A giant Ferris wheel is coming to Times Square
A giant Ferris wheel is coming to Times Square — and the idea is to roll out a welcome for tourists as the city looks to bounce back from the pandemic.
The massive amusement ride — which will stretch 110 feet high, the equivalent of 11 stories — will start getting assembled as soon as Thursday and be ready to hoist passengers high above the Crossroads of the World beginning early next week, The Post has learned.
The outsize attraction will be located just west of Duffy Square on Broadway between West 47th and West 48th Streets for about a 22 days, according to Vito Bruno, who heads up the Brooklyn-based entertainment company that’s behind the project.
“The city needs something fun, happy and nostalgic that brings you back to your childhood,” Bruno told The Post.
He added that he approached the Times Square Alliance about the idea several months ago, “and it’s been a sprint ever since,” with a myriad of permits, inspections and signoffs from multiple city agencies.
The hope is that the wheel will give Times Square a boost while area businesses and restaurants wait for Broadway shows to reopen in September. Foot traffic has been steadily returning and is nearly two-thirds of what it was pre-pandemic, according to the Times Square Alliance.
The Ferris wheel “fits perfectly into the mayor’s overarching summer of fun campaign which includes the five borough concerts and Five Boro Bike Tour,” Alliance president Tom Harris told The Post. “We want to give people that ‘wow’ moment to show them Times Square is back.”
After a weeks-long journey from Texas, a caravan of three, 53-foot trailers pulled into Times Square carrying the Ferris wheels parts early Thursday afternoon. The trucks had arrived in New Jersey nearly three weeks earlier and had been parked in Secaucus near the Meadowlands ever since.
A six-person crew that’s putting it together was flown in from California and Florida, staying at the Edison Hotel in Times Square, and has been waiting for the green light from the city to assemble it, a job that’s expected to take four days.
The wheel has a permit to be in Times Square for a total of 29 days, which includes the six days it requires to be assembled and taken down.
Tickets — which will cost between $15 and $20 each — will be sold online and at an on-site ticket booth. Visitors will be assigned a specific time for a 12-minute ride.
“It’ll be the number one selfie spot in the world,” Bruno predicted. “Times Square will get hundreds of millions of positive impressions.”
It’s part of a larger campaign to promote Times Square as a happening destination again — and a family friendly one at that — after tourists and locals, including office workers, fled last year.
A series of events, from free Jazz concerts on Thursday evenings to Broadway Buskers on Fridays and even the live taping of the children’s show Wonderama in Duffy Square in July, is aimed at dispelling the scary reports of broad-daylight shootings earlier this summer.
Times Square lost its only Ferris wheel in 2015 when the Toys R Us store in the Bow Tie building on Broadway between West 44th and West 45th Streets shuttered, removing the 65-foot Ferris wheel that had lured millions of families to the area.
The wheel that’s arriving now is owned by amusement ride company Ray Cammack Shows and has been used at Coachella and the Final Four, according to Bruno.
Bruno’s company, AMPM Entertainment Concepts, which typically produces concerts, is footing the entire bill for the Ferris wheel and counting on ticket sales to be made whole.
“This is all on me and my little company,” Bruno said.