Special Report: We Will Rebuild

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RISMEDIA-NRRE November 2001

Special Report: We Will Rebuild

A Special Report By Deborah Prussel

The resonating attitude of New Yorkers following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center has been one of strength and survival. The Manhattan real estate community, too has confidence that the wounded Financial District will be rebuilt, no matter what it takes. The effort on the part of hundreds of brokers and agents is an inspiring foretelling of what LIES ahead for the city that never sleeps.

Several Manhattan firms spent days helping needy residents find temporary housing and shelter. On Sept.13, two days following the attacks, Douglas Elliman?s phones were ringing off the hook. Voluntarily manned by the company?s brokers, they fielded over 700 calls from people seeking temporary housing in the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster.

That same day, The Corcoran Group, in recognition of the tragedy?s impact, closed down for the remainder of the week and encouraged its 500 agents to get involved with helping afflicted residents find housing.

“We relocated large numbers into hotels and furnished apartments. People living in Los Angeles who have New York apartments gave them to others,” says Daniel Segal, executive vice president of The Corcoran Group.

Over 20,000 people reside in Battery Park City and the Financial District, the two vicinities closest to the World Trade Center. Many homes lacked electricity, gas, water and phone service.

Nearby trendy TriBeCa was declared a crime scene as investigators found portions of the downed planes strewn over the area.

For safety precautions, emergency personnel displaced thousands of occupants from their homes and offices. The National Guard evacuated investment banking consultant Merilyn Donnelly and her family from their Financial District home at 9 p.m. the following evening.

Twenty-five year old Ronen Kauffman, a communications consultant to non-profit organizations, walked 40 blocks from his office near Union Square, catching the ferry with 350 other people for New Jersey. “Debris was falling by my feet as I stood there. Chaos was in full force,” says Kauffman.

Finding housing for the ousted was a major issue, one that received scant attention. “Fortunately the weather was warm and shelters were empty. New Yorkers took in total strangers,” says Scott Durkin, chief operating officer of The Corcoran Group. The company waived all fees for displaced residents and raised $100,000.

“Everyone was traumatized. You couldn?t walk down the street and not see what was happening. Pictures of the missing were everywhere,” says Sharon Michnay, senior corporate relocation specialist with The Halstead Property Company. “And yet there was this wonderful feeling of togetherness.”

We placed about 60 people and waived fees for those leasing up to three months,” says Michnay. The company?s president, Diane Ramirez, lives four blocks from the World Trade Center in the Financial District and as of this writing could not go home.

The atmosphere in Manhattan has been filled with feelings of both anguish and inspiration.

“It was heartening and heart breaking,” says Cate Agnew, vice president of the newly formed New York City chapter of Commercial Women in Real Estate (CREW) Network, whose members reached out to each other. “Tell us what you need and what we can offer. We have two offices; come and use them.”

Many residents have been faced with dislocation, but the general attitude, Michnay says, is: “We will not be driven from our homes. We love our city.”

Aime Gross, an architect who runs her own company, lives in Battery Park City, just west of the World Trade Center. She left her residence with only the clothes on her back and her two children.

A few days after the disaster, Gross and others waited in line for nine and a half hours to get access to their homes for 15 minutes to gather belongings while the National Guard and the military patrolled the streets. “There were tanks in front of our building,” she says.

Because of her children, Gross vacillates constantly about returning to the neighborhood. “The clean-up around the area is miraculous. The gardens are blooming and in tact.” But she, like Donnelly, worries about the air quality. Both women are concerned about their children?s daily exposure to the remnants of the horror that will come with years of new construction.

But even with streets cleaned, buildings washed and utilities restored, Donnelly is moving further north in Manhattan. “The smoke and ashes were so severe, that I worried about their effect on my three and five year old. The noise is horrific.”

At this writing, about 3,000 people were still unable to return home. Tami Schwartz, who works for a public relations company, lives close to Union Square. “During the first few nights crowds filled the park, holding hands and singing. Every day fresh flowers, candles and posters are placed at the local fire stations. We are not forgetting.”

It is too early to assess the full effect of the disaster on housing costs, but there have already been indirect consequences on the tri-state residential real estate markets of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

A two-bedroom 1,150 square-foot unit normally commands $4,000 a month in uptown Manhattan, but housing prices had already softened in some market segments, Durkin says.

For the most part, the industry envisions a bright light at the end of what could be a long tunnel.

National Homefinders owners Steve Harney and Kevin McClarnon, who acknowledge New York as the center pin for Long Island, northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut, sold 40 homes the weekend after the disaster and see business slowly increasing.

Harney says, “Don?t make light of the American will to survive and succeed.”


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