The Midtown Cultural District Plan outlines a balanced program of growth that will create a new downtown community of residences, businesses and cultural facilities. Specifically, the plan proposes ways to:

Create a new center of culture that will include 10 new theaters, new art galleries, satellite museums and public art installations.

Upgrade and expand the area's open space network by building a new gathering place on the Hinge Block, improving public areas in Downtown Crossing and Park Square, and creating smaller gathering areas and pedestrian-oriented walkways.

Aid Chinatown's community-based planning efforts by funding the construction of 800 units of housing (two-thirds of them affordable), requiring the affirmative marketing of neighborhood commercial space in new Midtown buildings, targeting job training funds for Chinatown residents, expanding open space facilities, jointly developing a traffic plan, limiting institutional expansion, and encouraging minority equity participation in new Midtown developments.

Expand the existing downtown residential community by building 3,000 units of new housing, one-quarter of them affordable, directing linkage money from Midtown developments to Chinatown, and setting aside 75 percent of the new affordable units built through inclusionary zoning for Chinatown residents.

Create a vibrant mixed-use economy by extending the office economy up the Bedford/Essex corridor, protecting and expanding the Downtown Crossing retail economy, creating day care facilities, and strengthening the area's cultural, hotel, and visitor economies.

Protect the area's more than 150 historic buildings by strengthening historic preservation laws and limiting new development in areas with large concentrations of historic buildings.

Improve the area's transportation systems by creating new east/west traffic connections, improving subway service, building a new Midtown subway line, carefully locating new parking facilities, and enforcing existing traffic codes.

Protect the district's historic scale and character through land use and urban design guidelines that ensure that new development is in character with the district.

The plan also generates a number of other benefits including more than 15,000 permanent new jobs, 8,500 construction jobs, $5 million in jobs linkage funds, $25 million in housing linkage funds, additional day care facilities, and $17 million in new property taxes. The policies outlined in the plan will be implemented through a variety of measures, including final zoning for the district. The new zoning, combined with coordinated actions by the city and state government, will reestablish Midtown as a premier center of the arts and business, make Midtown an important residential community, and support the unique resources that Chinatown has long provided for the area. (Summary, p. 11).

CONTENTS
1. Framework for the plan.
2. The cultural district.
3. Chinatown.
4. Building a new neighborhood.
5. Economy.
6. Historic preservation.
7. Urban design and land use.
8. Transportation access.
9. Achieving the plan.

The Midtown Cultural District Plan outlines a balanced program of growth that will create a new downtown community of residences, businesses and cultural facilities.