Opposite: One World Trade
Center is now standing
Right: The remainder of the
16-acre redevelopment site
continues to take shape.
anchor the new tower this past May, with
plans to leave its longtime home of 4 Times
Square in Midtown in 2013.
According to a new report titled, “The
State of Lower Manhattan: A Decade of
Progress” from the Downtown Alliance,
Lower Manhattan has seen a net increase
in the number of office-using tenants as
well as a diversification of businesses over
the past 10 years. The study found that
while the area saw a decrease of 754 companies in the first two years after 9/11, a
turning point occurred in 2004 when 200
firms returned to the neighborhood.
Since then, the Downtown Alliance says
the count has increased each subsequent
year. Currently, the district houses 8,428
businesses, 130 more than were here 10
years ago.
“This is a very emotional issue, and to see
how far we’ve come in 10 years—the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan has been
very fast,” said Carl Weisbrod, clinical professor and academic chair of global development at New York University’s Schack
Institute of Real Estate, during the university’s “New Downtown” conference (held
with Silverstein Properties) earlier in the
year. Weisbrod—the founding president of
the Downtown Alliance—was at the forefront of redevelopment after the Twin
Towers fell. “When you think about Times
Square, Metrotech, Battery Park City or
major projects across the country, 10 years
is short for a major urban redevelopment.”
Following 9/11, the efforts of the
Downtown Alliance and Manhattan’s
Community Board 1 helped generate
funds and relief efforts for the 16-acre site
and the area at large. With the help of
local elected officials, Congress passed the
Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of
2002, which allocated tax benefits to the
area of Lower Manhattan damaged by the
terrorist attack. Designated as the “New
York Liberty Zone,” programs were developed to keep commercial tenants in the
area, which included real estate tax abatement, commercial rent tax reduction,
energy cost reduction, property tax abatement, employee relocation tax credits and
sales tax exemptions.
“There were incentives to cover business
losses, and there were also incentives for
those whose leases were expiring to stay and
attract new employees—and those made a
difference,” says Michael Slattery, senior vice
president of the Real Estate Board of New
York. He explains that as-of-right benefits
were targeted to tenants of 200 or fewer
people, while the city worked with the larger
firms to identify what their economic needs
would be to stay there. “They determined
how close they were to Ground Zero, how
much of a loss they sustained and whether
they were likely to move or not. It was a more
subjective calculation, which was probably
the right solution,” he says.
The efforts are working. Since 2005,
Downtown has added 307 new companies
in an economy that has changed and diver-
sified post-9/11, 18% of which are creative
services tenants, according to the Alliance
for Downtown New York.
