Ninety-five blocks of Harlem will be getting free outdoor Wifi in the coming months – courtesy of a hefty infusion of Wall Street millions.
Mega-rich financier Glenn Fuhrman – a former Goldman Sachs managing director who now heads MSD Capital – and his wife Amanda donated $2 million to the city to pay for wiring the streets of Harlem, Mayor Bloomberg announced on Tuesday.
When complete, the area – stretching from 110th to 138th Street between Madison Avenue and Frederick Douglass Boulevard – will be the largest free WiFi zone in the country.
The first phase covering 110th to 120th Streets will be wired by the end of this month. The entire area will covered by May.
About 80,000 people live in the area, including 13,000 residents of public housing – but they might not want to cancel their WiFi subscriptions just yet. The streets will be zoned for outdoor reception, and service inside buildings will likely be weak.
Officials have yet to come up with a name for the WiFi network and password. The city is hosting a contest with local school kids to pick out a name and password.
Fuhrman and his wife were inspired to make their donation after hearing about Google’s free WiFi zone around its Chelsea headquarters, but on a larger scale. The Harlem zone is ten times larger than the one in Chelsea, which went up earlier this year.
“It’s pretty exciting,” Fuhrman told the News. “I’ve never done anything before where the mayor came to say thank you in person.”
He said he chose Harlem because he knew the area from his philanthropic work with the Harlem Children’s Zone, a hugely respected non-profit in the area.
