Even before the West Side Highway collapsed, the City Planning Commission and the Urban Development Corporation had developed an ambitious plan, which became known as Westway when it was formally announced in 1974. It called for four miles of new highway to be built on landfill between what is now Battery Park City and 42nd Street. The landfill would create more than 150 acres of parkland as well as residential and commercial development. Although it was finally estimated that Westway would cost slightly more than $2 billion, 90 percent of the money would come from the Federal Highway Trust Fund and New York State would supply the remaining 10 percent. The City would not have to spend a penny.
I was among the plan’s strongest advocates. I intervened with four successive secretaries of transportation in Washington to keep the project alive. I helped convince Governor Hugh Carey, though he had originally opposed the development, to become a supporter. I also helped convince Ed Koch, after his election as mayor in 1977, to abandon his strident opposition.
Westway’s opponents included advocates of mass transit who wanted to “trade in” the highway money for funds to improve the subways, community activists concerned about the impact of construction on their neighborhoods’ quality of life, and environmentalists. These opponents waged a protracted battle to prevent Westway’s construction, delaying the approval of the air-quality permit for more than three years and forcing federal officials to conduct exhaustive reviews.
Finally, in the summer of 1981, the Army Corps of Engineers issued the final, essential approval: the dredging and landfill permit. President Ronald Reagan came to New York on Labor Day and presented Mayor Koch with an $85 million check to purchase the rights of way for the highway. The President declared, “The Westway project begins today.” If only that had been the case.
Shortly after Mario Cuomo became governor in 1983, he told me he had learned as a lawyer that it was possible to stop anything if you persisted and knew the right techniques. In Westway’s case, Cuomo was prophetic.
Almost as soon as Reagan delivered the check, the opponents of Westway were back in court. Activist Marcy Benstock and her New York Clean Air Campaign petitioned Federal Court Judge Thomas Griesa to block the permit, alleging errors in the environmental studies conducted by the Corps. Judge Griesa agreed and ordered the Corps to assess more fully the impact of Westway on the Hudson’s striped bass population, which seemed to favor the rotting piers along the waterfront for procreative pursuits.
The Corps announced in 1983 that it would conduct a two-year survey of the landfill’s impact on the bass. In February 1985, the Corps found that Westway would have only a minor impact on the striped bass and issued a new dredge and fill permit. More than eight years after the initial federal approval and almost twelve years after the old West Side Highway had collapsed, it appeared that the construction of Westway would finally begin. I joined Governor Cuomo and Mayor Koch for a triumphant posting of the permit on Pier 59 in Chelsea.
Our triumph was short-lived. That same day Benstock and her allies paraded into court and sued to have the permit set aside. Incredibly, the judge concurred with the environmentalists. Griesa held new hearings on the way in which the Corps of Engineers had conducted its environmental studies, found them lacking, and on August 6, 1985, issued a permanent injunction on the spending of federal funds for the construction of Westway. When the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed Griesa’s decision a month later, Westway was dead.
Although New York received about $1 billion in mass transit money and about $500 million for the construction of a Westway replacement, much more than money was lost in the exchange. The dogged opposition of a small group of ideological extremists had defeated a project that was in the best interest of all New York’s citizens. What was lost is immeasurable: a magnificent new waterfront along most of Manhattan’s West Side, with skillfully landscaped parks and walkways overlooking the river, and concomitant new jobs and revenues for the City.
Ed Koch tells a story about Westway that in my more forgiving moments I find funny. One day an anti-Westway activist went to City Hall to object to Koch’s support for the project. She told the Mayor he had to stop the project because it was “killing people.” When he said he wouldn’t, she threw herself on the floor, clutching her throat, and screamed that she was dying because of lack of oxygen. The sad part is that this woman and her allies won. New York—along with reason and common sense—lost. I fought for Westway for ten years; I chaired countless meetings, wrote op-eds, gave speeches, and lobbied in Washington and Albany—all for naught. In the end, sadly, the striped bass trumped the public interest.
CREATING A LASTING PARTNERSHIP
The failure of a sound and sensible project like Westway was illustrative of a city in decline and disarray, lacking, in particular, strong leadership.
If the City was ever to recover, it would require a collaborative approach between government and the private sector. Complicating this was the fact that New York’s private sector was itself disorganized and fragmented. This was precisely the concern of three gentlemen—Walter Wriston, Richard Shinn, and William Ellinghaus—who asked me to breakfast one morning in late 1978. As a result of our meeting I agreed to join forces with them to charter a study by J. Henry Smith, the retired chairman of Equitable Life, to see what could be done. Smith concluded that consolidating all business groups within one organization was the only way to ensure that the private sector could have an “effective and unified voice to support the economic growth of the city.”
Smith also observed that the chief executive of the new organization would have to be “decisive, articulate, diplomatic, and imaginative—much like an effective chief executive of a large corporation.” After a number of meetings it was concluded that, for a variety of reasons, the logical individual was me. And so in October 1979 I assumed the chairmanship of what would come to be called the New York City Partnership, deriving its name from the partnership we sought between government and the private sector.
Because the Partnership was a tax-exempt organization, we decided to retain the New York City Chamber of Commerce as a subsidiary in order to legally lobby in New York, Albany, and Washington. And to symbolize our new citywide vision, we moved our headquarters from the chamber’s old building in lower Manhattan to a new office in Midtown.
One of our principal goals was to persuade organized labor—particularly the heads of the municipal unions—to participate. We were unsuccessful. These labor leaders adamantly opposed working with the Chamber of Commerce; they said it would be like mixing oil and water.
We were a great deal more successful in expanding our membership beyond the Manhattan-dominated big business community of male corporate leaders. We actively recruited smaller businesses in all the boroughs, many of them headed by women, Blacks, and Hispanics, and secured the active participation of the leaders of many of the City’s leading not-for-profit organizations as well. The result was the most inclusive, focused, and, I believe, effective private-sector organization in New York City’s history.
From the beginning we focused on enhancing economic growth—creating jobs, improving the business climate, and reducing the cost of government. That was the Partnership’s strategic vision in 1980, and it remains so to this day.
During the years of my chairmanship, the Partnership made demonstrable progress in several key areas. The first job we tackled in June 1980 was providing summer jobs. At the urgent request of Mayor Koch, a number of our member corporations, especially AT&T and Brooklyn Union Gas Company, provided almost three thousand jobs that first year. In subsequent years, with more time to organize, the Partnership provided summer employment for tens of thousands of young New Yorkers, most of them from minority groups. As a result Mayor Koch, who had been skeptical and even somewhat dismissive of the Partnership, became a strong supporter.
Improving the quality of education in the City’s public schools presented a more daunting challenge. Our long-term goal was
to address the growing imbalances between the needs of business and the lagging abilities of graduates of the system. My daughter, Peggy Dulany, a former teacher, served for several years as a Partnership vice president in this critical area. Through the Adopt a School program, companies provided administrative support to specific schools. Recently, through its Breakthrough for Learning program, the Partnership committed $25 million to turn around underperforming school districts.
Economic development has always been a strong focus of the Partnership. We have worked collaboratively with the City and State on a number of important economic development issues. One notable initiative has been to persuade corporations to shift their back office operations to less costly space in the outer boroughs. Thousands of jobs are involved—information storage, data processing, and the like—that don’t require prime real estate in Manhattan. Retaining such jobs in the City has been of the utmost importance. The development of Metrotech in Brooklyn to house Brooklyn Union Gas and Chase’s back office operations has been among the most conspicuous successes.
The Partnership has had its greatest impact in the area of housing, which, as noted, has been an interest of mine from the days of Morningside Gardens. In the mid-1970s I helped organize the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) as a nonprofit affiliate of the New York Clearing House to finance the rehabilitation of existing housing stock in deteriorating areas of the City. CPC used the financial resources and acumen of its membership of commercial and savings banks to provide millions of dollars in low-cost loans to enable owners to upgrade their property—and their neighborhoods.
While CPC filled an important niche, there was also an enormous need for new housing construction as well. This seemed like a prime opportunity for the Partnership to do something. At a Partnership-sponsored luncheon, at which President Ronald Reagan spoke, in January 1982, I announced our plan to provide thirty thousand units of housing over a period of five years.
After considering an array of possibilities we concentrated on the construction of new two- and three-family homes. Since 1984 the Housing Partnership has produced more than thirteen thousand moderately priced homes in fifty neighborhoods—almost 50 percent of the affordable housing built in the City during that time. In this way the Partnership has spurred the reemergence of housing markets in the most distressed areas of the City.
Most recently the Partnership has expanded its economic development efforts through the creation of the New York Partnership Investment Fund, co-chaired by Henry Kravis and Jerry I. Speyer, to provide venture capital for high-technology businesses that promise to diversify New York’s economic base and generate employment.
During the course of the mayoralties of Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and especially Rudolph Giuliani, the Partnership has become a highly visible fixture in New York City affairs. As the New York Daily News recently observed, it has “served as a model public-private organization” showing what can be accomplished when petty differences are set aside for the improvement of the entire community.
CHAPTER 27
PROUD INTERNATIONALIST
My lifetime pursuits as an internationalist might best be summarized by one rather extraordinary day in 1995.
October 23 was a busy day at the Council on Foreign Relations. The fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations had drawn almost two hundred heads of government to New York, and many had asked to speak at the Council. But even then the day was unusual for the diversity of the speakers: Jiang Zemin, president of the People’s Republic of China and heir apparent to Deng Xiaoping; Václav Havel of the Czech Republic, the former political prisoner who had eloquently guided his country through its “Velvet Revolution”; Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, considered by many a terrorist and by others as the key to an enduring Middle East peace settlement; and, finally, Fidel Castro, charismatic leader of the Cuban revolution and implacable opponent of the United States for almost forty years.
The ironies abounded. With the exception of Havel, these men had vowed to fight to the death against imperialist America. Now, with the end of the Cold War, they flocked to the center of world capitalism, eager to meet and close deals with American bankers and corporate executives, or at least to be seen with them—even Castro. El Presidente wanted especially to meet me, but a convenient time had not yet been found. Failing this, at the formal reception hosted by Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali at the U.N., Castro spotted me, charged across the delegates lounge, and grabbed my hand, shaking it warmly. I was chagrined, sensing the photo frenzy about to erupt. But I smiled as the paparazzi snapped away. Predictably, the photo of “the Capitalist and the Communist” appeared on the front page of newspapers from Ankara to Zanzibar; and just as predictably I was criticized for appearing with a man considered one of our nation’s bitterest enemies.*
POPULIST PARANOIA
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism. “Populists” believe in conspiracies, and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world’s economy. Because of my name and prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of “conspirator in chief” from some of these people.
Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted from our active international role during the past half-century. Not only was the very real threat posed by Soviet Communism overcome, but there have been fundamental improvements in societies around the world, particularly in the United States, as a result of global trade, improved communications, and the heightened interaction of people from different cultures. Populists rarely mention these positive consequences, nor can they cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic growth and the expansion of our political power without them.
Instead, they want to wall off the United States by rejecting participation in such constructive international activities as the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, eviscerating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and assaulting the United Nations. In staking out these positions the new Populists misunderstand history, misconstrue the effectiveness of the international effort that the United States organized and led after World War II, and misjudge the importance of constructive global engagement to our nation’s future. Global interdependence is not a poetic fantasy but a concrete reality that this century’s revolutions in technology, communications, and geopolitics have made irreversible. The free flow of investment capital, goods, and people across borders will remain the fundamental factor in world economic growth and in the strengthening of democratic institutions everywhere. The United States cannot escape from its global responsibilities. Today’s world cries out for leadership, and our nation must provide it. In the twenty-first century there can be no place for isolationists; we must all be internationalists.
THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
It was my parents who first impressed on me the importance of the world beyond the United States. Father was a staunch supporter of the League of Nations, an active participant in the worldwide Protestant ecumenical movement, and, through the Rockefeller Foundation and other family foundations, one of the principal funders of health, education, and cultural endeavors around the world. Mother, of course, was deeply engaged by art from all parts of
the world.
Like many in my generation I returned from World War II believing a new international architecture had to be erected and that the United States had a moral obligation to provide leadership to the effort. I was determined to play a role in that process, and I found the Council on Foreign Relations in New York the best place to pursue my interest in global affairs.
The Council was formed in 1921 in the aftermath of World War I and the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles. Despite the timing, the Council was not established to promote American membership in the League of Nations but “to afford a continuous conference on international questions affecting the United States.” The distinction is an important one because from the outset the Council has eschewed taking a position on any issue that it discusses save one: that American citizens need to be informed about foreign affairs because events in other parts of the world will have a direct influence on their lives.
For example, in the 1930s the foreign policy debate centered on America’s response to the rise of dictators in Europe and the Far East and the outbreak of war. Many Council members, John Foster Dulles among them, favored a strict American neutrality, while others, including my uncle Winthrop Aldrich, urged an active intervention short of war on the side of Britain and France in their struggle against Nazi Germany. The Council provided both sides with a forum.
After World War II the Council played an important role in alerting Americans to the new threat posed by the Soviet Union and in crafting a bipartisan consensus on how to deal with the worldwide expansion of Communism. In 1947, Foreign Affairs, the Council’s distinguished journal, published the famous “X” article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (written anonymously because George Kennan was serving in the State Department at the time). It outlined the doctrine of containment. George wanted to alert the foreign policy establishment to the dangers of Soviet imperialism and knew that the most effective way to do this was through the pages of Foreign Affairs. His article became the defining document of U.S. Cold War policy.
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