Broadway Mickey Mouse : Theater Deal Brings Disney Back to New York

NEW YORK —  It is a job that has defied the best and brightest of this city for decades, but local officials think they’ve finally found someone to clean up 42nd Street: Mickey Mouse and his friends at Walt Disney Co.

With New York Gov. Mario Cuomo waxing poetic about Disney’s role in restoring “old values,” the Burbank-based entertainment giant on Wednesday confirmed plans to renovate and reopen the landmark New Amsterdam Theatre as a way to establish a permanent presence in the New York theater world.

Disney will invest $8 million in rebuilding the Art Nouveau theater, with theNew York Urban Development Corp. contributing a $21-million low-interest loan. The project makes Disney the central player in the latest effort to revitalize the famed Times Square district, which has long been a hub for pornography and drugs.

“It’s a thrill for all of us at Disney . . . to do something with New York and maybe for New York,” said Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner, himself a native New Yorker. “Often where we go, other people will follow. You’ll see 42nd Street become the Great White Way that it was.”

The project has been the subject of difficult negotiations between Disney and city and state officials for more than six months, and final contracts have yet to be signed. Two major theater owners initially opposed the deal on grounds that the state was unfairly favoring Disney with subsidies.

Those concerns were assuaged when Cuomo promised to make state loan funds available for capital improvements at other theaters. Many Broadway theaters are old and expensive to maintain, and rising production costs have severely squeezed the theater industry in recent years.

The New Amsterdam’s 42nd Street block consists mainly of boarded-up theaters, arcades and cheap retail stores. The pornographic movie houses and peep shows that dominated the block for many years have been cleared out as part of the decade-old Times Square redevelopment program, but little has appeared to take their place.

The real estate collapse of the late 1980s scuttled controversial plans for redevelopment based around four immense office towers, and last year a revised plan focusing on entertainment and retailing was adopted.

Local officials see Disney serving as the anchor for the new redevelopment program. And Disney executives clearly expect the area to be much-changed by the time the New Amsterdam reopens in 1996.

Cuomo, appearing with Eisner and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at a packed City Hall press conference, said the developments on 42nd Street were nothing less than “a metaphor for this city and this nation.”

“It’s a lot more than one theater,” Cuomo said. “You’re going to get rid of the filth and bring back the old values. It’s the beginning of a whole new era.”

For Disney, the project also represents a return to Broadway, where Mickey Mouse first appeared in 1928.

The company plans to mount adaptations of Disney films--presaged by the new musical version of “Beauty and the Beast,” opening at the Palace Theatre on Broadway in April--as well as original productions.

Eisner said the New Amsterdam investment shows Disney’s “expanding commitment to live entertainment.”

While the “information superhighway” suggests a world where everyone stays home, Eisner said: “We decided to go the other way, to bring people out of their houses. . . . We decided to come back to New York. . . . It’s a natural for the Walt Disney Co. to get back into Broadway.”