The Upper West Side’s rat infestation took on epic proportions last year when multiple rodents were seen scurrying around Fairway on 74th street, including a cute little mouse videotaped frolicking in the olive bins. But City Council member Gale Brewer told the local community board on Tuesday night that “Fairway has gotten rid of its rats” and said that the supermarket is leading a charge to rid the area of the pests entirely. Fairway is hosting a breakfast on April 30 for local merchants to brainstorm on how to get rid of the rats.
The Upper West Side has had the most rat complaints of any neighborhood in the city in recent years.
Brewer secured $50,000 from the city to spend on rat mitigation — in particular, she wants to install 6 to 12 specialized “Big Belly” trash cans in the Verdi Square area from 72nd to 73rd streets on Broadway. The neighborhood’s first solar-powered self-compacting Big Belly can was just placed next to Shake Shack, and reportedly cost $3,000. She working with the city parks department on those plans. The Broadway Mall Association is also considering getting rid of the ivy in the area and replacing it with other plants. Rats have been known to build nests in ivy, which is frankly disgusting. In fact, I’m sorry you have to know that now.
Of course, with construction picking up at a rapid rate in the neighborhood, it’s hard to imagine that the rat population will decline much.
For all of our rat coverage, click here.
Can’t we just declare the rats to be “middle class”, and then they’ll have no choice but to leave??
Cato says it perfectly – but with that said, yesterday I did see a plump little fellow scurrying east from the corner of 74th and Broadway across the street, presumably heading toward other fertile fields.
Rats, rats. Rats on the UWS made homeless by reckless developers. Can we ever control the? By them I mean the two legged version, the developers and the developers friend Mayor Bloomberg. Unfortunately if Ms.Quinn gets elected we will 8 more years of Bloomberg style giveaways. Wake up NY you are being not sold but given away.
I am so tired of the knee jerk stupid comments that “pedestrian” represents.
now you are blaming developer for rats.
No one becomes Homeless you lefty liberal moron by new construction.
only in New York would Cristine Quinn and bloomberg be viewd as giving anything to real estate interests.
They are the ones forcing 1 in 5 of new units to be subsidized in every new building-or more, a new co-op city is being built in LIC waterfrront at taxpayer expense. Wake up, it costs money to build and pay taxes.
Also at taxpayer expense, the takeover of the west 90s by city homeless agencies at thousands upon thousands of dollars per night.
please STFU already or move to Century Village.
Another plump specimen at the hippo playground in Riverside park last week.
A rat ran directly across my path on West 73rd Street tonight in the block between CPW and Columbus. Luckily it was a small one. I’ve seen some the size of dogs.
The Administration is finally going to start sterilizing rats. This method has been in existence for many years, but not in NYC where it is drastically needed. I’ve walked down streets in the West 80’s and had rats run in front of me. New bins alone won’t do it. Rats must be prevented from
reproducing.
At dusk you can find any number rats is scurrying around in and out of the trash cans in the playgrounds in Riverside Park.
The trash needs to be emptied at night instead of the morning.
The rats are having dinner and breakfast there.
loads of rats on WEA/Riverside blvd (strip from W60th to W66). We saw one jumping out from the bushes on a pigeon to take whatever pigeon was having. They are just not bothered anymore to run away.
I’m seriously considering moving because there are too many rats. Something really needs to be done. One thing that would help is to crack down on landlords who don’t secure trash properly. It would also help if people didn’t drop food containers and food leftovers all over the place, and if people didn’t spread bread and seeds around for the pigeons. Finally, I do agree that sterilization has to be part of the equation if there is a successful method for doing that. I don’t know what all the right methods are, but we’ve got to be able to make rat sightings much more rare.
There are some simple actions that can be taken an enforced to prevent and fight rodent invasion:
The city should make it mandatory to have metal locked containers to store garbage cans. Some brownstones have them but most have the old metal garbage cans overflowing which makes impossible to cover the can with its lid properly. An open invitation!
Every business, especially food businesses ought to be responsible for mantaining spotless the piece of sidewalk in front of the business. That includes hosing down the asphalt when opening and when closing the sore/restaurant/deli etc…!
Garbage collection should be every evening!