The breakfast routine is different these days. Aaron is still sleeping when his dad leaves the house for the long commute to work from New Jersey. And it’s dark when dad gets home. They are suburbanites now, the Rosens. A big house, good schools, safe streets. It’s a nice life. But it’s no place like home.
The Rosens are part of the New York City diaspora of terror, people who left Manhattan after September 11, whether driven by fear, or despair, or simply because they needed a new start. Like many other families, the Rosens moved for the emotional health of their children. “The thought of the city terrifies my son right now,” says Rosen.
The boy isn’t alone. Nobody knows for sure how many New Yorkers have said goodbye, whether for a while or a lifetime. But rents have come down and more apartments are suddenly available. According to one real estate executive, rental vacancies have jumped from about 2 percent of total stock to as much as six percent. As Dean Lubnick, who moved from Battery Park to New Jersey, put it: “We just don’t have the mental and emotional bandwidth for the city right now.”
New York has always beckoned restless natives of America’s smaller cities and towns. After the terror, many of these newcomers felt the powerful tugs of home. Karen Fox, 28, a Harvard Business School graduate who had recently realized her dream of moving to New York, moved back home to Colorado in late October. “Suddenly, family mattered so much more,” says Fox, “my roots mattered so much more, and everyone I love is in Colorado and I just thought, ‘I need to go home’.”
Plenty of parents thought likewise. Courtney Taylor, 22, who was spending her first year in the city, was spirited out of New York by her mother, Peggy, and her boyfriend, Jonathan, who hopped in a station wagon in Denver after the attacks and drove 30 hours to get her.
Dan Davis, 66, was no newcomer. For more than 40 years, New York had been his home. He’d lived in the same Manhattan apartment for nearly a quarter century. But less than six hours after the Twin Towers were hit, Davis and his roommate were in a car headed out of the city. They stayed temporarily in New Hampshire, and ultimately settled in Texas. “I feel secure now,” says Davis, who lives in an apartment in San Antonio.
Even some suburbanites moved away, feeling they were too close to a possible terrorist target. David King, 29, who had been commuting to Manhattan from New Jersey, put in a request for a transfer to Dallas and was granted one. “I realized that we can be a target anywhere,” King says, “but in New York City, you just feel like you have a bull’s-eye on you.”
Most of the former New Yorkers believe they made the right decision, especially when it comes to the kids. Still, Larry Rosen concedes he’s homesick. “I want to move back to the city, to what I had with my family before,” he says. He doesn’t see that as an option. But it doesn’t stop him from longing for the old days–six whole months ago–when a little boy in New York would sit down with his father at breakfast and ask about shortstops, not suicide missions.
title: “New York City New York September 11 War On Terror World Trade Center Terrorist Attack Recovery” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Glenda Garcia”
Through a window still sealed with duct tape to keep out the dust and grime of the cleanup operation below, Rambusch points to Ground Zero–the increasingly hollowed-out cavities where the Twin Towers once stood. “It’s part of us now,” he says softly. While reminiscing about Winuk, Lars Forsberg, another partner in the firm who also aided others fleeing from the collapsing buildings, adds: “This office is made up of a lot of strong, competent people. They have pulled together. You’re seeing a great can-do resilience, a move-ahead attitude.”
Nearly six months after the terrorist strike on New York, the city is trying to get back to something loosely but uncomfortably labeled as normalcy. This doesn’t mean forgetting those who died, or in any way turning away from the tragedy. But with a new mayor, billionaire businessman Michael R. Bloomberg, working to woo back businesses that relocated after the attack, and with countless smaller businesses and individuals trying to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives, a new determination is evident. The “move-ahead” attitude that Forsberg describes at his law firm is taking hold elsewhere, as well. “New York has been through a lot,” says Yvette-Michelle Wynn, a vice president of The Bank of New York. “But I think we’re tough and we can get through whatever we have to.”
New York was harder hit by the economic slowdown than much of the rest of the country even before September 11, and since then the impact on the world’s financial capital has been massive. About 450 companies left the downtown area after their offices were destroyed. Many companies are deciding to permanently move part of their operations across the Hudson River to New Jersey, or to suburban Westchester County and Connecticut north of the city. The city lost nearly 100,000 jobs in October and November alone, and the sharp decline in tax revenues is a major reason why Bloomberg has to contend with an estimated $4.5 billion budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year. Although beginning to rebound, tourism plummeted. So far, the Bush administration and Congress have agreed to provide about $11 billion in emergency federal aid for the city, not the $20 billion the president had promised initially. But on a visit to New York earlier this month, Bush vowed he’d make good on the whole amount. “When I say $20 billion, I mean $20 billion,” he declared.
And there’s guarded optimism that the city is on the mend. If it’s possible to talk about a silver lining in the aftermath of the tragedy, it has to be the outpouring of sympathy for the city from within and outside the United States. Earlier this month–and for the first time in its 31-year history–the World Economic Forum held its annual meeting in New York instead of Davos, the Swiss alpine ski resort that normally plays host to the all-star assembly of political and business leaders. It was a way of ensuring, as the organizers put it, that the meeting was “directly relevant to the event of September 11 and their aftermath,” but it also was a strong signal of support.
Other forms of sympathy have elicited bemusement from hardened New Yorkers. In December, the results of an annual etiquette poll showed New York tied with Charleston, S.C., for first place as the country’s most polite city. Outgoing Mayor Rudolph Giuliani scoffed: “That was a definite fix.”
New Yorkers take the ups and downs of the tourism business far more seriously. Some of the early efforts to lure visitors back ended in frustration. Kathy Pahanish, who owns a travel agency in Boardman, Ohio, worked feverishly to arrange a New York tour for late October. Some 537 people signed up, but then the anthrax scare hit, and she was stuck with 499 cancellations. “It was awful,” she recalls. “You wanted to sit down and cry.”
The city worked hard to turn things around. In late September, 500 past and present Broadway performers filled the center island of Times Square to sing “New York, New York” for a commercial promoting the theater district. Two months later, other celebrities enlisted for a light-hearted “New York Miracle” advertising campaign to remind people of the city’s many attractions. And hotels, restaurants and Broadway shows offered enticing discounts.
Tourists began to return, and Broadway bounced back. Tickets for hot shows like “The Producers,” “Mamma Mia” and “The Lion King” are hard to get, with sell-out audiences night after night. Right after September 11, theater attendance sank to 20 per cent of the previous year’s levels, but now it has climbed back up to 85 percent. “We’re doing well, we’re vibrant and we’re alive,” says Patricia Armetta-Haubner of the League of American Theaters and Producers.
It’s no accident that the revival of tourism coincided with the construction of a wooden viewing platform at Ground Zero in December. The site of the tragedy that once drove people away has now become a magnet. “We stopped specifically to see this,” says Olen Edward, 73, who was traveling with his wife from his home in Florida to Vermont and decided to add New York to their itinerary. He compares the sense of solidarity in the United States to what he remembers from his childhood after Pearl Harbor. For some visitors, what’s important is simply to show up and support the local economy. “It’s almost a test of loyalty, right? Think of all the people out of work,” says Dorothy Deringer, a businesswoman from California. She usually visits New York several times a year, and was determined not to skip a visit after September 11. “It’s a horrible tragedy, but if you stay home you make it worse.”
Others are coming for the first time because they have radically revised their feelings about the city. Troy Loveless, a 28-year-old chemical engineer from Mississippi, admits he always thought of New York as a city that symbolized greed. “But now for me New York represents what freedom is all about,” he says, standing on the platform. “The two things I wanted to see when I came here were the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center.” Foreign tourists are also among those lining up. “Visiting the site is a form of paying respect to the people who died,” says Manuela Fallia, who was in town recently with her two daughters from Sicily.
Initially, some family members objected to the viewing platform–and to the whole notion of Ground Zero becoming a tourist site, where visitors gawk and street vendors sell souvenir photos, T shirts and caps. But the visible display of respect by most visitors has overcome many of those misgivings. The viewing platform has rapidly filled up with inscriptions, messages like GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES OF THIS TRAGEDY and YOU WILL ALWAYS BE IN OUR HEARTS. At nearby St. Paul’s Church, a makeshift exhibit of flowers, photos, T shirts and signs dedicated to the victims sets the mood. One poster with a picture of Robert J. Caufield of Valley Stream, N.Y., has the heading MISSING crossed out, and FOUND 12/26/01 written in. It’s a sobering reminder that the hunt for bodies isn’t over.
If the controversy over visitors has largely faded away, the debate over what should happen to the site where the Twin Towers once stood is heating up. Before leaving office in late December, Giuliani argued that all 16 acres should be considered “hallowed ground” and turned into a memorial park, with no commercial development. Many family members of those who perished passionately agree. “We need to make sure we remember the lives that were lost that day,” says Monica Iken, who lost her husband and is the founder of September’s Mission, a group dedicated to lobbying for that cause.
But others have insisted that the way to show that the terrorists cannot prevail is to do precisely the opposite: rebuild the site as a vital new business center. There’s also talk of building a performing arts center, which would probably be less controversial. Unlike his predecessor, Bloomberg has indicated that the city should consider “the needs for the whole area”–including commercial development along with a memorial. With the clean-up of Ground Zero likely to end no later than June, several months ahead of schedule, the newly created Lower Manhattan Development Corp. will have to weigh the recommendations of a broad array of advisory committees before it proceeds with the rebuilding. “This is what democracy is all about,” Bloomberg declared recently, counseling patience.
For Bloomberg, dealing with the conflicting pressures for the reconstruction plans will be only one of many difficult balancing acts. After his come-from-behind election victory in November, he proclaimed that New York is “alive and well and open for business!” And in his New Year’s Day inaugural speech, he reiterated that claim and pointedly added: “To our corporate leaders, I urge you to strengthen your commitment to New York. This is no time to leave the Big Apple.”
To lure businesses back, he has to demonstrate that the city is safe. This mean working hard to guard against possible future terrorist attacks. One of his first appointments: David Cohen, the CIA’s former director of operations, to serve as the city’s deputy commissioner for intelligence. “Strong intelligence will be needed to help deter and protect against terrorist threats,” Cohen declared as he took the job. Such appointments, though, underscore the point that an undercurrent of nervousness is something that New Yorkers now take for granted. Financial giant American Express has agreed to return to its downtown location, but only after receiving assurances that the city will provide extra police to ensure security around its building.
Similarly, Bloomberg has to balance his calls for “sacrifices” to deal with the huge budget deficit with reassurances that the city won’t cut back essential services or raise taxes–either of which could scare away those companies still deciding where to relocate. Unlike Giuliani, Bloomberg has signaled a clear reluctance to provide public subsidies to private companies. He has put Giuliani’s plans to build new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets on hold and put companies on notice that they can’t expect sweetheart deals as enticements to keep them in the city. But the business community knows that it has one of its own running New York. And, in turn, Bloomberg has put a top investment banker, Andrew Alper of Goldman Sachs, in charge of the New York City Economic Development Corp., which will seek to keep companies from bolting.
Bloomberg has also reached out to other constituencies, particularly the African-American and Latino communities that were often at odds with his predecessor. “He’s done a very good job in coming off as a kinder, gentler Giuliani,” says Philip Kasinitz, an urban expert at the City University of New York. “If you look at the breadth of his team he’s brought in, it is really quite remarkable. It does seem like a kind of unity government–lots of Republicans, Democrats. It’s ethnically diverse, ideologically diverse. He’s not an ideologue. He’s a pragmatist who’s looking to get the job done.”
His pragmatism is a natural product of a remarkable career. After spending 15 years at Salomon Brothers, he walked out with $10 million and a brilliant plan for a financial-information service. Bloomberg L.P. that began in a one-room office with four employees now spreads around the world, with 7,700 employees and dozens of related businesses. To build esprit at his company, Bloomberg created a unique corporate culture. Its hallmarks are an open floor plan (no offices), free snacks, hallway fish tanks, lots of parties and an insistence on nose-to-the-grindstone work.
As the company’s fortunes soared, so did Bloomberg’s philanthropy. Long before he considered running for public office, he began giving away $100 million a year, sometimes more. The gifts, to a wide variety of cultural, scientific and youth-development causes, were made quietly until Bloomberg launched his campaign, when his lavishly printed fliers boasted about them. A self-described “liberal” who only became a Republican to avoid a crowded Democratic primary, he spent a whopping $70 million on his winning campaign.
Bloomberg’s combination of business skills and inclusive politics could help accelerate the city’s recovery. “He has to go out and sell the country on the idea that New York’s problems are America’s problems and New York’s prosperity is linked to the rest of the country’s prosperity,” says Kasinitz. “It’s a tough sell, but he’s experienced in selling bizarre ideas and getting people to invest time and money in them.” How tough a sell? M. Myers Mermel, the CEO of TenantWise, a real estate consulting company, warns of “a lack of commitment” of companies located in lower Manhattan. Worried about security, traffic and environmental concerns, he predicts, many may decide to move elsewhere as their leases expire.
But there are countless examples of big and small businesses that are determined to stay the course. Take Capsouto Freres, a French bistro run by three brothers in the trendy Tribeca neighborhood. On a recent Thursday night, it was brimming with good fortune. Both the bar and restaurant were in full swing, with young lovers seated beneath a soaring eight-foot window holding hands and studying the menu by candlelight. It’s hard to believe that just five months ago the restaurant was an emergency haven for workers escaping from the burning Twin Towers just about a dozen blocks away.
After giving food away for free for 17 days, the brothers tried to get their business started again–but the neighborhood wasn’t ready for it. Many streets were still closed to everyone except emergency workers, and nearby subway lines weren’t working. Overnight, the thousands of people who had worked at the World Trade Center and the World Financial Center–many of whom were regular customers–were gone from the area. But gradually the neighborhood came back to life, tourists returned, and the restaurant no longer felt compelled to offer big discounts. By December, sales were back to their pre-September 11 level. “To us, it’s like a new beginning,” says Albert Capsouto, the youngest of the brothers. “This city is incredible. I think we’re going to be OK.” He compares what happened to breaking a bone. “First, you have to reset it, then you have to wait for it to heal,” he says. “It takes a long time.”
In emotional terms, the resetting process can be even more difficult–especially for those who were at the center of the horrific events of September 11. Insurance executive Eileen Touhey-Kiniery was on her regular train commute in from New Jersey on the morning of September 11 when the terrorists struck. She got off at the World Trade Center just as firemen were evacuating everyone from the trains and the building. When she got out, she saw people jumping to their deaths. She was knocked to the ground by others who were escaping. “I was stampeded a second time after the second building imploded,” she recalls. “There was a torso on top of me which I pushed up to get away.”
Since then, Touhey-Kiniery has continued to commute to her job in midtown Manhattan. True, she changed her routine, taking the ferry instead of the train. She sought counseling. She worries more about her 6-year-old son Liam than before, and he worries about her. “When I went back to work, my son was very, very upset,” she says. “He still asks me if I’m afraid.” And even the seeming normalcy of most of her life these days bothers her. “It’s very emotional and I felt ashamed that I am moving on while so many are still digging,” she confessed to a friend in an e-mail recently.
But New York and New Yorkers are moving on–not completely to life as it was before, of course. And, as Touhey-Kiniery’s case shows, not to a life without deep emotional scars–along with the physical void left by the disappearance of the Twin Towers. But they have returned to a more regular rhythm of life than what followed September 11, with a determination to look to the future as well as the past. That, in itself, is another New York miracle.
