Architecture: Disney to the rescue in Times Square: New York is trying to clean up a part of Manhattan that has been taken over by sleaze and drugs. Who else to lead the way than Walt Disney? Peter Slatin reports

Times Square and the western end of 42nd Street are the grimy soul of midtown Manhattan, a no-go area peopled by drunks, bums and junkies. This is the area that New Yorkers liked to think of as 'the crossroads of the world'.

Before the Second World War it had gaudy restaurants, honky-tonks, dance halls and 13 theatres (nine of which are now closed). It was celebrated in song and dance, from Busby Berkeley movies featuring wholesome, fun-loving showgirls, to the Guys and Dolls era of unwholesome, gun-toting gangsters.

Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, Times Square and West 42nd Street declined into little more than one seedy strip of vice, villainy and porn. Yet 42nd Street is a main commuter thoroughfare, linking the mammoth Port Authority Bus Terminal at its west end to Grand Central railway terminal in the east. For many visitors to New York, 42nd Street is a point of arrival and departure. New Yorkers agree that street and square need a fresh broom to sweep through them.

The question is: who should do the sweeping? Enter Mickey Mouse.

In February this year, the Walt Disney Company and New York State announced plans for a landmark theatre on 42nd Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. Disney was offered a 20- year, dollars 20m loan at 3 per cent from the state-run Urban Development Corporation; in return, New York would get stage versions of Walt's squeaky-clean cartoons and the start of a cleaner 42nd Street, with the redevelopment by Disney of the old New Amsterdam Theatre.

Mickey, Donald and Goofy seem to have come to the rescue of New York City where a plan originated by property developers working with New York City has so far failed to come up with the goods. Ten years ago, a big-buck development team including Prudential Insurance and George Klein's Park Tower Realty (the company behind the planned mock-Classical redevelopment of Paternoster Square, next to St Paul's Cathedral in London) proposed a nine-acre complex with four grandiose, pink granite office towers, which they commissioned from the architect Philip Johnson, placed at the four corners of the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway.

Thrilled at the prospect of a smart new development, state and city authorities bent over backwards to assist the project. To ensure speedy construction, they promised to condemn buildings and evict undesirable businesses from the affected sites. Local entrepreneurs, however, had their own agenda and began a series of lengthy lawsuits.

When the dust settled, about 240 local businesses were forcibly bought out, their stores and theatres closed and more than 30 buildings condemned. But before redevelopment could begin, the property market collapsed, leaving the Times Square area looking worse than ever, with its sex, drugs and ghost-town buildings. No developer at that time was going to spend a billion bucks building a quartet of slick but unlettable mansard-roofed office towers.

By August 1992, the area was going downhill so fast that something had to be done, even if it was a short-term solution. To fill the growing gap between intention and execution, and to stave off calls to forego the towers altogether, New York State hired the architect and conservationist Robert Stern, together with a small army of star designers, to come up with an 'interim' plan for the area. The plan is termed 'interim' because at some indeterminate moment in the future - not to exceed 15 years - the four towers will have to be built, because of legal agreements between the state, city and developers.

Stern is best known for designing Post- Modern homes on Long Island and one of the EuroDisney hotels. An odd choice to manipulate the gritty heart of Manhattan? Not really, since this witty architect is also an expert on New York's urban archaeology - he has written two books on the development of 20th-century New York architecture.

His well-received plan called for 'a human carnival. We want to make it so that people feel Times Square is a destination . . . there's almost nothing happening there right now. I doubt you can even make a first-class drug deal there.'

Stern's collaborators include Tibor Kalman, of the graphic design firm M & Co, which designed Interview magazine and ads for Benetton, and produced videos for the group Talking Heads. Both Stern and Kalman talk about visual 'cacophony': their aim is to create a lively street, but not an urban theme park.

'It should be a zoo, like the rest of New York,' says Kalman, 'but a well-maintained zoo, instead of a depressed, unemployed and crack-smoking kind of zoo.' When it was unveiled last September, the Stern plan met with critical acclaim. In essence, it eschewed major new building and called instead for a return to the look that 42nd Street enjoyed in its glory days. A blaze of colourful, multi-layered signage designed by the lighting experts Fisher Marantz would freewheel along the street, highlighting revamped second- storey shops and bars. (Times Square and West 42nd Street continue to attract around 20 million visitors a year, so the area remains a magnet for advertisers.)

The plan is fun, but hardly likely to appeal to the developers when the bucks start to flow again. The developers want a sober environment for their glossy office towers. To make a real and lasting impact, Stern's plan needs their blessing. If they refuse to play ball - as they have done to date - the 42nd Street regeneration is unlikely to achieve its potential.

Until a few weeks ago, it was feared that this stalemate would cause Disney to pull out and thus discourage other new developments in the entertainment business. If it is unresolved by August, the state authorities will have little choice but to try to withdraw the developers' right to build on the sites. But the resulting lawsuits could hold the street's future - and that of New York - hostage for years.

The only thing on the move here right now is Fred Papert's trolley. The civic- minded Mr Papert proposes closing off one half of 42nd Street to cars and installing a trolleybus or tram. This would go all the way from the United Nations building on the East River, past Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library and the theatres near the bus terminal, to the Jacob Javits Convention Center on the Hudson River.

This plan has nothing to do with the developers or with Stern's plan, but it does add a touch of whimsy to a dismal situation. Meanwhile, the important issue of transport - the rebuilding of the grungy Times Square underground station - remains.

Funds for overhauling New York's second biggest and ugliest station were to have been provided by the developers of the Philip Johnson towers. The Urban Development Corporation and the Metropolitan Transit Authority are trying to find other funding.

Perhaps now that Disney is coming, Cinderella's fairy godmother will appear and wave her magic wand over Times Square and 42nd Street. Then the developers' towers will rise and Bob Stern's cacophonous zoo will roar into action.

''We're on the way', says Stern. 'Let's say that if we were at zero on the Celsius scale six months ago, we've moved into the subtropical temperature zone.'

(Photographs omitted)