The real beauty of the plan was its pragmatism. It called for placeholder businesses to keep the major development sites active until it was time to build. A brew pub (with a rooftop mock-up of a Concorde, a British Airways ad) opened on the plan’s Site 1, where a 50-story tower by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was competed in 2002, and Disney opened a store in a one-story building where Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates’ 5 Times Square stands today. A couple of ornate historic theaters, like the New Amsterdam (leased by Disney) and the Victory, were preserved and restored. One, the 1912 Empire Theater, a one-time burlesque house, was moved 170 feet on steel rollers down a stretch of 42nd Street entirely devoid of buildings, to serve as the entryway to a soon-to-be-built 25-screen multiplex.
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- Times Square (Finally) Grows Up , Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - 13:03