In 1967 there was as yet no revulsion attached to the word. That taboo would come later, perhaps in the form of a delayed reaction. on or THE BATTLE of WESTWAY 89 outboarl>. Th impetus inclusl°n commercial and residential develop • the olan had its own history; it grew out of Manhattan's anom inent m tne j' possession of two competing business districts, Midtown and wntown_ Downtown was going through one of its periodic uneases: since the 1950s, the businessmen and realtors of Wall Street, headed by David Rockefeller, had been calling for some larger strategy to compete with Midtown, by making the financial district more attractive to new firms meanwhile retaining the older ones. In 1958 the Downtown Lowei Manhattan Association had outlined the area's problems, such as a lack ol new building sites, gridlocked traffic, a monotonous singleuse that made the area deserted after dark or on weekends, and a paucity of residential units and retail or cultural attractions to hold whitecollar workers. The canyons of Wall Street being already crammed with skyscrapers, the obvious solution was to add on to Lower Manhattan, by building a whole new. daynight district on landfill-which is where the idea of Battery Park City came in. During the mid1970s, with the city's economy approaching bankruptcy, and with Lower Manhattan neighborhoods' flattened growth seemingly in need of some economic boost, the billion dollars promised by Westway looked very tempting. Here is how the antiWestway attorney Michael Gerrard put it: "A remarkably successful effort to consolidate business and labor support foi Westway ensued in 1975 and 1976, headed by the odd couple of David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Harry Van Arsdale, president of the Central Labor Council, AFLCIO." Since New York City had just "brushed with bankruptcy" and "construction was in a terrible slump," Gerrard concluded: "The business community came to see Westway as a way to spur economic and real estate development; the construction unions saw Westway as a massive source of new jobs." To this picture of collusion among strange bedfellows, one might counter: How else could any massive public work, from Central Park to the water delivery system, have gotten built in New York without a broad alliance of business, labor, and government? N DECEMBER 15, 1973, the weight of a dump truck, hauling tar to fill e uncountable potholes on the West Side Highway, caused an elevated section of the roadway to collapse. The truck driver landed below Пеа West 12th Street, his vehicle upended like a turtle on its back, and even tually received $250,000 from the city as compensation for his injuries The highway was then closed to traffic south of 46th Street, and that p0r tion slated for demolition. In the interim, what followed was an urban idvl] of sorts, in which bikers, strollers, and sunbathers liberated the deck for recreational uses.