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But it almost did not come off. There was considerable opposition to reclaiming the area, which was not really substandard, though a number of flophouses there were attracting more and more derelicts. Then there was trouble raising the money to develop the land after buying and clearing it with URA assistance. At this point, the Travelers Insurance Co. stepped in to bankroll the whole $35 million needed. Its motives were solidly self-interested; Travelers' own nearby building, the tallest in town, gave the company a stake in the central city area, which had been rapidly losing business of all kinds to the suburbs.
Constitution Plaza has successfully reversed this desertion. Hartford's biggest retailer, G. Fox, added a $12 million annex to its store just across the street, and Korvette's decided to occupy a long-vacant store near by. The Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Co., which had been planning to move to the sub urb of West Hartford, changed its mind and built a graceful, green-glass ship of a building, connected to the plaza by a bridge, that is the handsomest store that had just spent a million dollars on redecoration. But Wallace's plan was voted unanimously, and even though it is still about five years from completion, its presence has brought a new atmosphere of optimism to the business community.
Baltimore has also worked a small miracle of rehabilitation in a Negro district, 32 blocks of 2,000 dilapidated houses known as Harlem Park. By cleaning out old shacks and what were once servants' quarters, the city gave each block the choice of whether it wanted to use the liberated space as a playground for children or as a postage-stamp park for adults. House owners were given expert advice and help in floating loans and making repairs and improvements. The result has been dramatic. "Harlem Park is no Georgetown," says Richard L. Steiner, director of the Baltimore Renewal and Housing Agency. "Generally speaking, these are still poor people. But there is a great change. In the past it was an area for a person to get out of, if he could afford it. Now it's a place to stay in." The Beautiful Cities. The urban renewal operation, always painful and not always a success, requires a solid consensus of civic opinion and energy. In Buffalo, for instance, a $15 million renewal program has been stalled in its tracks for a year and a half while politicians bicker over which developers should get the job. But most renewal is still slum clearance, and slum clearance has critics aplenty. The far political right naturally attacks it as a new kind of Communist takeover. The left attacks it as displacement of the poor.
"Urban renewal," the slogan goes, "is Negro removal." On the financial level, critics think the bulldozer has been overworked.
They note that Pei's towers on Society Hill are still only 21% rented. In San Francisco's Western Addition, some apartments are still tottering along, and the reason is clear enough. They are surrounded by slums, and tenants hesitate to settle in a depressed area and send their children to a school that is 95% Negro.