http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...BC%20Universal
Donald Trump's Circus, and Bread
November 9, 1987
After an ardent 18-month courtship, Donald Trump has failed to win the hand of NBC as owner-tenant for 10 acres of his dramatic 76-acre development proposed for Manhattan's West Side. That adds urgency to efforts by Mayor Koch and Governor Cuomo to keep NBC in New York, the way they have now succeeded in keeping the Dreyfus Corporation. And
it leaves Mr. Trump wondering what to do with the 10-acre site now.
One of his ideas is an amusement park modeled on Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. While that might be an appealing circus, New Yorkers are better off with bread.
Mr. Trump's proposed development fronts on the Hudson River, from 59th to 72d Streets; it's the largest remaining vacant site in Manhattan. Here is where Mr. Trump wants to build the world's tallest building, and much else: 7,600 luxury apartments, a 750-room hotel, a 1.3 million square foot shopping mall, office space, 14 acres of parkland and open space and 7,300 parking spaces.
The project raises difficult issues of density, transit and traffic, air quality and shadows.
What should now be done with the ex-NBC site? One of Mr. Trump's suggestions is for a Tivoli-on-the-Hudson, and that inspires visions. Imagine a park and playground, with strings of winking, colored lights outlining minarets and ferris wheels. Think of New Yorkers on a soft summer night strolling among the musicians, mimes, acrobats and tight-rope walkers. Picture the hydrofoils zipping in from New Jersey and Westchester. Such an enterprise rings with the sound of Donald Trump, the showman-entrepreneur.
But wait. Vision is to be prized, but at the moment, New York desperately needs something more mundane: affordable housing. And if Mr. Trump is a showman-entrepreneur, he is also a master builder. He could enhance that reputation by making those 10 acres a showplace for low- and moderate-income housing. In the process, he could soften the controversy that has already arisen over his project and earn needed political support.
Mr. Trump could lease the land for a dollar a year to a nonprofit agency with housing management experience. The city could finance a thousand or more units on the site. Then the Trump Organization, not the city, could undertake the construction, perhaps with the help of imaginative architects. In 1986, Donald Trump built an ice skating rink for New York faster and cheaper than the city could. Now, he could benefit his ambition, and the public, by exchanging one vision for another.
A park of soft pleasures on summer nights tantalizes the imagination but houses no citizens. An imaginative array of homes for lower-income New Yorkers would create a consummate example of doing well by doing good.