CHANCES are you know what you think about the proposed stadium for the Far West Side – the plans for which just crossed a major hurdle yesterday. If you live in Manhattan, odds are you’re against it.
Though their politics tend to lean far to the Left, Manhattanites have spent the past 30 years as visceral reactionaries, opposing any and all change.
They are effective reactionaries, too. They kvetch. They moan. They form committees. They scream and yell and whine and sue. And often, all too often, they get their way.
And what results from them getting their way? Let’s consider three cautionary West Side tales.
The first concerns a massive chunk of real estate on Broadway between 96th and 97th Streets. From 1915 until 1976, two undistinguished movie theaters (called the Riverside and the Riviera) occupied the real estate. In 1972, the now-defunct Alexander’s announced it was going to tear the theaters down and put a major department store on the site.
The neighborhood was of two minds. On the one hand, it would be nice to have a convenient inexpensive retailer nearby. On the other hand, local mom-and-pop shops worried that Alexander’s would drive them out of business.
Then the activists got involved – specifically, neighborhood radicals who had succeeded in gaining control of the local community board. They did everything in their power to delay, deny and obstruct Alexander’s, and eventually the retailer fled.
In 1976, the two theaters were demolished because they were deemed unsafe. And then, for nearly eight years, a vast gaping hole sat smack dab in the middle of the Upper West Side.
And as the neighborhood declined in the late ’70s, that big chunk of land went from an eyesore to an urban calamity.
Some of the radicals had the idea of turning it into a community garden. It became an open-air drug market instead. It was fenced in. The dealers broke through the chain link and kept selling their woeful wares.
But every time somebody came along even with a notion of how to develop the site, the radicals worked to stymie it again. They demanded that one developer put in a recreation room for the “community” – which would’ve just moved the open-air drug market from the gaping hole into more comfortable interior quarters.
Eventually – after the site had lain fallow for most of a decade – the powerful Zeckendorf family took it over and built a condominium there. And the new apartment building went a long way toward stabilizing what had been a neighborhood in grave peril.
Then comes the nightmare that was Columbus Circle.
In 1987, Mort Zuckerman announced plans to build a dramatic tower on the site of the disastrous Coliseum convention center. He was stymied for years by a coalition of well-heeled crazies who became convinced the towers would cast Central Park in shadow. They drove him away – and again a key intersection in the city lay fallow for more than 15 years until ground was broken on the new Time Warner Center.
Overly sophisticated New Yorkers like to grouse about the Time Warner Center – how it’s like a suburban mall. Big deal. The place is a huge contribution to the life of the city.
Finally, there was the hue and cry about the apartment towers to which Donald Trump has signed his name on a new stretch of Riverside Drive below 72nd Street. They’re terrifically attractive buildings and the deal made to get them built has allowed Riverside Park to grow a bit, which is always welcome.
And now, West Siders a few miles south are kicking up a fuss about the new stadium and the concomitant development of the area around it. This project follows a previously stymied effort by Rudy Giuliani to put a Yankees ball park on the same site. Perhaps, once again, the second go-round will be the charm.
And the people who will benefit the most from it will be some of the people who are squawking the loudest now – neighborhood residents who will see their quality of life increase dramatically from the new businesses and new excitement in their now-deserted neck of the woods.
Of course, there is one very unhappy squawker – James Dolan, the CEO of Cablevision, who has made it his obsessive life’s work to block the stadium because he fears it will hurt Madison Square Garden’s business.
As somebody who has suffered in innumerable ways through innumerable events at the Garden over four decades, I can only say: I sure hope MSG takes a hit. Maybe even from a wrecking ball.