(
)
(
)
It wasn’t 9/11, but Hurricane Sandy sidelined between 10 million and 15 million square feet of office space downtown, Jones Lang LaSalle tristate CEO Peter Riguardi estimated yesterday — more than 10 percent of FiDi’s 94 million square feet.
The surge temporarily displaced companies central to downtown’s economy, including at such huge addresses as 1 New York Plaza and 55 Water St.
Most firms were secretive about short-term relocations in the Financial District, in part because they were still figuring them out. It was not immediately known what 1 New York Plaza mega-tenants Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and law firm Fried Frank were up to, for example.
But Citigroup shared a notice it sent to employees at 388 and 390 Greenwich St., apprising them that they could come back to work yesterday — although without steam yet to be restored, they should “be prepared for cooler temperatures and dress accordingly.”
It was another story at nearly 1 million square-foot 111 Wall St., a back-office address owned by Citi with no trading facilities or “client-facing personnel.” The memo said the tower would be closed until further notice and plans were still being made to relocate staff until then.
Real Estate Board of New York President Steven Spinola said the 10 million to 15 million figure seemed “high.” He also noted rapid progress.
“Downtown already looks a lot different than it did on Friday,” he said, adding that several buildings, including the Rudin family’s 55 Broad St., had already reopened.
At Larry Silverstein-managed 120 Wall St., water damage has been mostly repaired and the tower is to reopen Friday or early next week, while Silverstein’s 120 Broadway already reopened with no damage at all.
Brokers cite a spirit of cooperation, with landlords offering short-term space for free. Even so, disruption remains large-scale — and the last thing needed in the district that heroically rebounded from 9/11, yet remains full of uncertainty for some prospective tenants.
While street conditions are improving daily, generators and pumps on Water, Broad and other streets block sidewalks as they roar like an industrial park. Many stores, restaurants and small hotels remain closed, their facades blocked by heaps of debris.
But Riguardi and Spinola were in accord on a key point: Short-term moves are a far cry from the crisis companies faced after the terrorist attack, when they needed to find permanent new homes.
Most of the temporarily closed addresses are on eerily quiet Water Street and others near the East River. The normally bustling corner of Wall and Water streets, site of the Andaz Hotel, is the epicenter of disruption; the traffic light has yet to be fixed, and a cop was directing traffic yesterday.
Prominent among the hard-hit properties is 55 Water St. — with 3.8 million square feet, the city’s largest office tower and the second-largest privately owned one in the US, after Chicago’s Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. Standard & Poor’s is the largest tenant with 1 million square feet. Other large tenants at the fully leased giant include Emblem Health and the city’s Department of Transportation.
A round-the-clock army of up to 400 tradesmen was racing to reopen the behemoth to tenants “in two to three weeks.” That’s according to Harry Bridgewood, executive vice-president of New Water Street Corp., an operating unit of landlord Retirement Systems of Alabama.
Flanked by optimistic CBRE leasing agents Howard Fiddle and Brad Gerla, Bridgewood said the owners gave him an unlimited budget to make the 53-story building tenant-ready as swiftly as possible — a figure he said could reach $100 million, “but let’s hope it doesn’t,” he said.
The job Bridgewood is managing out of a ground-floor “war room” includes pumping out between 32 million and 52 million gallons of salt water that inundated three underground levels and swelled to waist-high in the lobby. The estimate’s wide range reflects the challenge of quantifying a circumstance not previously imagined.
By 3 p.m. yesterday, the structure was dry down to only a few feet of depth in the deepest level. The water is going into sewers and “being returned to the river,” Bridgewood said.
Meanwhile, crews were working to return 79 elevators to service while serpentine plastic tubes crisscrossed the lobby to bring in fresh air.
Before 55 Water or any damaged building can reopen, it must be engineer-certified as meeting fire standards and other benchmarks set by the city in consultation with REBNY.
Getting 55 Water St. back on its feet is aided by the fact that all of its major mechanical and electrical systems are run from equipment on the 14th floor, high above any possible saltwater damage — which was not the case at every other large building by any means.
While the strain of switching offices doesn’t compare with losing one’s home, it was taking its toll on many executives. One who was evacuated to Midtown from Savannah-owned 100 Wall St. termed the overall scene downtown a “s–t show.”
The executive was skeptical of claims that most buildings would reopen in a matter of weeks, adding, “It could be months.”