The project would have created 234 acres of new (via landfill) and reclaimed land, of which ninetythree acres were to be set aside for parks. Ada Louise Huxtable put the matter in perspective in her January 23, 1977, architecture column for the New York Times: "Westway is not just a billiondollar road. It has never pretended to be only an answer to transportation needs. There are simpler answers, as opponents claim, but that misses the point. Westway possesses rare vision: it is largescale, longterm land use planning for the city's future. It is a chance to reclaim the mutilated waterfront and West Side. It is an opportunity to do something extraordinarily constructive and creative-provided that it is done well." For Huxtable, the challenge was to ensure that the design of the project met the very highest standards, and that real estate speculation in the areas adjoining the new parks was held in check by zoning restrictions with teeth. I The complexity that Huxtable saw as Westway's strength-that it was a comprehensive landuse plan, accomplishing several things at once became one of its vulnerable points. Some critics would continue to insist that over a billion dollars was too high a price to pay for any road, ignoring the plan's other components, while others would portray Westway as dishonestly piggybacking a development scheme onto highway construction. Those who were for Westway asked why this merger of two aims, highway and community development, should necessarily be considered a boondoggle. In a society that was not afraid to plan for the future, it would only make sense to design the public areas-park and highway-and the on OR THE BATTLE OF WESTWAY OUTBOARD, ercial and residential areas as one autonomous element, giv Pr: F E PROPOSED WESTWAY was to run past several of the most con tious and politically active community boards in the city, Greenwich Village TriBeCa, and Chelsea. Their support was essential for the project to go forward. As it happened, the NIMBY ("not in my backyard") factor played little part in the battle; the neighborhoods most affected were rather quiet during the Westway fight (perhaps preferring to have a highway submerged in landfill than run through their blocks). The main anti Westway leaders, such as Marci Benstock and Albert Butzel, lived farther uptown. The local community mistrust that did exist tended to center on the development issue. So Mary Perot Nichols, in her Village Voice column dated November 19,1970, alerted readers that the man just put in charge of waterfront planning, Samuel Ratensky, represented "a dead hand from the past. . . . Sources close to Ratensky claim he already has a plan, composed of high rise apartment buildings for the West Village. ... Is Sam Ratensky going to give us a warmed over West Village Urban Renewal plan or has he turned over a new leaf? . . . Until we get these answers, maybe we should keep our paranoia alive but leashed.