Upper East Siders are trashing NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to eliminate nearly 30,000 parking spaces citywide and plunk tens of thousands of massive garbage containers streetside – saying it would turn the posh neighborhood into “Dumpsterville.”
The towering, UFO-like metal trash containers – called “Empire Bins” — would line up like “permanent walls” block by block, creating eyesores that would attract graffiti, choke out lighting and potentially cause safety concerns at night, warned Valerie Mason, who chairs Manhattan Community Board 8.
“We are concerned about the resulting 24/7 visual blight, and perhaps even more significant than the effect on our quality of life, we are concerned about public safety, especially at night, as ambient light from street traffic, which helps illuminate the sidewalks, may be blocked by these tall and wide non-transparent containers,” wrote Mason in the board’s Aug. 7 letter to Sanitation Department officials.
Residents “do not want to . . . live in ‘Upper East Dumpsterville,’” added Mason, who demanded the city provide the public extra time to weigh in on the controversial program.
The Upper East Side would be the hardest hit neighborhood in the city.
CB8 would lose 1,658 – or nearly 10% — of its parking spots to accommodate 3,648 containers, according to a July 1 document outlining the program’s environmental impact. Other street space not used for parking would also accommodate the massive 6-foot-long, 5-foot-wide, 5-foot-tall metal monstrosities.
Manhattan’s Community Board 7, which covers the Upper West Side, would lose 1,460 – or 10.3% — of its parking to accommodate 3,211 containers.
Combined, both neighborhoods would host 6,859 – or 10.2% — of the projected 66,817 Empire Bins, while 3,118 of the projected 29,842 Big Apple parking spaces slated to be be eliminated through the program would come from the UES and UWS.
Empire Bins were first introduced through a 10-block pilot program in 2023 in West Harlem as part of former Mayor Eric Adams’ infamous “war on rats” that called for eliminating trash bags on curbs. The program — which targets residential buildings with more than 30 units — was expanded throughout West Harlem’s Manhattan Community Board 9 by June 2025, and now Mamdani wants to make it permanent citywide and roll it out through 2032.
Victor Edwards, who chairs CB9, told The Post the pilot program has had “mixed results.”
While the local rat population might have dropped slightly, many residents are still furious about losing parking to make way for “ugly,” huge dumpsters being plopped in front of their multimillion-dollar townhouses and brownstones, he said.
The city also needs to give communities more input on bin placement because many throughout West Harlem were placed in front of smaller homes, not only 30-plus-unit residential buildings, he added.
Despite the ire in her district, UWS Democratic Councilwoman Gale Brewer said she supports the program.
“Parking is a huge issue . . . Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “I don’t have a car, but people want them for family-member needs, medical needs, leisure, and parking [in an UWS parking lot] can be $1,400 a month.”
Sanitation Department spokesman Vincent Gragnani defended the Empire Bins program, saying the former “decades-old practice of leaving trash bags in stinking mounds” was “unacceptable.”
He also insisted communities will have another shot to provide additional input before bins and are dumped on their respective neighborhood, and he claimed the bins would “block less ambient light than the private vehicles that currently occupy the exact same curb space today.”
“All New Yorkers should be proud of the cleaner city that is emerging each day,” he added.
