New Yorkers Face Challenges and Come Out Stronger

When I survey the past decade and consider what has had the most profound impact on New York real estate, one event stands alone: 9/11. Of course, the unfathomable brutality of the attack and its immense human toll are at the heart of our memories. But the attack on the World Trade Center also resulted in the destruction of 13.4 million sq. ft. of office space—the equivalent of the entire CBD of Kansas City.

As time passed, and posters for the missing turned into memorials for the lost, many wondered whether we'd lost some of ourselves as well—some of what makes us New Yorkers—in the assault on our skyline. Real estate gives us structure—it defines the way we organize our lives—and the destruction of the World Trade Center took that structure from many of us, along with some of our confidence. Would New Yorkers be willing to work in iconic high-rise office buildings again? Would Downtown become a ghost town? The doubts were real.

But the worst didn't happen. Instead, we saw new skyscrapers rise across Manhattan, and tenants and investors redoubled their commitment to our city. On the commercial front, the success of 7 World Trade Center, the development of Eleven Times Square and One Bryant Park, and progress at the World Trade Center site have all reaffirmed New York's verticality. But with a twist: We now put emphatic focus on the safety of our people in our workspaces.

Before 9/11, our city's office buildings seem, in retrospect, to have been relatively barrier-free. After 9/11, that changed. With an increase in security hardware and enhanced practices relating to the flow of people in and out of buildings, employees today feel more secure in their environments.

We've also been able to begin the hard work of addressing the long-deferred issue of our outdated office stock. We have precious few sites for new development, and our city's tax structure, planning and permitting relating to new construction create even higher hurdles. We've been chronically starved of new construction for years. And our office inventory is aging as the infrastructure requirements of tenants increase, and as our global competitors meet the 21st century demands of business with the latest in tall building innovation. The average Manhattan office building is 70 years old compared to the national average of just 28 years old. New York is in danger of becoming a 20th century city. Our ability to retain and attract major employers, and today that means global firms, will be severely compromised if we don’t keep pace with other global cities.

In the decade after 9/11, we added about 22 million sq. ft., or roughly 6%, to overall inventory. Today, there's approximately 12 million sq. ft. on the horizon, adding another 3% to inventory. Much of this space is at the World Trade Center site, where we're reinvesting in Downtown, developing high-tech, secure buildings on a site becoming more beautiful with every passing week.

Along the way, we've become more engaged in the type of architecture we're incorporating across our city. Great local and global architects are designing more projects here. This is important not just because of aesthetics, but because of the world-class thinking and standards it brings to our office space. Fresh approaches to building systems, sustainability, interior environments and how people function within buildings create a different class of office tower.

We've also been able to do with our Downtown in the past nine years what we've failed to do for decades—make it a 24/7 environment. Where the streets used to roll up at night, Downtown is more alive than ever. Remarkably, there's been a doubling of the residential population in Lower Manhattan since 9/11. The city's fastest-growing neighborhood, Downtown is home to 55,000 residents—with a median income more than double that of Manhattan overall—drawn to the neighborhood for its quality of life. Who could have imagined this on 9/12/01?

At the same time, Downtown continues to evolve as a diversified office district, with the mainstays of finance and government being supplemented by an influx of industries including media, fashion, health, education, high-tech and the arts. In a modern-day reinterpretation of the development of Grand Central Terminal, today we're creating a nexus of high-density commercial space and transportation infrastructure in Lower Manhattan, with the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and Fulton Street Transit Center.

We've also been able to focus anew on the importance of streets—how streets relate to buildings and how a streetscape impacts the urban experience. Development at the World Trade Center will reintroduce the street grid, creating a greater sense of neighborhood and reintegrating the site into the surrounding city.

History has taught us, time and again, that when New York City is confronted with extraordinary challenges, New Yorkers come out stronger. The events of 9/11, in their unimaginable tragedy, demonstrated this once again. 

Mary Ann Tighe has been CEO of CB Richard Ellis’ New York Tri-State Region since 2002, a region of 2,125 employees. She is the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York and is a six-time winner of the Real Estate Board of New York's Deal of the Year awards for ingenious brokerage. She received the Louis Smadbeck Memorial Broker Recognition Award, REBNY’s highest award in brokerage, and REBNY’s Bernard H. Mendik Lifetime Achievement Award.