DAY EIGHTY-TWO:Dec. 1:
It was a magnificent day. Temperatures soared into the mid-seventies, not a cloud or wisp of white marred the blue sky, and a gentle breeze blew gusts of freshness over the city. By the thousands New Yorkers stepped out today, walking, biking, jogging, strolling, shopping, gawking and even sunbathing.
It was bizarre. December – this is December – and temperatures are in the seventies. It’s terribly hard to think about Christmas when it feels like May. Nobody can recall a “winter” like this one. We’ve yet to have a frost and today is T-shirt weather. It lovely, but it’s not right.
Nevertheless, New Yorkers took pleasure in today’s spring weather. Along the Westside Highway roller bladders and bikers sped past baby strollers and clusters of chatting pedestrians. I was, meanwhile, struck but the massive construction operations going on by the World Financial Center, which remains vacant three months after September 11. The World Financial Center is two large high rises located on the Hudson River, noted for the massive sun-drenched atria filled with enormous palm trees. It was always striking to sit in the heated, several stories high atria, nestled among towering palm trees, watching snow fall over the Hudson. But on September 11 the east side of both towers was severely damaged, and the companies that used the towers as their world headquarters, American Express and Lehman Brothers, abandoned Manhattan, moving most of the offices to New Jersey.
It was startling, therefore, to see a large crew of men, huge cranes and a full out construction effort underway on the long-vacant two or three acre large site next door. They are in the business of erecting another skyscraper, at a time when many cynics claim the entire downtown core of Manhattan is dead – or dying.
The city’s most powerful millionaires and billionaires, working with the New York City Partnership, are determined to not only build whatever is being erected next to the World Financial Center, but the entire city in a new image. Created during the 1970s bankruptcy of New York City by David Rockefeller, the Partnership had become a sort of booster club for big business in Gotham. And it had floundered of late, unable to define its mission in a booming economy. But within hours of the September 11 catastrophe the most powerful men in the city – the likes of billionaires Jerry Speyer, Mort Zuckerman and Michael Bloomberg – were plotting the resurrection of Gotham. Joining their team were NY Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, former President Bill Clinton and the CEO of the largest finance and investment companies in the world. Bill Clinton has been acting as the group’s cheerleader, chanting at meetings; “Get the money now!” They’ve, managed to bring onto their team media mogul Larry Tisch, former ambassador and financial whiz Felix Rohatyn, the chair of the New York Stock Exchange and a host of other movers and shakers who move in circles we mere mortals can only imagine.
New York magazine reports this week that these men – and a couple of women – have been pushing Congress to pass a $5 billion tax package that would essential give corporations massive amounts of money – in the form of tax break – in exchange for not leaving downtown Manhattan. House leader Rep. Trent Lott, a Republican, can’t understand why America should foot the bill for New York’s recovery. Many other non-New York political leaders are raising eyebrows. The Partnership counters that they expect the realtors, developers and investors of New York to shell out their own money to build, but need tax incentives to keep businesses running downtown for the three to five years time that will elapse before new office buildings are in place.
The Partnership estimates that 125,000 people who worked downtown will have lost their jobs by the end of the year, and in the absence of incentives to keep businesses in the area another 270,000 jobs may be lost. All of the city’s major labor unions have joined the Partnership, creating a remarkable meeting of minds across deep class divides. It is perhaps as strange as this weather: Pleasant, warm, but clearly abnormal and oddly unsettling.
Tonight the moon is full, rising so close that it seemed to kiss the city.
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
