Ed Koch didn’t save Times Square. But no one at the time could have. The place was that terrible.
He gave the effort his all but made poor choices and left the “Crossroads of the World” seemingly in worse shape at the end of his mayoralty than it was at the start.
But looks deceived. The rebirth that gained irreversible traction years after Koch left City Hall took its first baby steps on his watch. Without his voluble commitment to change — his unshakable faith that there could be change — today’s commercially and culturally dazzling Times Square would still be an impossible dream.
Koch was no master urban planner, but he recognized the district for what it was: a repellent open sore in the city’s heart.
The energy that Koch invested in the Crossroads of the World galvanized the notion that it didn’t forever have to remain the world’s most brightly lit mugging and pimping ground.
He had neither the background nor the guts — nor the right Police Department — to rid the zone of predatory, violent crime. He did nothing to tame the annual horror show emblematic of street anarchy: the Times Square New Year’s Eve “celebration,” when thousands of drunk youths marauded and mugged their way through the “Bow Tie” unchecked.
But his heart was in the right place, and his conviction would eventually carry the day.
Koch found ways to shut down the porn peddlers who dominated Times Square and West 42nd Street — and by the end of his final term, they were mostly gone.
In the early 1980s, Koch put his clout behind construction of the massive Marriott Marquis Hotel, which required demolishing three beloved old theaters. He was vilified over it — but the hotel altered perceptions that no decent business would ever want a part of the area.
Once Koch made his mind up to anchor a “new” Times Square with modern office buildings, he and then-Gov. Mario Cuomo concocted a heavily subsidized scheme that was all thumbs. He chose the wrong developer and blessed its design for a quartet of bulky, unadorned towers that would have sucked Times Square dry of whatever legitimate street life remained.
A sinking economy mercifully killed the project. But it proved an indispensable crash-test dummy for what came later. Future mayors and developers learned from earlier mistakes.
And the template Koch established survives. The popular new towers at 42nd Street and Seventh and Eighth avenues look nothing like the ones originally proposed — but they’re exactly where Koch envisioned them. They incorporate all the lessons about show-business uses and bright lights gleaned from the detested original plan.
Koch also used rezoning and tax breaks to spur construction of 7 million square feet of new office buildings in the Theater District. That led directly to the rise of such mighty skyscrapers as 1585 Broadway with its famous triple-tier news zipper — and an influx of new companies and thousands of well-paid executives.
By the time David Dinkins was turning City Hall over to Rudy Giuliani in January 1994, Times Square was at last ready for prime time.
The rest is history. But history might have been very different had Koch not persevered for change when most regarded hope as a waste of time.