Traffic-Free Plaza Roils Little India in Queens Merchants say a walkway on 37th Road in Jackson Heights hurts commerce, is frequently strewn with trash from picnickers and draws loiterers. The new pedestrian plaza on 37th Road in Jackson Heights, in the heart of Little India, is an oasis of calm, a much-needed stretch of open space in a traffic-glutted area of Queens. Or, it is a glaring example of disastrous city planning, a blighted, unlovely esplanade that has all but decimated commerce in the neighborhood. It depends on whom you ask. Last September, in efforts to create more open space and decongest nearby Roosevelt Avenue, the city repurposed one block of the road - much as the Bloomberg administration has reinvented chunks of Times Square - to be a haven for pedestrians. But the plaza bears little resemblance to Times Square, just six miles away. A half-dozen traffic-blocking boulders and rickety picnic tables seem to be the sum total of the alterations to the streetscape to date, but business owners say it has been enough to turn a once-bustling block into a barren one. In the coming days, the plaza will be tweaked: parking spots will be added and a tributary road rerouted, among other things. But still the community remains divided between merchants and residents, who see the plaza, between 73rd and 74th Streets, as a boon for a park-starved populace. "This is a business place, this is not Times Square where people come from all of the world and sit there," said Javed Chaudhry, who sells phone cards and accessories at GRB Distributors. He recalled feeling a mounting dread as the boulders rolled in. "I knew I was going to lose my bread and butter," he said. Without car traffic or the Q47 and Q49 buses that used to stop on the block, many merchants claim business has fallen by at least half. Park advocates say the recession is more to blame. But even during the economy's darkest days, says Raj Bhalla, who sells cellphones, Jackson Heights was largely spared, because of the bustling business of East Asian people drawn here for products from their homelands. Councilman Daniel Dromm, a Democrat who had pushed for the plaza, said he believed the business owners were overstating the impact, and he challenged the merchants to turn over their books and prove their losses. No one has done so. Even if the business community were to prove its claim, Mr. Dromm said, the plaza would most likely stay. The plaza was created after an 18-month study of safety and congestion in Jackson Heights by the city's Transportation Department, said Seth Solomonow, a department spokesman. No cost estimate is available, he said: the boulders, tables and paint were already on hand. It broke ground after unanimous resolutions by Community Boards 3 and 4. "They didn't ask me anything; nobody knew," said Abdul Karim, who manages the Jackson Heights Music Center on 37th Road. They just came. They closed the street. Mr. Dromm said that he tried to reach out to business owners but that he was dismissed. Nooruddin Dashti owns two jewelry shops on the road. Since the closing in September, he says, he was forced to reduce hours at his newest shop after firing all but one of his employees because he could no longer pay them. Little India's customer base, the merchants argue, is not foot traffic. Destination shoppers come here for Nepalese, Indian and Bangladeshi goods. The closing ate up parking spots, merchants say, and made streets unnavigable. Some passers-by, however, enjoy it. "We like it, it's nice, it's kind of less crowded, otherwise you'd see a lot of vehicles coming from here, there, you never know," said Karsang Dawa, who lives nearby in Woodside. But it's very dirty, that's a problem. Mr. Dashti says he has been fined by the Sanitation Department for picnickers" litter. On a recent Thursday, piles of garbage spilled from trash bags on the tables and lumped in the street, next to boxes and a broken television. Cigarette butts eddied in the gutters. Workers from the Doe Fund now clean multiple times a day, says Mr. Dromm, who spent $42,500 from his discretionary fund on sanitation there. On a sunny morning in early March, the street was nearly empty. A few men slept at the blue picnic tables, more than one emitting a scent that made sharing a table impossible. The lounging men have become a fixture since the street closed, people who live nearby said. One man, who gave his name only as Derek, said he began hanging out on the block as soon as the street was closed. "Rather than be on an avenue that is all active and engines flowing here and going there," said Derek, as he paced back and forth unsteadily, "it's calm and tranquil." Perhaps too calm and tranquil, says Mr. Chaudhry, the phone-card salesman. "Either this park is going to be here," he says, "or we're going to be here."