated signs on Broadway, which appear to be about 7 or 8 feet tall, are causing pedestrians to do double-takes.
“Obnoxious,” said one of our tipsters.
They also appear to be keeping people up at night.
Someone in a building across the street called 311 complaining that the lights “shine brightly” into their apartment “all night long.”
It’s reminiscent of a classic Seinfeld episode in which Kramer couldn’t fall asleep because of a sign advertising a chicken restaurant that shone into his window.
Because the bank is not in a landmarked building, its signs did not have to be approved by a commission or Community Board 7 as long as they got a permit from the Buildings Department.
Mark Diller, the chairman of CB 7, remarked that the signs prove once again that banks mostly rent real estate to market themselves, as opposed to sell products.
“This sign reconfirms that the real purpose of the big bank frontages is marketing. TD is a valued member of our UWS community, but I would love them even more if they had retail space that matched the scale of the neighborhood.”
Thanks to Ken for the photos.
Noticed that sign yesterday…it is indeed awful.
Every time we notice a business has gone under I quip “I guess that’ll be a bank soon.” I’m right at least half the time.
The sign is just on a scale proportional to the size of the SUVs driven by the customers they want to attract.
Had this problem when Wachovia (now Wells Fargo) opened on 70th and Bway. Lived across the street and our apt was bright as day at night because of their signs. Complained to 311 and the bank and they ended up turning them off at night.
Crony capital loves you, green scam fanatics, all. Because you are psychotically terrifying school kids with tobacco farmer and now oil barren Al Gore’s specific brand of bullshit, your own dear neighborhood becomes home to rats, addicts and banks and karmic hell in general. When your whole proud and loud proclaimed self-image is that of business hating activism, well, even Alexander Cockburn rolls in his grave over the inquisition you have wrought upon the modern world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y
Huh?
Holy cow, that would piss me off if I still lived down the street.
Re: NikFromNYC’s rant above:
HUH ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Here’s a thought. Maybe you shouldn’t try writing at 2:43 a.m.?
Well said! And full credit for saying it first, though farther down. (Sorry I didn’t see your comment before posting my own!)
A well-placed shot with a .22 from across the street should take care of this problem.
I think a large rock could serve the same purpose and perhaps be a bit safer
Well, this insures that I’LL never be a customer of these f))ckers. Complete disregard for the comfort of the neighborhood…they are NOT good neighbors, as Mark Diller timidly suggests above. They are rapacious neighborhood destroyers. I hope they fail completely.
Nick, were it not for laws allowing landlords to triple rents, we’d still have a neighbourhood. I don’t care for their aesthetic storefront designs either or their need to take over entire blocks, but they’re just businesses taking opportunities that are handed to them by the landlords and rules governing the city. Maybe the best place to start is to work on electing a mayor that doesn’t think like the lovechild of William Randolph Hearst and Robert Moses.
…wow, that would be an ugly baby.
“but they’re just businesses taking opportunities that are handed to them by the landlords and rules governing the city” —
more like, the landlords are “just people taking opportunities that are handed to them by businesses”
is it a crime to throw a rock at that sign -at any time, day or night?
I was struck by the enormity of the green TD Bank sign and am, frankly, amazed they were able to gain permission to put such a large, bright, and intrusive sign on the building.
I think the sign poses an issue on multiple levels, including setting a risky precedent for other businesses to put similarly out-of-scale signs on their upper west side establishments. It seems as though Times Square is creeping north and the good efforts to continue to improve the look, feel, and life by many upper west siders, including WEPS, is being eroded.
There really is no justification for this sign to be as big as it is. The branch is plenty large enough to advertise the brand name and attract customers. Let’s hope the bank continues its good neighbor behavior and replaces this sign with a much smaller version.