Word: disneyized
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...Amsterdam--and more to the point, Disney's corporate presence and the vote of confidence it represents--is the anchor for an ambitious city and state plan to make over 42nd Street, long the area's most notorious thoroughfare. As the sleaziest strip in the sleaziest part of town, the stretch of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues was from the late '60s until just a few years ago the ninth circle of Times Square. "You could buy anything you wanted, whether it was drugs or girls or boys or green cards or telephone cards. You really felt like...
...becoming Manhattan's most chipper. On its east end a onetime porno palace--where Robert De Niro took Cybill Shepherd on an ill-fated date in Taxi Driver--is now a children's theater. Across the street, next to the New Amsterdam, is a big, bright Disney store--probably the only Disney store in the world that is just four doors away from an establishment that sells scary-looking swords and knives, boxing equipment and dusty copies of Bruce Lee videos. The latter retailer is one of two storefront businesses that remain from the street's previous incarnation. The other...
...building boom in the rest of the Times Square area, 42nd Street's caretakers were having a hard time interesting new tenants because a figurative stench still lingered. Of the few serious inquiries about the old theaters, one came from a mud-wrestling entrepreneur, another from Michael Eisner. Disney's chairman became interested in owning a theater in New York because the company's theatrical version of Beauty and the Beast was imminent on Broadway. As it happens, the architect Robert A.M. Stern, who had devised post-Johnson-Burgee guidelines for 42nd Street, is a member of Disney's board...
...quick to see not only the romance but the potential." What Eisner also came to see, after two years of tough negotiations, was a deal that included low-interest loans from the city and state to cover 75% of the restoration--a good deal for both sides, since Disney's involvement proved to be 42nd Street's turning point, encouraging other corporations to sign...
...context. Since 42nd Street's traditional ambiance is chaotic, the city and state are in the odd position of planning something that is supposed to appear unplanned. Conundrum or not, they so far seem to have succeeded, despite critics' fears that the block would become an 800-ft.-long Disney World. "This is 42nd Street," Cahan reminds us. "It rains. Big trucks go across it. There is no climate control here. It smells. This is not City Walk at Universal City. This is a very real street. It is going to be more of what it once was than ever...