[6] With no other options available, New York City applied for federal funds under the Section 8 program to re-purpose the project as deeply subsidized housing for poor and moderate-income families.

[5] Rose had been searching for a tenant population that would meet the income requirements for deeply subsidized public housing, assuage the community's fears about dysfunctional neighbors, and contribute to the revitalization of the Times Square neighborhood.

Quoting Mike Todd, who once said that while growing up, his "family had been often broke, but never poor",[11] Rose proposed limiting occupancy in the new project solely to residents who were, or had been, engaged in the performing arts.

By seeding the 1,600 apartments with families of actors, musicians, directors, stagehands and others in the entertainment industry, the idea was to fill the project, stabilize the neighborhood, and support the regrowth of legitimate theater in Times Square.

Met at first with skepticism to derision[12] (as no other subsidized housing project had previously been limited by occupation), the idea soon garnered enthusiastic support from the performing arts unions and the City.

Peter Joseph, a deputy commissioner of the NYC Housing and Development Administration, said the agency strongly supported the performing arts idea: “It takes what had been an uncomfortable situation and makes it something vibrant and exciting.

By using Federal funds to subsidize housing for the performing arts we are helping the entire country, and we are also solving the economic problems of the Manhattan Plaza project, of the New York theater and of the Clinton neighborhood.

Tapped to supervise the opening of Manhattan Plaza, Kirk helped set the tone for the development, and organized community support that permitted hundreds of aging neighborhood residents to keep their apartments with their dignity intact.

[2][15] The Manhattan Plaza AIDS Project Foundation's benefit concert in May 1997 at the Westside Theatre on 43rd Street featured Joseph Bologna and Renée Taylor, Jenny Burton, Vivian Reed;[16] artists in other years included Jeanne MacDonald, Audra McDonald, and Robert Cuccioli.

[19] More than 1,500 one-act plays including more than 40 by Lewis Black have been staged at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in the West Bank Cafe (where Bruce Willis was a bartender) at the base of the 9th Avenue building.