His real estate company allegedly received $91,000 in 2006 for the development of a downtown Greyhound station that he supported.
This son of the Bronx now calls the City of Angels home and has set out to give it a new heart by driving the development of a downtown area with a strong emphasis on culture.
"In fact, we wish an even greater centrality of the concept of Rye Brook with some sort of physical presence in an eventual long-term development of a downtown Rye Brook".
He organizes workshops to modernize small businesses and pushes tourism and the development of a decimated downtown along the banks of the Mississippi.
Mr. Diner conceded that much of this changed attitude could be attributed to the sense of improved prospects in this city of 275,000 since the construction of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and a minor-league baseball stadium, and the development of a somewhat livelier downtown real estate market and of plans for a sports arena for the New Jersey Nets and New Jersey Devils.
He shaped the mayor's speech outlining the future of Lower Manhattan, and oversaw the rezoning of industrial Williamsburg for housing development and the development of a master plan for downtown Brooklyn.
Her calls for converting a warehouse in the Bronx into a washing-and-bagging facility for locally grown produce complements the Mayor's food policies, and her championing of the development of a "tech triangle" linking downtown Brooklyn, Dumbo, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard echoes Bloomberg's recent announcement that Cornell University will establish a technology-oriented campus on Roosevelt Island.
The show also features a nine-foot-square model of Lower Manhattan, built between 1968 and 1970, to trace the development of downtown -- a theme that is especially relevant.
And the pizza entrepreneur who owns the Tigers and the Red Wings plans to build an arena as part of a downtown development project partly supported by $285 million in public money.
As a scion of one of America's most powerful families, a globetrotting business statesman, a former C.E.O. of Chase Bank, and an important player in the development of downtown Manhattan, David Rockefeller is an emblematic figure of a world that no longer really exists: the world of the Wasp ascendancy.
He also helped stop the construction of a fourth regional airport, near Flemington, N.J., and stimulated the development of downtown Stamford, Conn., and Metrotech, a multibuilding office complex, in downtown Brooklyn.
