Real Estate

Waiting for Water Street

Re-opening storm-damaged 55 Water St. — the city’s largest office tower with 3.8 million square feet — is taking longer than its owners expected.

It had been thought that it would welcome back workers around Dec. 1 — but that deadline has come and gone.

The building will have a “soft opening” this week to let tenants’ managerial and facilities people check out their spaces, said Harry Bridgewood, executive vice-president of New Water Street Corp., an operating unit of the landlord, Retirement Systems of Alabama.

Tenants can begin returning as soon as all hands decide that it’s safe and systems are working properly. But Bridgewood wouldn’t cite a particular date.

Back on Nov. 6, we reported that Bridgewood expected to reopen 55 Water to tenants “in two to three weeks.” He had cause to be optimistic: RSA was providing unlimited funds to bring the behemoth back to life, a job he estimated could soar to $100 million.

Plus, his hundreds-strong crew had already pumped out around 40 million gallons of saltwater from the 53-story tower’s three concourse levels, and was toiling 24/7 to make it habitable again.

But unanticipated problems have slowed the process of welcoming back tenants — including Standard & Poor’s and Emblem Health.

Employees have been scattered to empty floors around town — including “as many S&P people as they can fit” on a floor formerly used by BusinessWeek at 1221 Sixth Ave., S&P sources report.

Chief among the unhappy surprises, Bridgewood said, was damage to two of the tower’s underground Con Ed vaults. They have yet to be re-energized. “As you bring something online, you find a bug you didn’t expect,” Bridgewood said.

“We have to be very careful and very safe. We’d rather push off the start date than make an appearance that everything will be done by a certain date.”

Bridgewood said a widely-reported fire in the basement two weeks ago, which resulted in several cases of smoke inhalation, isn’t a cause for the delay.

The Con Ed vaults are another story. To prevent them from ever being crippled again, Bridgewood says RSA has agreed to foot the bill to move them to the third floor after an office tenant moves out at the end of 2013.

The temporary delay at 55 Water St. comes as millions of square feet of first-class office space remain sidelined in the district. Conditions on parts of Water and Front streets don’t seem to have improved that much in the past few weeks.

But the picture’s getting brighter each week. A recent major reopening was Brookfield’s One New York Plaza.

Jones Lang LaSalle, which has systematically charted commercial conditions building by building since the storm hit town on Oct. 29, as of yesterday reported 11.5 percent of downtown office addresses still closed, comprising 17.9 percent of the area’s floor space.

The disparity is due to the fact that several of the temporarily closed buildings are among the largest — including 55 Water St.

But JLL now forecasts that by Dec. 31, 97 percent of downtown’s damaged buildings will be back on line — reflecting 95 percent of the district’s total 100 million square feet.

Downtown brokerage sources said at least two other large buildings, 100 Wall St. and 90 Broad St., would reopen this week.

But the temporary displacement of tens of thousands of Wall Street traders and executives from the district has made life hell for hundreds of stores and businesses.

Some normally-bustling restaurants are still disturbingly quiet at lunch. Yet, they’re the fortunate ones: many eateries on FiDi’s eastern edge might never reopen.

And the South Street Seaport vicinity remains a near-total disaster area. Pier 17, slated for major redevelopment, is now being evaluated by owner Howard Hughes Corp. to determine whether it is “structurally sound,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Today’s groundbreaking for Related Companies’ first Hudson Yards tower is a milestone for all involved — among them, Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s Economic Development Corp., the MTA, Related chairman Stephen M. Ross and Coach CEO Lew Frankfort.

Also due credit are CBRE brokers including Mary Ann Tighe, Bob Alexander and Rob Stillman.

The 47-story tower at 10th Avenue and West 30th Street, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, is to be finished by mid-2014. It’s obligated to close by June 1, 2013 and is likely to do so much sooner.