September 13, 1985

The road to Westway has now been narrowed to this: Can New York officials persuade Congress to extend beyond Sept. 30 the deadline for exchanging Westway's Federal financing for mass-transit money and a more modest highway instead? And, can the Army Corps of Engineers quickly overcome the objections of a Federal appeals court, which ruled against Westway this week? In its nearly 15 years as an ambitious blueprint to redevelop Manhattan's West Side, Westway repeatedly has survived court rulings and administrative decisions that were described as potentially fatal. But while the project has passed largely intact through hazardous crossroads before, even many of its supporters acknowledge that now time and the number of places they can turn seem to be running out. Supporters of the highway and development project along the Hudson River have been waging a two-front war, in Congress and the courts. This week they were rebuffed on both fronts.

When the G. Heileman Brewing Company announced last month that it would build a new brewery in Milwaukee, a lot of people were surprised. The Stroh Brewery Company had just closed its famous Detroit brewery and the Miller Brewing Company had taken a $140 million write-down on a huge new Ohio plant that it has yet to use. And here was Heileman, the upstart from western Wisconsin, building a brewery in the face of sluggish growth in consumption and excess industry capacity - problems that have bedeviled Heileman, too, though less than many other companies. In fact, the ultramodern brewery the company plans to open in mid-1986 to produce European-style beers is one way Heileman hopes to grow in the face of slack demand. ''Our new plant is an effort to capture a segment of the market that we think is available,'' said Russell G. Cleary, Heileman's 51-year-old chairman. ''Although beer sales are flat over all, imported beer is enjoying a double-digit expansion. We think we can duplicate European quality.''

Among Wall Street's privately owned brokerage partnerships, profitability has always been a jealously guarded secret. But Bear, Stearns & Company disclosed all yesterday in announcing the terms of its plans for an initial public offering of stock - and at the same time confirmed its reputation as a savvy trader able to reap profits even in bad times. In recent years, when heated competition and volatile markets depressed the results of many publicly owned firms, Bear, Stearns produced returns of better than 50 percent on its partners' capital. It had net income before taxes of $163.8 million on revenue of $1.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended April 30, 1984, and net income of $168.7 million on revenue of $1.8 billion in the most recent year. For its most recent quarter, ended in July, Bear, Stearns earned $69 million on revenues of $565 million.

It never looked like it would come to this: There were the Mets, a six-run lead vanished, clinging in one half of the ninth and then scratching their way to victory in the bottom half. First came an infield hit, then a bunt, and then Keith Hernandez's ground-ball single to left field that gave the Mets a 7-6 triumph over the St Louis Cardinals yesterday, putting them back in sole possession of first place with a one-game lead in the National League East. ''We had to win this one,'' said the manager, Dave Johnson. ''We had to show the Cardinals that we're to going to win.''

A Government-sponsored panel today recommended the abolition of the pass laws, which restrict blacks' right to move to the townships set aside for them in urban areas. The pass laws, long a source of black resentment, are known officially as influx control measures. They enforce apartheid by seeking to limit the number of blacks able to live in the segregated townships set aside for them near white-dominated cities. The panel, which had been appointed by President P.W. Botha, recommended a ''strategy for orderly urbanization,'' making it easier for blacks from rural areas to take up residence in the segregated townships. The panel offered no proposal for residential desegregation.