Page 453 - WhyAsInY

WitHout reCourse: Harvey, tHe real estate laWyer
transaction was to “clean up Times Square” (or, as I put it, to take the hookers off the street and put them where they belonged, in the hotel), the City, for cosmetic political purposes, insisted upon having a ten- page article of the ground lease devoted to proscribing in the public area of the hotel what it denominated “prurient practices.” What could and could not be displayed or performed was itemized and described in almost excruciatingly clinical, first-year-medical-student-textbook detail. (This was my first encounter with the word detumescence, which, for reasons that still elude me, found its way into the unending list of modified nouns that the City insisted be covered, as it were.) In the end, the non-negotiations became the subject of much immature giggling. But the article in question was probably the only one in the lease that we were all sure was free of typos.
The other political concern was far more real. As I mentioned ear- lier, in order to build the hotel, Portman would have to demolish the Morosco and the Helen Hayes, the two theaters on the site. Although Actors Equity had expressed great support for the project when it had first been proposed by the Koch administration (many theaters were then “dark”), as the time for the commencement of construction neared, the theater community had reversed itself (Broadway was now far bus- ier), and there was a public outcry concerning the prospective demolition. Litigation and protests ensued, and the hotly contested matter wended its way through the New York State courts, where it was ultimately dis- missed, and the federal courts as well. Sad to say, we, formerly the heroes, were now wearing the black hats and were cast by the theater people as villains.
The City and the UDC, afraid of the potential for outraged public reaction if the hotel project did not come into being, were unwilling to let Portman demolish the theaters until all of the litigation was finished, and until they were satisfied beyond peradventure that the developer was ready to go forward with and complete the project. They were ter- rified of the backlash that would ensue if the theaters were lost and all that remained were two lots, empty of everything but rubble. In antici-
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