Reconnecting the Empire State Plaza

Photo: A water fountain with functional tap but disconnected spigot, located on the observation level of the Corning Tower, part of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, USA, pictured on November 18, 2025, around 7 PM, during a workshop on reconnecting the Empire State Plaza to its surrounding neighborhoods.

Reconnecting the Empire State Plaza to Albany (New York, USA)

After 24 years living in the Hudson Park and Mansion neighborhoods of Albany, I recently moved away, just in time to miss Gov. Hochul’s $25 million investment in the Empire State Plaza. Sigh. Still, as a complex systems scientist, I can tell you what I see as the one indispensable feature missing from the place and how that omission relates to our civilization’s stability.

From fall to spring, external stairways are blocked off the entire time, forcing visitors walking north on Swan Street into a long detour and making access from Madison Avenue to the Plaza seem forbidden.

For years, the south Concourse bathrooms have been locked evenings and weekends, without any sign directing visitors to the distant, but available, north bathrooms. The Concourse remains stripped of its benches, surely a violation, at least in spirit, of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Unless you’re familiar with the place, you would be hard-pressed to figure out how to enter the Concourse from the north or, evenings and weekends, exit it to the north. In fact, disoriented visitors are a common sight in the Concourse near the Convention Center. What if a fire broke out?

The observation deck in the Corning Tower, the tallest building in New York State north of Westchester County, is open 10 to 4, Monday through Friday, except holidays. I once apologized to a visitor who, ignorant of local custom, expected this tourist attraction to be accessible outside bankers’ hours. No, the visitor was not Rebecca Lobo, who mockingly challenged us to find something to do in Albany.

The State Museum also lacks evening and holiday hours. Doesn’t anyone go on museum dates these days? Incidentally, the old state museum, the former D&H Building, and the Old Albany Academy Building are also downtown landmarks containing architectural, artistic, and historical treasures, but they are sealed to the public, ironically enough, by education administrators whose offices they contain.

I goggle at the folly of it all, but the stoneheartedness hurts worst, for I’ve walked the Concourse when its entrances were locked early on a frigid evening. I’ve seen a man ordered to leave, not move, for lying down near the Madison Avenue entrance, possibly because there was a shindig in the Convention Center.

What's missing in each case is hospitality. Sure, there are arguments in favor of each policy, often having to do with frugality or security, including securing the state from legal liability. However, you have to spend money to make money, and excessive security destroys the value of what’s secured.

The solution in each case is to hire people to provide hospitality: a concierge to supplement state police efforts to serve visitors; people to shovel snow from staircases; museum, landmark, and observation deck docents; maybe bathroom attendants.

Oh, and house everyone.

If you’re worried about the economics, consider that artificial intelligence is seen by many as a means to eliminate vast numbers of jobs, eventually, perhaps, all of them. The work that might remain would consist of helping people directly and, for a time, physical labor not easily mechanized.

Still, if you think first of economics, please consider that economics must be subordinate to values. I have been exposed to Christian values. According to Ezekiel 16:49, Sodom was destroyed for inhospitality, an immorality shockingly illustrated in Genesis19:5 by the crowd’s attempt to rape angels visiting their city.

My scientific training makes me feel viscerally how inhospitality could take down our civilization. For some, religion or human decency makes them feel it. Wherever our feelings come from, let’s use them when we decide how to spend the $25 million.