URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1101 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 21, 2007 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

In a Fat Nation, Are Thin Mints On Thin Ice?
BYLINE: By PETER APPLEBOME.

Email: peappl@nytimes.com

SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; OUR TOWNS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 775 words
DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS
It's hard not to take one look at MeMe Roth's call for boycotting Girl Scout cookies and think, ''Lady, lighten up.''

In the grand scheme of the world's horrors, those Thin Mints, Do-Si-Dos and Tagalongs don't quite register up there with Al Qaeda, global warming or the cable television coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death as clear and present dangers to the general health and welfare.

And yet. Given the astronomical growth in childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes, the overall supersizing of the American body, the degree to which diet is about as mainstream a concern as there is, is it really so nutty to ask if the Girl Scouts need to be in the business of selling 200 million boxes of cookies a year -- and pushing madly for more? Or to put it another way, if the Girl Scouts were created today, as an organization devoted to helping raise healthy, empowered girls who make smart choices, would the ideal fund-raiser be something that makes all of us even fatter?

Of course, it's not just Girl Scout cookies. Food is about emotional comfort as well as nutrition: think of all those church bake sales and school cookie sales and candy sales, each nestled in a warm spot in the national psyche. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington research group, released a study last week saying that of schools with fund-raisers, 76 percent sell chocolate, 67 percent sell baked goods, and 63 percent nonchocolate candy.

But there's no iconic junk binge as beloved as Girl Scout cookies, one of those sugar-coated (and partially hydrogenated oil-laden) bits of Americana too mythic to be subject to rational analysis.

Still, wading into the food wars is Ms. Roth, who was a mom from Milburn, N.J., who got slightly obsessed over the American Way of Junk and started National Action Against Obesity which, in truth, is essentially her and a Web site. She has since made herself enough of a nag to get her name out there, even appearing on ''The O'Reilly Factor.'' This week Ms. Roth called for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies and suggested that the organization come up with a five-year plan to move away from high-calorie morsels as its primary fund-raiser.

''The Girls Scouts are a civic organization that does good things, but they shouldn't be using children to sell junk food when we're in the midst of an obesity epidemic,'' she said. ''Hopefully they will see this as an opportunity to take a leadership role for all civic organizations to move away from junk foods.''

Of course, nothing stays the same, least of all the Girl Scouts, now 95 years old. The cookies have been around for 90 years, starting out with scouts baking sugar cookies at home with their mothers, wrapping them in wax paper and selling them door to door, a dozen for 25 cents.

You're just as likely to buy your cookies from some girl scout's father at work as from some 9-year-old coming to the door, and the Scouts, too, have ginned up their marketing for the Internet age. They hired Ripple Effects Interactive to design a Web site (girlscoutcookies.org) and to post vintage cookie clips on 14 sites like MySpace and YouTube, a far cry from the early days when girl scouts actually baked Girl Scout cookies.

''They want to use the Web to really grow their audience and get a presence in those niches where they might not be a household name yet,'' said Natalie DiPasquale of Ripple Effects Interactive.

Denise J. Pesich, vice president of the Girl Scouts, said the cookie program taught girls entrepreneurial and personal skills as well as raising money. ''What we're really doing through the free enterprise system is selling items to the American public that they have come to expect, to enjoy and to love over 90 years.'' As for obesity, she says, ending Girl Scout cookies won't end obesity.

It's hard to beat the cookies, even in their slightly slimmed-down guise this year: no trans fats, or at least few enough to meet federal labeling standards. And it's almost certainly impossible to beat the revenues: $700 million to support Girl Scout activities. Try selling enough carrots and broccoli to match that.

Who's enough of a Grinch to really want to go to the mat over this one?

Still, Dr. Susan Rubin, a dentist-turned nutritionist and a former Girl Scout leader who founded the Westchester Coalition for Better School Food, asked: Where do you start changing the food culture? It's not likely to be Girl Scout cookies, but it's not clear where it would be.

''This is just another part of this toxic food chain that kids are awash in,'' she said. ''At some point, communities are going to have to walk away from the Do-Si-Dos.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: YOUTH CLUBS & ACTIVITIES (90%); FUNDRAISING (90%); BOYCOTTS (90%); BAKED GOODS (90%); OBESITY (89%); NUTRITION (75%); CHILDREN (75%); OILS & FATS (75%); CHILDREN'S HEALTH (75%); DISEASES & DISORDERS (75%); GLOBAL WARMING (71%); EPIDEMICS (70%); RESEARCH INSTITUTES (69%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (56%); DIABETES (55%); BAKERIES (78%) Bakeries and Baked Goods; Cookies; Weight; Calories; Boycotts; Sales; Bakeries and Baked Goods
ORGANIZATION: AL-QAEDA (57%); CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST (54%) Girl Scouts; National ACtion Against Obesity
PERSON: BILL O'REILLY (52%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (50%) Peter Applebome; MeMe Roth
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1102 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 21, 2007 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

As Newark Neighbor Moves Toward Rebirth, Some Pains Are Felt
BYLINE: By RICHARD G. JONES
SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1379 words
DATELINE: HARRISON, N.J., Feb. 20
For decades, the nicest thing said about this town of withered factories, toxic waste sites and dried-up ambitions was that at least it was not Newark. Or that it was a great place to park and catch a train for Manhattan.

It was a sobering descent from the days when Harrison, which juts into the Passaic River just across from Newark, was the city where the likes of R.C.A., Otis Elevator and Thomas A. Edison helped forge the town's motto: ''Beehive of Industry.''

''The factories left, everything left, some of us stayed,'' said Manny Amaral, the owner of a car dealership and a parking lot, who has witnessed the ups and mostly downs in Harrison for the past 25 years. ''We tried to make it better.''

But now, even as a proposed $1 billion redevelopment project on 300 acres of abandoned industrial land along the waterfront has captured a good deal of attention and large-scale investment, some residents are already asking if their city's much-heralded rebirth is worth the trouble.

After more than a decade of discussions, preliminary work has begun on the first of a handful of projects that would almost double the town's housing stock, replace punched-out factories with more than a million square feet of retail space and make Harrison the home of a professional soccer team with a new 25,000-seat stadium.

The concerns about the redevelopment project are nearly as plentiful as the abandoned factories. For one thing, residents question whether the city is prepared to handle all the new commercial development and housing, which could double Harrison's current population of about 14,000 and strain the school system and other services. They are also puzzled by a plan to build so close to the waterfront, an area with a history of flooding.

Others question the presence of so many politically connected developers, like the company founded by Joseph Barry, Applied Development Company. Mr. Barry was released from federal prison in April 2006 in a public corruption case.

Others with connections include the law firm of Alfred C. DeCotiis, a Democratic National Committee official, which played a role in the stadium deal; McManimon & Scotland, a Newark law firm whose lawyers have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to county and state party officials, which was hired to handle a $40 million bond sale; and one of the principal developers, the Roseland Property Company, which is led by the chairman of the agency that runs the Meadowlands sports complex.

Then there is the issue of the city's plans to seize several properties for redevelopment through the use of eminent domain.

''We don't mind the development,'' said Mr. Amaral, a plaintiff who recently lost a round in an eminent domain lawsuit. ''We want to see the town get better. It's just the way they're doing it.''

Change usually comes slowly to Harrison, as evidenced by Frank E. Rodgers, who was elected mayor in 1946 and went on to serve in that post for 48 years. The town's current mayor, Raymond J. McDonough, who has held office since 1995, referred telephone calls about the project to Gregory Kowalski, executive director of the Harrison Redevelopment Authority.

Mr. Kowalski dismissed the notion that politics played a role in the selection of Applied Development and Roseland Property Company, which is headed by Carl Goldberg, the chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, to develop the area. ''I don't see it,'' he said.

The grand plan for Harrison, which officials say could take 10 years to complete, encompasses four projects -- two involving the construction of condominiums and townhouses, which is the first phase of an estimated 7,000 new housing units, and another for construction of a retail complex, and the stadium, which will be the home of the New York Red Bulls of Major League Soccer.

Among the concerns is a tax abatement plan that calls for a lump-sum payment up front in lieu of annual taxes later. Critics say tax abatement is not needed here since the site is desirable enough to attract developers without added inducements.

Mr. Kowalski defended the abatements, and said that if the project was seen to fruition it would generate more than $2 billion in taxable revenue. He deflected the question of whether the town has sufficient roads, schools and parking spaces to accommodate such a sharp increase in population.

''We're envisioning this as a mass-transit-oriented project,'' Mr. Kowalski said, adding that he expected most of the newcomers to commute to jobs in Manhattan. ''We're not going see this huge increase.'' He said Harrison had already seen benefits from the redevelopment, describing a new Hampton Inn that opened recently as a ''rousing success.''

''We had big industry,'' Mr. Kowalski said. ''We got into the '70s and virtually all of it was gone, we had brownfields'' -- low-level toxic waste sites concentrated mainly near abandoned factories.

By the time R.C.A. shut down operations in 1976 -- it had made vacuum tubes -- Harrison was already in a downward spiral.

It was not always that way. During World War II -- perhaps the city's most prosperous period -- there were an estimated 90,000 workers commuting to factories within a 1.3-square-mile patch of industry here.

The city has long been defined by the river and its working-class population, which over the last 30 years has shifted from European to Hispanic immigrants, who now make up more than a third of Harrison's population. And it was the river that insulated Harrison from some of the racial strife in 1967 and the subsequent white flight from Newark. The neighborhoods of low-slung row houses have largely remained stable, although in many cases in need of improvement.

Yet despite the prospect of new residents and new revenue, some residents remain unconvinced that growth here is a good thing. ''I don't know, until it's all built up we'll see what it'll do to this town,'' said Joseph DiBenedetto, 49.

Seth Schneider, 29, who lives in Rockaway, N.J., and commutes on the PATH train from Harrison to Manhattan, worried about the traffic the project could bring. ''It's already congested,'' he said.

Mr. Schneider, who works in the financial industry, also wondered that with the Newark hockey arena under construction and the Meadowlands sports complex just 15 minutes away, ''Why a stadium here?''

Property owners like Mr. Amaral and Steven Adler, whose father was a scrap metal dealer, with adjoining properties near the town's PATH train station, have been made targets for seizure under eminent domain laws.

Mr. Adler said he had been negotiating with developers over four acres of land he owns when he abruptly received notice that his property had become a target for eminent domain proceedings. ''I don't mind selling,'' said Mr. Adler, adding that he had been offered about $20 million for his property. ''I do mind doing so under the compulsion of condemnation.''

Mr. Amaral said that he was not even allowed a chance to negotiate and only learned that his property was identified for condemnation last fall. ''It's sick what's happening here,'' said Mr. Amaral, 55.

Last week, a Superior Court judge ruled that the town could appoint commissioners to begin considering the condemnation of Mr. Amaral's property. On Friday, Mr. Amaral received notice that he had 90 days to vacate the premises. Mr. Kowalski declined to comment on the dispute over the use of eminent domain because it is in litigation.

The two property owners have an ally in Steve McCormick, a member of an all-Democratic City Council who upset some members of his party last year by running a campaign that questioned the development deals. ''This town is an unpolished stone,'' he said. ''But this town is basically being given away.''

One day last week, Mr. Amaral pointed out the abandoned factory across the street from his businesses and spoke of the workers who used to fill the street now known as Frank E. Rodgers Boulevard. He also pointed out a sign in his storefront window that reads: ''Stop Eminent Domain Abuse.''

''People come in and they don't know what it is,'' Mr. Amaral said. ''I say, 'It's where the government can take your property.' They say, 'That can't happen in this country.' I tell them, 'Yes, it can.' ''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EMINENT DOMAIN (89%); PROPERTY LAW (88%); LAWYERS (86%); HAZARDOUS WASTE (78%); INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY (78%); SPORTS & RECREATION FACILITIES & VENUES (77%); TOXIC & HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES (73%); COMMERCIAL PROPERTY (72%); PROPERTY VACANCIES (72%); CONSTRUCTION (70%); STADIUMS & ARENAS (89%); REAL ESTATE (74%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (67%); BONDS (67%); RETAIL PROPERTY (65%); SPORTS (64%); SPORTS & RECREATION (64%); POLITICAL PARTIES (61%); NEW CAR DEALERS (54%); SOCCER (64%); POLITICS (66%); ETHICS (65%); LEGAL SERVICES (86%); SOCCER TOURNAMENTS (69%) Area Planning and Renewal; Population; Ethics; Soccer; Stadiums and Arenas; Politics and Government
COMPANY: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE (52%); MCMANIMON & SCOTLAND (51%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (92%) NEW YORK, USA (92%); NEW JERSEY, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%) Harrison (NJ); Harrison (NJ)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Miguel Gavilanez, one of the workers at Infinite Sign in Harrison

the building is on property the city is trying to acquire by eminent domain.

Steven Adler, in the old Driver-Harris building in Harrison, N.J., said property he owns had become a target for eminent domain proceedings. (Photographs by Aaron Houston for The New York Times)Map of Harrison, New Jersey, highlighting proposed development area: A redevelopment plan would almost double Harrison's housing stock, replace punched-out factories with retail space and add a stadium.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1103 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 21, 2007 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

The World of Black Theater Becomes Ever Bigger
BYLINE: By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
SECTION: Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1525 words
DATELINE: BALTIMORE, Feb. 18
Urban theater -- or what has been called over the years inspirational theater, black Broadway, gospel theater and the chitlin circuit -- has been thriving for decades, selling out some of the biggest theaters across the country and grossing millions of dollars a year.

In the last two years, however, the tenor of the business has changed, especially since Tyler Perry, the circuit's reigning impresario, took in $110 million at the Hollywood box office with ''Diary of a Mad Black Woman'' and ''Madea's Family Reunion,'' movies that were based on his plays; they cost less than $7 million each to make.

The bigger players are developing television series, and veterans who have been part of the circuit for years suddenly have movie deals. The word in the industry is that urban theater is about to go mainstream.

''A year and a half from now, if you're not coming with a play, film script and sitcom spinoff, you're not going to be able to go anywhere in this business,'' said Gary Guidry, one of the founders of I'm Ready Productions, based in Houston, another of the circuit's big producers.

But the sight of crowds of theatergoers slowly streaming into the Lyric Opera House here on Saturday and Sunday, continuing to walk through the door throughout the first act and eventually filling just about every one of the 2,564 seats for a performance of ''Men, Money and Gold Diggers,'' prompts the question: If this is not already mainstream, what is?

As white theatergoers were lining up for ''Wicked'' at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center across town, the audience filling up the Lyric, a slightly larger theater, was almost exclusively black, mostly middle-aged women. Many said they had heard about the play through the traditional lines of the circuit's promotion: radio ads, fliers in local business and church parking lots and an astonishingly effective word-of-mouth network that precedes the show from city to city.

Some aspects of urban theater are set in stone. Top tickets average about $30 less than those of touring Broadway shows. And it has become standard practice to sell DVDs of the plays after the tour; Mr. Perry has reportedly sold more than 11 million.

The plays, which typically take place in contemporary settings, are often sprinkled with R&B solos and duets, and tend to be a mix between melodrama and farce, with clownish archetypes, like churchy grannies and two-bit entrepreneurs. And they all have uplifting plots, usually about a woman torn between a glamorous philanderer, whose speech is laden with double-entendres, and a humbler, more dependable man, whom she eventually chooses. (The more muscular actors also have a tendency to take off their shirts.)

More than a marketer's demographic description, urban theater is a genre like the sitcom or courtroom thriller, and experiments tend to fare poorly. David E. Talbert, a 15-year veteran of the circuit, said he once wrote a pure comedy without an inspirational message and was bluntly advised by audience members not to try it again.

Mr. Talbert, 40, is the other powerhouse on the circuit, along with I'm Ready Productions and Mr. Perry. By Mr. Talbert's own estimate, he has grossed $75 million over the last decade and a half with 12 plays, and counting. He likens himself to Neil Simon as a playwright who tries to cater to his audience's wants and tastes rather than hew to some establishment idea of high art.

Mr. Guidry, 33, and his producing partner, Je'Caryous Johnson, 29, the author of ''Gold Diggers,'' are not so content with the status quo. They have departed from the form somewhat by adapting popular romance novels to the stage; like many younger people in the business, when they first began attending the plays, they felt the quality was, well, not great. Granted, they added, theatrical distinction has never really been the main point. That point, in the view of many, has been simply to have theater by, for and about contemporary black people.

Antonio Banks, who was snapping and selling souvenir photographs in the lobby of the Lyric, summed up a prevailing attitude among theatergoers: ''Not much is offered to them,'' he said. ''If they can find an outlet, even if it's not really good, it helps them escape from reality for a while.''

That attitude has been changing. One reason, said Laterras R. Whitfield, a 28-year-old from Dallas who broke into the field four years ago with ''P.M.S. -- It's a Man Thang,'' is that the market is becoming saturated.

''It appears to be so easy,'' he said, ''that a lot of people say, 'Hey, I can do this,' and they just write a play and find somebody silly enough to promote it, and then people go see it and say, 'What is this mess?' ''

The target audiences, in general, do not have much disposable income, and having been burned too often with bad plays, they are more discriminating. The excitement of going to see theater made explicitly for them, Mr. Johnson said, is no longer enough. Without the equivalent of a Broadway imprimatur to guarantee a certain level of production quality, though, reassuring theatergoers is not easy.

''If I tell you 'Les Miz' or 'Cats' or 'Hairspray,' you immediately know what I'm talking about,'' said Brian Alden, whose North American Entertainment Company promotes Mr. Johnson's plays. ''In urban theater, we're marketing an unknown product, so generally we're marketing a name.''

But outside of Mr. Perry -- who has also acted in many of his plays, most notably in drag as the vigilante grandmother, Madea -- there are no writers or producers everyone knows by name, except for some of the older gospel impresarios, who no longer have the buzz they once did.

So active producers are now heavily casting recognizable film and television actors and singers.

At a recent, crowded performance of Mr. Talbert's new play, ''Love in the Nick of Tyme,'' at Newark Symphony Hall, none of the dozen or so audience members interviewed knew Mr. Talbert. They did, however, know the name of the male lead, Morris Chestnut, the heartthrob film and television actor. Mr. Chestnut and other familiar faces in the circuit are not in the top ranks of fame; former sitcom stars tend to be particularly well represented. But they are celebrities of a caliber that would have been unheard of in a gospel play 10 years ago.

Increasing star power and the box office success of Mr. Perry, who is now developing three television series and a few more movies, are signs of the circuit's move into big business.

But there are still few signs of acceptance by the cultural establishment. Reviews of Mr. Perry's first two movies, which were based on his plays, were overwhelmingly negative.

For now, critical disregard can be a selling point. On Feb. 13, the day before the opening of ''Daddy's Little Girls,'' Mr. Perry's latest film, he sent an e-mail message to the members of his database, complaining of the skepticism from Hollywood insiders and journalists.

''It is as though we are all so unsophisticated that we won't support a great movie about a good father,'' the message read. ''We know the truth, so let's show them at the box office.'' (The first weekend grosses were estimated at a robust $17.8 million.)

Mr. Perry declined to comment for this article.

The circuit's position in the universe of black theater -- particularly as distinct from the work of black playwrights presented in literary theater -- is a topic that has long been discussed. While some scholars and theater professionals have criticized gospel plays for trafficking in stereotypes, others see it as another kind of drama, even finding, as Henry Louis Gates Jr. put it in a 1997 article in The New Yorker, ''something heartening about the spectacle of black drama that pays its own way.''

Kenny Leon, who is directing the Broadway-bound production of August Wilson's last play, ''Radio Golf,'' works in the same building as Mr. Perry in Atlanta. ''I look at theater that is produced at some of the regional theaters and theater that is produced on that circuit as two different things,'' he said. ''We shouldn't try to make them be the same things.''

No figure attracts more conflicting opinions than Mr. Wilson, who died in 2005. Mr. Talbert, being almost hypnotically unflappable, is not shy about his view: if the audiences who go to Mr. Wilson's plays are predominantly nonblack, he asked, then how significant could he be to black people?

But Mr. Guidry and Mr. Johnson, the young Turks, think the genre can continue to develop while still staying true to its traditions. In 2002, when they produced an adaptation of Michael Baisden's ''Men Cry in the Dark,'' they did not advertise its basis as a best-selling romance novel, fearing it would alienate the church-based audiences. Now a play's origin as a novel is a selling point.

And as for Mr. Wilson, Mr. Guidry said that ''Fences,'' Mr. Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, could do perfectly well with some judicious trimming, a little more comedy and, of course, a savvy marketing campaign.

''Man, if it were called 'Big Man, Stronger Woman,' '' Mr. Guidry said, ''this thing could tour.''

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