Fashion Week at Port Authority? Puh-leeze (at Least for Now)

Last week it seemed like the prolonged standoff between the Bryant Park Corporation and the company that manages Fashion Week, IMG, might finally be resolved when the Port Authority announced that the biannual event was slated to move to the Manhattan bus terminal in 2010.

Now Fashion Week’s future is once again up in the air, and, contrary to what you might think, the problem is not the venue itself—anyone who has picked up a copy of Vogue is surely familiar with the industry’s penchant for photographing leggy, designer-clad models in gritty environments, and what’s grungier than the Port Authority?

Real Estate Weekly reports that Port Authority officials realized that the southern portion of the bus terminal does not have enough elevators and escalators to ferry the 2,000-plus peanut gallery to the rooftop parking lot where the shows would take place.

The news will surely come as a blow to the nonprofit that manages the midtown plaza, the Bryant Park Corporation. The BPC has been trying to oust Fashion Week for years. In February, BPC president Daniel Biederman told The Observer that they were hopeful IMG might leave before their lease expires in 2010.

“Normally, we would not be involved in the search,” Mr. Biederman said, “but we’re so anxious to get rid of them that we’re working probably as hard as they are to find a new spot that fashion will like so we can run the ice rink through 2009-2010.”

Though the Port Authority said the deal is not quite dead in the water, IMG had not responded to their request for proposals to deal with the flow of fashionistas.

Here’s an idea: Have them use the stairs.