Battery Park

For more than 20 years, dogs have run free on Battery Park’s main lawn early in the morning. The unused grassy area was a place for dogs and their owners to socialize, the only large open space downtown where dogs could run around. But that changed this summer, when Parks Department officers began issuing $150 tickets to dog owners, enforcing a leash policy that had long been ignored.

Read it all here.
What's particularly interesting is that the Battery Park authorities seem to have enforced the leash law quite vigorously otherwise via rent-a-PEP agents, who have given many tickets. So of course the existence of this de facto off-leash area hasn't heretofore induced dog owners to limit their depredations to it. It won't if the area becomes off-leash de jure.