Top musical acts, including Lauryn Hill, John Legend and Lenny Kravitz, are set to hit Central Park’s Great Lawn Saturday for the Global Citizen Festival — but so could driving rain from a brewing nor’easter, threatening a disastrous encore of three years ago when the lawn was trashed and closed to the public for months.
In September 2023, the annual star-studded concert, was held despite heavy rain and soggy conditions. As a result, the Great Lawn had to be shut down two months ealier for repairs and resodding after tens of thousands of concertgoers stomped it into a muddy mess. The lawn’s closure, which usually happens in the winter, coincided with peak fall foliage-viewing season, putting a prime spot for autumn leaf lovers off limits.
The forecast points to a potential repeat. Wednesday morning, strong winds were already whipping New York, with forecasts on the developing nor’easter predicting a 70% chance of rain on Friday and Saturday, when the concert is set to run from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
“What’s going to happen this weekend?” asked Councilmember Gale Brewer, whose Upper West Side district includes Central Park. “I haven’t heard of any rain dates — they don’t do rain dates.”
Brewer is on record saying the Global Citizen Festival should not be held on the Great Lawn, urging it instead be relocated to Randalls Island. Other concerts in the park are nixed if it’s raining, the councilwoman noted. She said she plans to write to Mayor Mamdani this week about her concerns over the concert’s impact on the Great Lawn.
“It wasn’t even a nor’easter, it was a rainstorm,” she said of the 2023 festival fiasco. “We weren’t in winter yet. I don’t care how much sun there is, that place is jammed. So the notion that it’s OK to close it, even for a month, is to me outrageous.”
The city Parks Department and Central Park Conservancy, which operates the park, say they are monitoring the weather and taking steps to protect the lawn.
“NYC Parks is proud to continue its partnership with the Global Citizen Festival and bring such a significant event to Central Park,” a Parks spokesperson said. “We’re aware of the current weather forecast and, as with every large-scale event, we continuously monitor weather conditions in coordination with our sister agencies and event partners.”
The department is taking “extra steps” this year to help protect the Great Lawn during the festival, including adding more signage and detours to minimize impact on the grass, plus putting in “additional flooring, pre-seeding and conditioning (and) cordoning off vulnerable areas.”
“We trust NYC Parks to make the appropriate determination about whether the event proceeds based on conditions at the time and what is in the best interest of the Park,” a Central Park Conservancy spokesperson said. “We will continue to support preparations and work with our partners to ensure that appropriate measures are in place ahead of this year’s festival to protect the Lawn and the Park, particularly given the forecasted weather.”
A Global Citizen Festival spokesperson said the festival is coordinating with the Mayor’s Office and NYC agencies “to monitor conditions and prepare for every scenario,” adding, “just like we have done every year, if there is any damage, we cover all costs to fix it.”
“This is our 14th year in Central Park,” she said. “We’re excited because there’s still so much work to be done — nearly 10 percent of the world’s population is living in extreme poverty. Our movement won’t stop because it rains — it won’t stop until extreme poverty does.”
Global Citizen, which has raised billions to fight poverty, typically sees 60,000 concertgoers pack the 12-acre lawn. The festival in 2023 paid for the lawn’s repairs. Brewer has said she believes the festival also brings in around $2 million for the city’s general fund.
According to Hugh Evans, an Australian humanitarian who is the event’s co-founder and CEO, this year’s festival effort will allow “2.5 million families across the Indo-Pacific region to have access to clean energy,” plus benefit 1.5 million small farmers around the world and combat global food insecurity.
Locally, Evans said, volunteers are pitching in, and last week did a beach cleanup in the Rockaways and this week will “support homeless people across New York City.”
While the festival is primarily focused on supporting communities living in extreme poverty on less than $3 a day worldwide, it annually injects roughly $33 million into New York City through spending by attendees and visiting tourists on hotels, transit, retail, food and beverages, a spokesperson said.
Also, instead of entering a free ticket lottery, fans can make a $25 donation to support City Parks Foundation’s free programming or organizations helping homeless New Yorkers. People can also earn festival tickets by volunteering in NYC to do urban planting, food donation and more.
