The Bryant Park Grill Is Fighting to Survive

It’s Tuesday, and we’ll look at a lease renewal for a restaurant that has been a centerpiece of Bryant Park since the 1990s. We’ll also get details on why the city’s famously delicious tap water may taste different for a while.

“Help save Bryant Park Grill,” the restaurant’s website has said imploringly for the last couple of weeks. A spokeswoman said the restaurant was fighting “to avoid shutting down.”

The web page amounted to a pre-emptive strike by Ark Restaurants, the company that has run the Bryant Park Grill for nearly 30 years in the park behind the New York Public Library between West 40th and 42nd Streets. The restaurant’s lease expires in eight months. The landlord and manager of the park, the nonprofit Bryant Park Corporation, says it has not made a final decision about whether to renew the lease with new terms or to bring in a different tenant.

Michael Weinstein, the chief executive of Ark Restaurants, is unhappy about the way the renewal process has been handled by the Bryant Park Corporation, which leases the restaurant space from the city and in turn leases it to Ark.

Ark said the process of renewing the operating agreement had been going on for more than 11 months, starting with the nonprofit’s issuing a request for proposals, or R.F.P., which is used to solicit bids from prospective vendors or tenants.