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TRUMP'S TROUBLES. Plans Donald Trump unveiled last week for the old Penn Central railroad yards from 59th to 72nd Street are running into trouble. The Coalition Against Lincoln West is mobilizing to halt Trump's 150-story Television City tower and other proposed monumental buildings. The Upper West Side citizen's group so vigorously fought Lincoln West, an earlier proposal for the 100-acre site, with public protests, political action and lawsuits, the financially-strapped developers sold out to Trump.
"Our executive board has unanimously decided to oppose this project as presently conceived," said Joyce Matz, a coalition board member. "We were against Lincoln West because its proposed density was absolutely too great, and Lincoln West was half the size of what Trump proposes to build."
The group never disbanded after Lincoln West went down the drain. When Trump announced his plans, West Siders once again began volunteering for battle.
Matz says, "There is general consternation about this project, far more than with Lincoln West. If it was excessive, and it was, Trump's plan is doubly excessive."
The West Siders' major concern is the impact on city services - subways, buses, sanitation, even police.
"We now have a precinct, the 20th, that can just about handle the area," says Pat Hetkin, executive vice president of the coalition. "That precinct will never be able to also cover a city within a city. Past history makes it clear New York doesn't plan for things like this, so our police services will be so thin they'll be meaningless."
The coalition will not negotiate the Trump project down even to half of what he now plans, Matz says. "We're not going to let...