ForumLOCAL: New York
Lower Manhattan’s
Evolving Tenant Base
New York lost nearly 12. 5 million square feet after 9/11. Now,
the area below Canal Street is emerging as a 24/7 mixed-use
community home to more than just financial services.
By Jacqueline Hlavenka
Four months before the 10th anniver- sary of 9/11, Larry Silverstein, presi- dent and CEO of Silverstein
Properties, looked out the window from
the 10th floor of 7 World Trade Center
and watched the progress taking place
down below on the site where 2,982 lives
were lost on September 11, 2001. Today,
the 16-acre area is rising from the ashes,
thanks to a $20-billion redevelopment—
which includes four brand-new class A
office towers, the WTC Transportation
Hub and the 9/11 Memorial. Today, the
$20-billion, 16-acre redevelopment area is
rising from the ashes—and the climate of
Lower Manhattan is changing dramatically as a result.
“Most people won’t have a clue about
what’s to come, and when it does, you are
going to see a transformation here over-
night,” Silverstein told investors at a Real
Estate Lenders Association meeting on
June 13. “The impact and transformation
will be similar to what Rockefeller Center
did in 1930 for Manhattan’s West Side.”
And slowly but surely, that transformation
is already taking place. The nation has
turned its attention to the 9/11 Memorial,
which opened to the public on Sept. 12, as
well as to One World Trade Center, now
standing 80 stories tall. The building—
owned by a joint venture of the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey and the Durst
Organization—has become the centerpiece
of the changing real estate landscape in
Lower Manhattan. It is the future home of
magazine publisher Condé Nast, which
inked a landmark million-square-foot deal to
Photos by Jacqueline Hlavenka
