Sorry, Rudy. BUT, you'll always have Bernie.
Posted on 12/28/2007 4:13:08 PM PST by jdm
Times Square is crammed with tourists, and not just for New Year's Eve. These days, they're eager to gawk at the glittering lights of Broadway and visit attractions like Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and the MTV studios.
But 15 years ago, the place was considered a cesspool, overrun with crime and home to sex shops and peep shows. Drug addicts shot up on the street. Locals avoided the neighborhood.
The man who has taken the credit for revitalizing Times Square is GOP presidential hopeful and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He has made Times Square a symbol for how he tamed the evils of an out-of-control city and turned it into a tourist-friendly destination.
"It's called getting things done," he said at a fundraiser this year.
It's not that clear-cut, a closer examination of the Times Square renaissance shows.
While even his critics will say Giuliani deserves praise for his part in redevelopment of the area, the finished product was the culmination of decades of work that came before he was elected, according to lawmakers and urban planners.
"State agencies had plans in place to develop 42nd Street well before Giuliani," said Ethel Sheffer, an urban planning expert who led a quality-of-life study on Times Square during the redevelopment. Any large-scale redevelopment "takes a long time to unfold," she said.
The Times Square plan was in the works during the 1980s, when state officials and then-Mayor Ed Koch used eminent domain to condemn and take control of decrepit buildings.
But there was no legal way to control businesses until the City Council initiated a study during the administration of David Dinkins, who preceded Giuliani as mayor, that would allow them to pass rezoning laws if they could prove sex businesses were harming residential areas.
Walter McCaffrey, a former City Council member, said the idea to rezone wasn't even related to Times Square at first. It started with a neighborhood in Queens near the Queensboro Bridge that had suffered when topless bars and porn shops moved in. After the study, the City Council drew up stricter zoning laws that prohibited sex-oriented theaters, bookstores, massage parlors and dance clubs from operating within 500 feet of homes, houses of worship, schools or one another.
The law passed in 1995 - about two years after Giuliani took office.
By this time, the area was already changing, urban planning experts say. The paced quickened after the legal challenges to the zoning laws were defeated and Giuliani bore down.
Says Charles Millard, a former City Councilman and head of the city's Economic Development Corp: "I drafted the law that allowed us to do this constitutionally when David Dinkins was mayor, but until Rudy became mayor and pushed it through his planning commission, and pushed it through the city, not a thing had happened."
Others say Giuliani was in the right place at the right time, as the economy boomed in the 1990s and shifted toward tourism, real estate and Wall Street. The proliferation of Internet porn also made many sex shops obsolete.
"It was kind of like a perfect storm for him," said Arturo Ignacio Sanchez, a City and Regional Planning professor at Cornell University. The process started with Koch, picked up speed under Dinkins and really accelerated under Giuliani, he said, adding: "It fast forwards with warp speed under Bloomberg, and you have the city today."
Times Square has always lived a double life - even a century ago the 10-block stretch of busy Midtown streets was home to upscale splendor as well as hidden brothels and fetid hotels. With the invention of neon and the rise of Broadway shows, the area slowly became the entertainment center of the city.
But by the time Giuliani took office, the area had fallen into decline. In 1993, nearly 4,000 incidents of crime were reported in the area, according to the Times Square Alliance, a business group.
Part of the revival was the arrival of upscale hotels, theme stores and restaurants - businesses that Giuliani helped lure with a private-public team of developers.
Disney received a low-interest loan from the city to give a facelift to the New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street, considered by some to be the crown jewel of the new Times Square. The renovated theater soon drew in other businesses, such as MTV, ESPN and other media companies.
Giuliani talks on the campaign trail about the eradication of porn shops from Times Square and about declining crime rates during his tenure.
"It didn't happen by accident, it didn't happen by wishing they went away," Giuliani said in a speech in October. "It happened based on a very well-organized campaign, a study demonstrating the impact of pornography on neighborhoods, an intense battle in court that nobody thought we would win, and we won. And most importantly, the pornographers lost and they were chased out of Times Square."
There are still some sex shops in Times Square, but the majority of them disappeared long ago. Some simply relocated.
Former City Councilman Thomas Duane was among the few who voted against the rezoning laws in the 1990s, in part because he was not eager to see the sex shops simply switch neighborhoods.
"He didn't get rid of them from New York City, he dispersed them from Times Square, mostly to the industrial waterfront areas of the city," Duane said of Giuliani.
"And as Manhattan became a more attractive place to live, people started moving into those communities and now the same problem exists," he said. "It just doesn't exist much where the tourists go."
Giuliani had radiation therapy.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2007/12/23/2007-12-23_cancer_test_for_rudy_giuliani.html
Power of the pellets
When Rudy Giuliani was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in 2000, he had to undergo nine months of therapy.
First he received injections of Lupron, a drug that stops testosterone — which feeds the cancer — and helps shrink the prostate. The drug was administered monthly throughout his treatment.
Next, doctors implanted 90 rice-sized titanium pellets into the prostate, designed to kill the cancer cells.
The last stage — the most arduous — was five weeks of daily external beam radiation.
Guiliani’s treatment was controversial because surgery is the usual option for men under 60 with early cancer. The mayor was 55.
"The supervisor, Eric Beck, said some finely sifted debris, which could have contained the cremated remains of human victims of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, were carted away to be used for paving and filling while he worked for a private contractor at the Fresh Kills landfill from October 2001 through July 2002, according to the court papers."
Rudy lovers love to remind everyone that Rudy was Mayor of New York in 2001.
I know you may feel that New York's first-responders are being unduly sentimental about the remains of their brothers and sisters who died on 9/11, but they have no respect for your candidate. They don't see him as a hero.
Again, I wonder what you Rudy lovers see in the guy.
Times Square changed because large corporations took over a world famous location. To make a visit feel safer, local officials cracked low life skulls forcing them from the immediate area.
Must not have been too many Illegal Alien skulls getting cracked or JulieAnnie would have put the brakes on it.
Giuliani had radioactive seed implantation on September 15, 2000 and was up on his feet in a day. There was no chemo. He missed a day or two of work and within a week he had marched in a parade, presided over a town hall-style meeting, gone on the stump for Lazio, and conducted daily press conferences, including one pushing a $1 Billion taxpayer subsidized stadium in Manhattan's West Side after holding meetings with both the Yankees and Jets owners that week.
Back in May, 2000, when he dropped out a mere 11 days before the State Convention where he was to be nominated, leaving the GOP high and dry (with no other choice but to recruit Lazio), the doctors said they thought campaigning was perfectly within his physical capabilities and, if he started treatment right way, he would have recovered and been "full speed" by the time the campaign normally kicked in. He delayed that procedure until September and went about his mayoral duties as usual.
See #105. Rudy only missed a couple days of work.
If you read the article, it says that the lawyer Norm Siegel (former head of the NY Civil Liberties Union) is seeking to depose Bloomberg. Again, Giuliani is not mentioned. Why isn’t being deposed if this was his fault?
Also, are you affiliated with Norm Siegel and/or the NY Civil Liberties Union?
Sorry, Rudy. BUT, you'll always have Bernie.
My 80 year old father went through this "arduous" procedure and didn't miss a beat. About 1/2 hour at the hospital for each treatment (including time to disrobe/re-dress) and back to life as normal. No pain, no fatique, no nuttin!
Listen, why don't you go tell New York's first responders that they shouldn't be mad at Rudy for using their brothers and sisters as fill for pot holes? Tell him what a hero your candidate is.
In the meantime, I keep inviting you to tell everyone what it is you see in Rudy. Why don't you tell everyone what we're missing?
Is it because he's for the gay rights agenda?
Rudy backed out of the race in 2000 because his campaign was unravelling before his very eyes. His tryst with Miss Judi and his disgustingly public announcement (press conference) notifying his wife of his decision to divorce caused him to sink in the polls (not to mention prosecution/conviction of many of his top aides).
Wimp Rudy couldn’t face his inevitable defeat and decided to retreat.
What’s up with this Jimbo guy? Why does he want to know what our jobs are and what our affiliations are? He must think we’re agenda driven like maybe he is.
He keeps going down in the polls, though. People are catching on.
>>Fresh Kills landfill
I was just reading today about Rudy’s mobbed up cousin’s associates dumping body parts at that location. His cousin was suspected of multiple murders but the FBI shot him dead before they could prosecute him. The guy was at the heart of a mob counterfeiting and auto-theft ring responsible for stealing over one BILLION dollars worth of vehicles in NYC.
It's unclear to me why anyone would support Rudy. That's why I keep asking him.
Rudy's base, such as it is, keeps getting smaller. The last ones to leave seem to be largely composed of women with no self-esteem and men who are homosexual.
Where will they go when he quits?
Fresh Kills! That would fit on a bumper sticker.
Thanks.
His appointment of Bernie Kerik as Police Commissioner will haunt him as the indictments roll in.
Again, where is Rudy Giuliani named in Norm Siegel’s lawsuit in the article you mentioned?
If Rudy was responsible for the pothole-filling situation, why isn’t he being deposed in the lawsuit instead of Bloomberg?
“Did Giuliani Really Clean Up Times Square?”
Probably. But RG is too LIBERAL on important social issues i.e. life, marriage, borders... RG is a good man but is not the right fit for President. Maybe ambassador to the UN.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.