Ground Zero plus ten: The wounds are healing slowly, but are healing

(From the economist.com) On September 11th 2001 everyone who was at their desk at Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 101st-105th floors of the World Trade Centre’s north tower, died. Of the company’s 960 New York-based employees, 658 were killed, including Gary Lutnick, brother of Howard, the firm’s chief executive. In all, the attacks took 2,752 lives from the city. But the disaster called forth great-heartedness. A week later, when it was not yet clear the company would survive—it was losing $1m a day and was in need of a $75 billion loan—Mr Lutnick announced that Cantor would share 25% of the firm’s profits with victims’ families for five years and would provide them with health insurance for ten years. This amounted to $180m. The families also received $45m in bonuses.

Lower Manhattan, like Cantor Fitzgerald, suffered a devastating loss on that day. Some 14m square feet (1.3m square metres) of office space was damaged or destroyed and 65,000 jobs were lost or relocated. Hundreds of businesses closed, some permanently. Yet ten years on, the area is doing well. According to the Downtown Alliance, its vacancy rate is one of the lowest in the country. The volume of apartment sales has increased by 151% since 2003. The resident population has more than doubled, to 56,000, since 2001. Six new schools have opened there since 2009. Last year almost 10m tourists visited. Many stay at one of the 18 hotels in Lower Manhattan, three times the number in 2001. Though many companies fled in the first two years after the attacks, today there are more downtown than there were in 2001.

The biggest change is at the site itself. After years of construction delays and paralysis, One World Trade Centre, formerly known as “Freedom Tower”, now tops 80 floors. It is beginning to dominate the downtown skyline as the twin towers once did. Still two years from completion, when it will reach 104 storeys, 1m square feet of it is already leased to Condé Nast, a publishing company. The 9/11 museum, meanwhile, will not open till next September; but visitors to the site will soon be able to see two of the steel trident-shaped supports from the original building, which survived and have now been enclosed in the museum’s glass atrium. Seeing them for the first time since they were salvaged from the pulverised buildings is powerfully impressive. Visitors will also be able to see and touch the 70-foot (21.3-metre) underground wall that mercifully held back the Hudson River during the attacks.

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