For more than 30 years, the Broadway Mall Association (BMA) has cared for the five miles of green space in the middle of Broadway — planting, restoring, and stewarding the 10.6 acres of parkland for the neighborhoods it connects.
Each season, we plant annuals and bulbs, tend trees and shrubs, maintain garden beds, add winter lighting, and curate public art installations that enliven the corridor. We partner with city agencies, business improvement districts, workforce programs, and community organizations to keep the malls welcoming and vibrant year-round.
In response to climate change and species decline, BMA’s expanded focus is ecological restoration and biological uplift — the foundation of our vision for The Great Green Way. Since 2024, we have completely restored many malls including 73rd Street, 83rd Street, 164th Street, and more, removing invasive English ivy and replanting with dozens of native species from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. These landscapes do more than beautify Broadway — they create an essential habitat for local pollinators, birds, and bats, and become ecological corridors.
Founded in 1980 by Eugene Hide after years of fiscal-crisis neglect, BMA began as a grassroots effort to restore Broadway’s planted promenades and became a nonprofit in 1987.
Today, as millions of New Yorkers live around and traverse Broadway – from the Upper West Side to Washington Heights – BMA is reimagining the malls, through restoration and community stewardship, as a continuous, climate-resilient greenscape.