This plan is for the birds.
City officials and NYC Audubon want all lights decorating the outside of buildings above the 40th floor to be turned off by midnight from now until the end of October.
The initiative, called Lights Out New York, is to be announced today and is designed to help hundreds of thousands of migrating birds navigate safely through the Big Apple on their annual route south.
Every year, 10,000 birds, among them red-tailed hawks, kestrels and white-throated sparrows, flap their way through the city after dark, get thrown off by the high-perched lights and crash into the skyscrapers – most often fatally.
“We find hundreds of birds every year injured or dead in the city,” said NYC Audubon Executive Director E.J. McAdams.
“We’re not asking building owners to turn out the lights all year round,” he said, pointing out that the migrating season is only a few months long in the spring and fall.
He added that dimming the nighttime skyline would also cut down on the building owners’ electricity bills.
“What we’re looking for is a win-win situation,” he said. “And while the city is 24-7, there are a lot of people in bed by midnight.”
The Empire State Building – which experienced a lot of problems with birds in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s – already turns off its famed lights by midnight, McAdams noted.
The 77-story Chrysler Building now keeps its decorative lights shining until sunrise – but it will soon join the Lights Out program, a source said.
Still, McAdams said, more than 100 New York buildings top 40 stories and keep their lights on beyond the witching hour.
As part of Lights Out New York, which was patterned after a successful program launched in Chicago, the Audubon Society and city officials are reaching out to groups that represent building owners.
Promises of support have been elicited from the Real Estate Board of New York and the Building Owners’ and Managers’ Association, the Parks Department said.
But the initiative isn’t only about outside lights. It’s also asking commercial and residential tenants on upper floors – and people in low-rise buildings with big windows along the rivers – to turn out the lights or at least draw the blinds.