The de Blasio administration will give the owners of 17 enormous office towers in Lower Manhattan a chance to fill in the public arcades along their buildings’ ground floors and turn a shadowy, windswept realm into moneymaking retail space.

The arcades were constructed from the 1960s through the 1980s under an abandoned and discredited zoning theory that imagined Water Street, near the southern tip of Manhattan Island, benefiting from covered pedestrian walkways like those on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris.

In exchange for providing open-air arcades around their buildings, developers were permitted to construct more office area than zoning rules would have ordinarily allowed. That added to their revenue in perpetuity. The public was supposed to benefit in perpetuity, too. But it did not.

A few arcades create inviting vistas or make it easier to navigate downtown’s erratic street grid. Some have cafes. They are handy for escaping a downpour or blazing summer sun. But many are used as outdoor smoking lounges. Pedestrians prefer sidewalks to the gloomy, moribund spaces.