REAL ESTATE: Roman Candles

Real-Estate Promoter William Zeckendorf, whose plans shoot out as fast and colorfully as flaming gobbets from a Roman candle, moved into Dallas last week and popped an idea that had even Texans agape. He announced that his Manhattan realty firm of Webb & Knapp and a group of well-heeled oilmen are in the process of acquiring 5,000 acres of choice land between Dallas and Fort Worth for $10 million. Their plan: to turn the land into the world’s biggest “industrial park,” a roaring “prairie boom town” where 100,000 people would work in a $300 million complex of aircraft, electronics, food-processing and packaging plants, with an annual payroll of $500 million. The details and timing were still undecided, said Zeckendorf grandly, but he and his backers had already plunked down $500,000 as down payment on half the land, hoped to start building this year.

Back in Manhattan, one of Promoter Zeckendorf’s earlier colossal deals fizzled, proved to be only damp punk, but he promptly shot out another to replace it. A plan for a grandiose $130 million “Palace of Progress” over Pennsylvania Station has been dropped, he said (the foundations alone, it developed, would cost another $45 million). But now he hopes to build an even bigger project on Manhattan’s West Side. This time, the idea is to redevelop 40 acres between Pennsylvania Station and the Hudson River, create a $300 million-$500 million city of the future, with a vast merchandise mart, a permanent World’s Fair, a heliport, a glittering television city, a parking lot for 20,000 cars, and a 1,750-foot “Freedom Tower” for, as Zeckendorf put it, “defense observation and other activities.” With a target date of 1960, Zeckendorf announced that New York Central Chairman Robert R. Young had offered to help out with the financing and that he had also asked the Pennsylvania Railroad to share in the deal. But, said Zeckendorf confidently, “If they don’t want to come in, we can go on without them.”