How Does This Name Sound?

Let foreign money buy some Los Angeles office tower and Angelenos barely blink. Let the Japanese buy into Rockefeller Center and New Yorkers, of course, squawk. They wouldn’t be New Yorkers if they didn’t. One typical comment: “We seem to be selling the country away.”

There is a difference that goes just a bit beyond the Radio City Music Hall and the Rockettes. Even in the forest of towers that is Manhattan, Rockefeller Center is something special. It consists of 19 buildings covering 22 acres between Fifth and Sixth avenues and 48th and 52nd streets. The core of Rockefeller Center was opened in the depths of the Great Depression--to many, a promise of American dynamism to come.

The centerpiece was, and is, the Art Deco 70-story RCA Building, still the sixth tallest in New York. For those visitors who for some reason did not travel to the top of Empire State, the RCA Building offered a special attraction, a splendid view of the Empire State Building. Others know Rockefeller Center for its ice skating rink, graced during the holidays by its famous Christmas tree. The glamorous shops of Fifth Avenue are nearby.

The center also symbolized the massive wealth of the Rockefeller family. But times change. The Rockefellers needed a little cash recently to meet trust obligations so they sold majority control of the office complex to Mitsubishi Estate Co. in an $868-million deal. The Japanese government was said to be upset that Mitsubishi contributed to the impression that it was buying up America so soon after the Sony deal with Warner Communications. But while many New Yorkers complained, Mayor Ed Koch said not to worry: “Radio City Music Hall will go on forever.” That’s not quite true, either. Since General Electric took over RCA and its network subsidiary RCA, what used to be the RCA Building is now the GE Building. How does Mitsubishi Center strike you?