Jane Jacobs Be Damned!

After rock-star restauranteur Charlie Trotter abandoned plans to open in the Time Warner Center, the Times looks at how the development is going. And despite raised eyebrows, New Yorkers don’t seem to mind that it’s one big mall:

It began as a concept with, at best, a checkered history: a mall in the city. This one was to look different, with quartz and granite and an irregular shape, and be different, with very expensive restaurants instead of a food court.

A year and a half later, the public pullout of the big-name chef who was to fill one of the few remaining vacancies has some people wondering about the Time Warner Center, the silver-skinned complex at 10 Columbus Circle. It brought together the restaurants, a hotel, a condominium and stores, along with the workings of Time Warner – from offices for its magazines to studios for CNN – and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

For Manhattan, it was something of a gamble. Malls in Manhattan have not had the best track record. Malls, almost by definition, are about cars and huge parking lots. Also, while Manhattan may not have room for big-box stores, the vast majority of its stores are boxes: discrete squares or rectangles, each with its own door facing a street, not an indoor corridor.

The problem is, except for Charlie Trotter, the Time Warner Center appears to be very successful, leading some to wonder whether New York City is rapidly on its way to full red-state status.

But don’t let that fool you — the Times assures us that malls will never — never! — survive here:

Manhattan has never fervently embraced the mall concept. While Trump Tower’s 22-year-old shopping atrium on Fifth Avenue draws some tourists (thanks to its supporting role in “The Apprentice”), Herald Center, the 10-story mall inside the former Gimbel’s department store on Herald Square, has had a troubled history. Originally bankrolled by Ferdinand E. Marcos, the Philippine dictator, it opened in 1985 with tenants that included Ann Taylor, Brookstone and Caswell-Massey. After a mortgage default and an auction, it was reinvented as a discount mall, with stores like Payless Shoes.

That’s OK — I very much like the idea of a Payless Shoes at the Time Warner Center!