A rich corporation like Disney that saw a financial boon in making it happen.
Forgive what may seem like a lengthy tirade, but I see
red whenever the transformation of Times Square is attributed to Disney.
It's certainly true that Disney renovated one theatre that had not been used for many years and put The Lion King in it. They also opened a Disney Store at 42nd and 7th, which is no longer there. And that's it.
Politicians, for years, had been trying to clean up the square and to put new buildings there. Under Mayor David Dinkins, New York's crime rate finally started going down.
Around then, The Gap opened a store at 42nd and Broadway. Other retailers laughed, at first, but they sure took note when the store did a whole lot of business. Soon, other emporiums opened in the area, including, across the street, a Warner Brothers Studio Store (now gone).
Then came the builders: Conde Nast put up an office building and Reuters soon followed. Hilton built a hotel, and, since nobody wants a room on the lower floors on 42nd street, they joined forces with a cineplex: Rather remarkably, the cinema pushed an old theatre down the street and renovated it, using a lot of the hotel space, for the movies. See a movie there, and then you exit into a food court that's under the hotel. There's also a new Westin Hotel and a new W hotel - I think those are different things.
What they're not is Disney. As far as I know, Disney has nothing to do with these other companies. Nor do they have to do with all the national chains: Appleby's, Chili's Chevy's, Cold Stone Creamery - all making their first appearance in Manhattan.
If I took the time to tell the whole story, I'd go into the Business Improvement District, which runs the neighborhood using rent-a-cops. But let's not go there.
Sure, the porn is gone. That was Giuliani's main contribution. But gone, too, is the sense of Times Square as a special place, with restaurants you can't find in your home town. It may be more crowded, more lit and taller, but this is the one New York City neighborhood that's very much like everywhere else in America.
I share, with many here, the dream that Hollywood Boulevard could become a pedestrian-friendly tourist attraction. One thing BK hopes for that I don't see happening is the reopening of cinemas with just one auditorium. On Times Square, we've only one of those left, Loew's Astor Place, and I doubt it's doing very well.
There, that wasn't so bad, was it?
