By Gus Saltonstall
The Global Citizen Festival is set to return to Central Park’s Great Lawn later this month, and with it, continued anxieties around possible damage to the beloved green space.
The annual concert will take place on Saturday, September 27, making it the 13th year the event is hosted on the Great Lawn. In 2025, the concert, which is aimed at raising money and spearheading campaigns against global poverty, will be headlined by The Weeknd and Shakira.
In 2023, the Great Lawn was badly damaged during the concert, as Tropical Storm Ophelia blew through the city on the same day that tens of thousands of people showed up to enjoy the show. As a result, Central Park closed the Great Lawn for the winter about two months earlier than normal, and it needed more than $600,000 in repairs, which was first funded by the Central Park Conservancy, and then reimbursed in full by Global Citizen.
Last year, while there was again rain on the day of the concert, the damage was not as bad. However, the Great Lawn still ended up closed to the public from the third week of September through the end of October, after it was initially projected to only be shuttered until October 2 of that year.
Upper West Side City Councilmember Gale Brewer has voiced her opposition for years to the Global Citizen Festival taking place on the Great Lawn.
“I’ve never liked it [the concert] and I wish it didn’t happen here,” Brewer told West Side Rag over the phone earlier this week. “It’s just so much time that a centerpiece like the Great Lawn is out of commission for the public.”
Brewer also once again penned a letter to the city on Thursday, shared with the Rag, to ask that they choose a different venue for the concert.
“This one day festival is so large that it takes a week to set up, barricading off many sections of Central Park which are then inaccessible to the public during the beautiful fall weather. Trucks servicing the festival line Central Park West, taking scarce parking from residents and emitting air and noise pollution,” Brewer wrote. “The Great Lawn will be in some disrepair if the weather is good. It will be destroyed if rain comes. Indeed, the Great Lawn was ruined a few years ago by this festival. What is the postponement or cancellation policy if bad weather is predicted?”
The Upper West Side elected official suggested Randall’s Island as a more suitable location.
The Mayor’s Office did not immediately respond to Brewer’s letter.
The Rag reached out to the New York City Parks Department about the issue, which pointed to multiple precautions the agency was taking in the lead-up to the concert to “help protect the Great Lawn Oval,” including adding signage to guide visitors on a detour to minimize impact to the lawn through a separate walkway, and adding additional flooring to the area, pre-seeding and conditioning the grass, and cordoning off particularly vulnerable areas of the lawn.
In keeping with past years, the Great Lawn will be closed to the public around a week before the September 27 concert, in order to prepare the green space for the event.
“Central Park is not a museum; it’s an active space with a long legacy of hosting large cultural events like this one,” a spokesperson from the Parks Department said. “As with every year, our partners at Global Citizen Festival are fully committed to restoring the Great Lawn to its original condition, ensuring the space remains accessible for parkgoers.”
Global Citizen has to apply with the city for a Parks Special Event Permit to host the event, which comes with a processing fee.
The Central Park Conservancy told the Rag that it has no comment on the Global Citizen Festival continuing to take place on the Great Lawn.
WSR will keep an eye on the forecast for September 27, the closer we get to the date.
You can learn more about the 2025 Global Citizen Festival — HERE.
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The irony is simply staggering.
Came here to say this. This irony of a global citizen / volunteer celebration destroying a public park that hundreds of thousands use is just chef kiss
It should be held in October, and the festival should be 100% on the hook for complete and timely repairs.
This type an event should be held in some type of enclosed arena and there’s so many of them available.
Why they destroyed our nature?
Our oasis!
We never invited them here!!!👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎
The benefits of the festival outweigh any temporary hardship.
We must all sacrifice for the good of the planet and humanity.
It shouldnt be held at all. The unrelenting loud thumping for hours on end and damage to propert is disgusting and cruelly oppresive to the neighborhood.
The benefits of the festival outweigh any temporary hardship.
We must all sacrifice for the good of the planet and humanity.
The Global Virtue Signal Citizen Festival
It’s like Davos with slightly fewer billionaires.
I guess team Global Citizen is hoping the NY drought continues.
Who said there’s a drought in New York City?
There are no drought restrictions in effect!
According to the Köppen climate classification, the climate of New York City is now in a humid subtropical (Cfa), with parts of the city now in a transitioning into a humid continental climate, where summer is expanding and winter is decreasing.
NOOOO!!
Gale is fear mongering again
The conservancy prob needs Global Citizen to help pay those Million dollar salaries
There’s no indoor venue anywhere on the “globe” to hold this? Shocker, it’s better too for the attendees.
Gale Brewer – always looking on the brighter side of life.
Who cares about actual environmental and societal damage?! People have virtue-signaling to do!
Global Citizen Festival is what makes our streets livable!
I don’t want people living on the street.
If you don’t want people living in the street, then you must allow historic district landmarking to be abolished on the UWS as that is what is preventing more housing from being built. Even if there is no affordable housing being built on the UWS, most people in gentrifying outer borough and uptown neighborhoods would rather be on the UWS but cannot afford it. When more housing is being built, yes that includes brownstones being knocked down to build supertall buildings, that will lead to more affordable housing for homeless people in Bushwick or Ridgewood or Harlem. Sara Lind was the only qualified candidate to build lots of housing and make our streets livable in 2021 and the UWS rejected her for Gale Brewer who is the same old tired thinking that does not make our streets livable. Melissa Rosenberg also ran for state assembly and many people on the UWS don’t want the transformative vision that she had. Sara Lind needs to run for office again!
Otherwise, seeing people living on the street is part of a big city and you have to get used to it. They are people, not an eyesore to complain about.
Does it even matter? People treat NYC like it’s a garbage dump/toilet bowl as it is.
Maybe where you live!🫵
So the Conservancy has no comment.
What a joke. I guess conserving isn’t part of what they stand for.
The conservancy cares about what the bike lobby wants it to.
Global Sh*tizen should really be the name of this craptacular event.
And exactly during the beautiful fall season in the park, too. … Again. Oy.
Folks behind the festival are massive contributors to politicians, so the park pays the price.. It’s not the event itself, it’s the before and after that’s so disruptive. The park belongs to everyone, yes, including the festival goers. But it’s the equivalent of massive download of second-hand smoke on the rest of us.
The stupidest thing ever. The fact that the city allows this to happen is ridiculous. The park gets ruined EVERYTIME, whether is rains or not. Wish we could figure out how to stop the most hypocritical and destructive event annually. The powers that be should know and do better.
Was there no damage caused by any of the other concerts that have been held there over the years? People seem to be awfully bothered by this particular event.
Gale Brewer wasn’t in office when Simon & Garfunkel or Elton John or Diana Ross performed in Central Park, when there were half a million people attending. Global Citizen expects 60,000 fans.
It’s grass. Big deal. It grows back
Joe, you clearly don’t live here and don’t know what it’s been like after this event.
How much is the processing fee?
This explains the mushrooming number of weed dispensaries on the UWS – these concert goers will need their kush!
Here we go again !!!!🤬
When will they ever learn.
What a shame, the stress they put on the Great Lawn in Central Park.
All for an organization that you never see the money for what it is really meant for.
Hard not to smell the whiff of payoffs.
Some people I know are advocating canceling contributions to CPC, what with travesties like this and out of control bikes coupled with big salaries for the leadership.