Changing Times

The Great White Way will go black on the last night of the millennium. The police department, fearing that the more than 2 million people expected to show up to see the ball fall in Times Square could create massive problems, asked the city’s Broadway theaters to shut down on Dec. 31. The owners quickly acquiesced. “It’s going to be a very, very, very congested area this year,” said Lee Silver of the Shubert Organization, which operates 16 theaters. The move could cost Broadway’s producers hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance ticket sales - not to mention upsetting the people who planned their New Year’s Eve around the theater.