THE CITY OWNS BRYANT PARK. A PRIVATE NONPROFIT DECIDED WHO COOKS ON ITS LAWN.

Bryant Park Grill opened on the back lawn of the New York Public Library in 1995. Ark Restaurants' filings count 180 seats inside and 820 outside, and the place keeps about 250 people on payroll. With the Café and the Porch beside it, it did $25.5 million in sales in Ark's last fiscal year, 15.4 percent of everything the company takes in. It is the kind of room a city uses without thinking about it: a lunch between meetings, a drink after the library closes, a wedding where the groom's family came in from New Jersey. On June 18 a judge cleared the way to put it out. On September 22 an appeals court said not yet. In between, the people who decided its future were not the people who own the land.

Bryant Park is city property. The corporation that runs it is not city government. Bryant Park Corporation was founded in 1980 by Dan Biederman and Andrew Heiskell, and in 1988 the city turned day-to-day control of the park over to it. It calls itself privately funded. The Parks Commissioner sits on its board ex officio. Its money comes from assessments on the surrounding buildings, rent, sponsorships and events, and its most recent tax filing reports about $30.5 million in revenue for the year that ended in June 2025. Ark pays the corporation about $3 million a year for the Grill, the Café and the Porch. Biederman has said the Grill paid $28 million in rent over its thirty years.

That arrangement is how the park went from a place New Yorkers avoided to the lawn office workers fight over at lunch. It is also why a private nonprofit, not a city agency, got to pick who cooks there first.

Ark's leases on the Grill, the Café and the Porch ran out in the spring of 2025. The corporation ran a competitive process for the space, and Biederman later said eleven restaurants were seriously considered. On January 27, 2025, he told a Community Board 5 committee the winner was Jean-Georges. Seaport Entertainment Group, which owns a quarter of Jean-Georges Restaurants, was set to run it, with an 18-year contract and a $12 million renovation. The Parks Department still had to sign off.

Ark fought the pick. Its lawyers argued the Jean-Georges bid was speculative and guaranteed at least $1 million less in annual rent than Ark's own. Its court filing, as the New York Post reported, accused Biederman of running the park as his “personal domain.” Michael Weinstein, Ark's chief executive, said the Grill would keep serving as long as the case was in court.

By June 2026 Seaport was out of the operating role. Lois Freedman, chief executive of Jean-Georges Restaurants, told the Post: “If/when we sign [a lease], we will be the operators, not Seaport Entertainment.” In August, Ark told shareholders that the approvals required from the Parks Department and the New York Public Library were never obtained, Nation's Restaurant News reported. The corporation named the next chef for city land in January 2025. The city has not signed off.

Ark sued in March 2025, and a judge denied its request for a temporary injunction. On June 18, 2026, a Manhattan Supreme Court justice ruled the corporation could move ahead with eviction now that the leases had expired. The same decision found the corporation had breached its lease with Ark, including Ark's right of first lease, with damages to be set at a later trial. Ark said it would appeal, posted a $125,000 undertaking in July, and kept a stay that ran to about October 16.

On September 22 the Appellate Division put the eviction on hold while the appeal is heard. Eater NY reports the next hearing is scheduled for February. After the June ruling, the corporation's lawyer, Gil Feder, told Crain's: “We can work it out, we would try to work it out.” The Grill opened for lunch the next day, and the day after that.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten can cook. That was never the question. The question is who gets to decide what a public park's dining room is for, and in what order. The order here was: a private corporation chose, announced, and went to court to clear the tenant; the agency responsible for the land was to sign off later; the people who ate on the lawn for thirty years were not asked at all. A restaurant that pays about $3 million a year in rent to a nonprofit is not a charity case, and a court has already found the corporation broke its lease with that tenant.

The city has one lawn like this. It will have a restaurant on it either way. If the next one arrives through an agreement nobody outside a boardroom has read, with the Parks Department's signature added after the press release, the lawn is public in name and private in practice. The Grill is open tonight. Go sit on the terrace while the appeal runs, and decide whether a public park should be run like one.