Visitors can soon take selfies in Times Square next to elephants, giraffes, reptiles and other wild beasts. That is, when they bring the animals’ virtual likenesses to life through a smartphone app.
Starting Monday, the animals will roam and play against the backdrop of New York’s tourism-and-entertainment mecca through the Concrete Jungle AR TimesSquare augmented reality app produced by property developer Jamestown, the owner of One Times Square, home of the well-known New Year’s Eve ball drop.
AR technology, which integrates digital content with real-life environments, has been widely adopted for various uses including retail, entertainment and job training. For instance, Amazon uses it to help shoppers see if a couch fits in their living room. Beauty companies allow customers to check how a lipstick shade looks on their skin. When it was released in 2016, the widely popular AR game Pokémon Go sent fervent players worldwide searching for characters in locations including Manhattan’s Central Park and the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan.
This isn’t the first time an AR experience has been offered in Times Square. In 2018, Unmoored, a six-minute mixed-reality experience, was said to take users through an experience of the area submerged in water.
Through Jamestown’s Concrete Jungle app, users will be able to access five viewing zones, each with a distinct group of animals in their own unique environments, the developer said Friday in a statement. The app offers virtual games with quest badges, a 3D puzzle, and the ability to capture photos with a virtual animal companion, including spiders, crocodiles, parrots, tree frogs and lions.
The app is responsive to the user’s movements and the time of day within the five viewing zones across the public plazas of Times Square from 43rd to 47th streets along Broadway and Seventh Avenue, Jamestown said. At each viewing zone, two Concrete Jungle “park rangers” will be stationed daily during peak hours to help visitors with the experience.
Immersive Real Estate Technology
Atlanta-based Jamestown said it’s exploring the use of a range of immersive technologies across its real estate portfolio, with Concrete Jungle based out of the 118-year-old One Times Square serving as the first project.
“Augmented reality is the future of entertainment, retail, advertising, and the built environment more broadly,” Michael Phillips, president of Jamestown, said in the statement.
“Concrete Jungle will scale and normalize augmented reality experiences as a tool to enhance engagement with the public. These technologies can be leveraged beyond entertainment to improve wayfinding, public safety, and health and wellness. Jamestown is at the forefront of creating that bridge by investing in technology to create experiences that will transition the physical to digital life in the future, ” he said.
The app’s unveiling comes as One Times Square is undergoing a $500 million overhaul for the next two years to modernize the historic 26-story building and open it to the public for the first time in decades. The redevelopment also includes enhancing the entire bow-tie-shaped area of Times Square with “cinematic storytelling” through augmented reality, Jamestown said. The developer is planning to offer a 12-floor experience giving brands the ability to market to customers.
Jamestown isn’t the only real estate developer using AR or virtual reality, which makes users believe what they are experiencing through a headset is a real-life experience.
Fisher Brothers, a fourth-generation real estate company, in May unveiled newly installed public art at 1345 Avenue of the Americas in midtown Manhattan. The painted mural, which portrays a multicolored falcon in flight, can work with an AR app to bring the falcon to life and take viewers on a journey through the five thematic elements: earth, water, fire, air and space.
“We believe in developing creative and inspiring spaces,” Ken Fisher, partner at Fisher Brothers, said in a statement at the time. “Art plays an important role in activating public spaces and, ultimately, defining neighborhoods.”
The debut of Concrete Jungle, if it turns out to be as popular as Pokémon Go, may further boost foot traffic in Times Square, which already has seen a sharp rebound from the start of the pandemic that made it a ghost town.
Pedestrian traffic in June averaged 344,133 people per day, more than double from June 2021, according to the Times Square Alliance, the area’s business improvement group. June’s count is only 13% below the June 2019 level. Pedestrian counts exceeded 400,000 daily visitors three times last month, reaching a high of 426,236 daily visitors on June 13, according to the latest monthly report.