Central Park, New York City’s largest park, will host a large concert as part of New York City’s “Homecoming Week” festivities celebrating reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday.
“This is going to be an amazing, memorable, once-in-a-lifetime week in New York City, … and we decided to do something classic, iconic: a massive concert in Central Park to celebrate the rebirth of New York City,” he said. “The concert will be in August. It will celebrate the summer of New York City, the comeback, and it will emphatically make the point there is no stopping New York.”
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De Blasio said the concert will boast a “great lineup” because he has enlisted record producer Clive Davis to find artists to perform at the event, which is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 21.
Central Park, which said Davis is aiming for eight “iconic” stars to perform a three-hour show for 60,000 attendees and a worldwide television audience, described the planned concert as “perhaps the best proof that New York City has returned to its full glory.”
“We can’t wait — stay tuned!” the park teased in its announcement.
New York imposed some of the strictest lockdowns in the country during the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented a statewide mask mandate that remained in effect until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance on May 13 dropping its recommendation that vaccinated people wear face masks, even indoors, and the city’s indoor dining capacity was severely restricted even when restaurants began reopening in recent months.
New York City, which has more than 8 million residents inhabiting close living quarters, was once the epicenter of the pandemic. More than 780,000 cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in the city, and 28,225 deaths were attributed to the disease, according to data provided by New York City.
Coronavirus cases have sharply decreased in recent weeks, which the mayor attributed to increasing vaccination rates. More than half of all people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to New York City’s records.
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De Blasio has encouraged expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines, even proposing last month that vaccinating tourists at popular sites across the Big Apple would send “a positive message to tourists: ‘Come here. It’s safe, it’s a great place to be, and we’re going to take care of you.'”
Representatives for de Blasio did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.
