TURF WAR

The inside story of a New York community’s fight against the Trump Organization.

The subject of Robinson’s book is “Television City,” a 1985 proposal made by real estate mogul Donald Trump to turn the abandoned Penn Central Railyard on the Hudson River into a massive, 18.5 million square-foot building project that would feature luxury apartments, acres of parking, a lavish shopping mall, and the world’s tallest building as its centerpiece. The author, then a young architect, was outraged by this plan, which would have completely swamped the local communities. He banded together with local lawyers, journalists, artists, and civic preservationists in order to wage what he calls a “turf war” to thwart the Television City plan. (“Turf is a hard-wired connection,” he writes, “it is our home ground, personal territory, sphere of influence … its emotional value is determined by its qualities to sustain life, confer status, or provide security.”) With plenty of detail and long quotes from contemporary documents (the clash was widely reported, month after month), Robison tells the story of the coalition that fought against the development and of the allies they enlisted among activists—like Richard Kahan—and politicians, including New York mayor David Dinkins. He follows the story to the unpredictable victory the activists won against Television City, which eventually became the largely residential Riverside South area. Throughout all of this, the author works the minor miracle of turning largely procedural real estate wrangling into gripping reading. Robinson compellingly details how the Trump Organization swamped the city agencies with superfluous litigation and complained that the American Institute of Architects’ report against Television City was an unfair witch hunt—and how the community, alarmed by “a litany of the unacceptable environmental and social impacts” that Television City would unleash on the West Side, won in the end.

A richly detailed and lively account of a community victory against an unscrupulous real estate mogul.