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Photograph: TAPPED OUT Only the Times Square Theater is unclaimed in redevelopment area.
Real estate magnate Douglas Durst is part owner of New York state's largest organic farm. Construction's Dan Tishman raises llamas and trees in New England. Urban planner Rebecca Robertson is a transplant from Toronto, a city far away from the bite of the Big Apple. And Disney's own king, Michael Eisner, is America's reigning symbol of squeaky clean--from sea to shining sea.
So what's an odd bunch like this doing in a place like Times Square--for two generations reviled as the crossroads of cheese? They are creating the miracle of 42nd Street.
The strip between Broadway and Eighth Avenue is still an asphalt jungle. But street crime is down 50% since 1992. Pickpockets and con artists have been replaced by hordes of ordinary people. Marquees for the Lion King and Ragtime have prevailed over signs flashing ``XXX'' and ``Live Girls.'' And turf battles are between Disney and Warner stores.
Giant billboards camouflage construction's sidewalk sheds. And dirt is generated by dozers and dump trucks, not pimps and prostitutes. It's a changed scene.
The state-city-subsidized revival of the 13-acre zone that forms the southern border of Manhattan's theater district is already a hit, yet only 142,000 of an eventual 8 million sq ft of development is occupied. With only one site unaccounted for, the business establishment sees a street paved with gold.
``A public investment of $75 million has leveraged more than $2 billion in private investment,'' says Charles A. Gargano, who in 1995 became chairman of the state's Urban Development Corp., which he renamed the Empire State Development Corp., New York City. UDC, the state's enabler of urban economic development in 1982 formed the predecessor to the 42nd Street Development Project Inc., to turn around Manhattan's Tenderloin District.
Interim stores and eateries are keeping the street lively during the more lengthy construction work, as is a new Times Square subway station. The curtain came up on the New Victory children's theater in December 1995. In 1996, the New Amsterdam Theater started raking in audiences and kudos for The Lion King. The Ford Center for the Performing Arts, containing the restored landmark Apollo and Lyric Theaters, opened late last year with...