What’s Old Is New: A Revitalized Downtown NYC
A convergence of real estate development, infrastructure improvements, and diverse cultural offerings is redefining Lower Manhattan, harkening back to the city’s colonial days.
Published July 1, 2006
By Pamela Sherrid
Academy Contributor
The block of Front Street just north of the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan was a sad sight for most of the last 30 years. Vintage commercial buildings built by prosperous merchants at the end of the 18th century stood derelict and nearly empty.
But today, life is stirring on Front Street. Real estate developers, helped by low-cost public financing, recently renovated 11 old buildings and built three new ones, creating 96 chic apartments that were all quickly snapped up by renters. On a recent sunny spring afternoon, entrepreneur Sandra Tedesco was unpacking bottles at her new wine bar, Bin No. 220, the first retail business to open on the block. A coffee bar, a dry cleaner, a sushi place, and a gourmet grocer—those basic upscale urban amenities—are also on the way.
Sandra and her business partner, Calli Lerner, both pioneering residents in the Financial District, are engines of the change that is sweeping Lower Manhattan. “We had nowhere we could walk to have a nice glass of wine and relax,” says Tedesco. So, both experienced in the restaurant trade, the partners are remedying the situation by opening a cozy neighborhood place.
A Neighborhood on the Move
If all you know about downtown is the seemingly endless squabbling about what will be built at Ground Zero, you are missing the big picture. Lower Manhattan is not only being rebuilt, it is morphing into a much more diverse and lively neighborhood. No longer is finance the only employer, nor do the streets echo emptily at 7 p.m. “This is definitely not the Downtown we once knew,” says Mary Ann Tighe, CEO of the New York Tri-State Region at real estate firm CB Richard Ellis. Baby strollers roll right by bankers’ limousines and green parks are sprouting amidst the concrete canyons.
Two powerful forces—the free market and the government—are working in tandem to improve life downtown. Rentals and condos are less expensive below Chambers Street than in many spots elsewhere in Manhattan, luring singles and families. That relative value is even greater for office space, attracting many nonprofit organizations and firms in everything from biometrics to publishing.
As for the public sector, it is spending billions to make Downtown an architectural and cultural showplace as a moral victory over terrorism. “Despite wishing terribly that 9/11 never happened, it does present us with a chance to look at Lower Manhattan from top to bottom, to evaluate its assets and see how it can be improved,” says Stefan Pryor, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp (LMDC).
Transportation Projects
The really big-ticket items are transportation projects that will make Downtown easier and more pleasant to travel to and move around. A new Fulton Street Transit Center, with an expected completion in 2008, will untangle the maze of ramps and passageways that connect a dozen subway lines. Its dramatic glass- and-steel pavilion entry at the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway, designed by prominent British architect Nicholas Grimshaw, will let natural light filter down to below street level.
The Port Authority hired an even better-known international “starchitect,” Santiago Calatrava, to design a new PATH Terminal at the World Trade Center, also currently under construction. A pedestrian underground concourse will be built to connect the Fulton Street Transit Center to the PATH terminal and to the World Financial Center further west. A proposed rail link to JFK airport, requiring a new tunnel under the East River, would make travel much faster between Downtown and anywhere on Long Island. It is not a done deal, but already funding is in place for more than half its $6 billion cost.
Arts and Leisure
Public spending is also revving up the cultural life Downtown. This spring 63 Lower Manhattan arts organizations and projects received a total of $27 million in grants that are expected to spur private donations of many times that sum. The Flea Theater, an award-winning Off-Off-Broadway theater known for nurturing innovative playwrights, is hoping to upgrade its building and create more rehearsal space.
The Poets House, which offers lectures and readings, and houses the nation’s largest collection of poetry books and media open to the public, will be moving next year to a beautiful river-view home in Battery Park City, just a short walk from The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy).
The River to River Festival presents over 500 performances downtown from June through September, including a diverse range of music that includes pioneering rappers, The Sugar Hill Gang, and the lush-sounding indie rockers, Belle & Sebastian. And music is just part of the happenings: On a Sunday afternoon, for instance, a family can see a tap dance demonstration and then take part in a marathon reading of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” aboard a tall ship.
Downtown nature lovers can celebrate, too. Government money is improving and creating more than a dozen parks and open spaces. At the foot of Broadway, Bowling Green, the nation’s oldest park, has been relandscaped, creating an oasis of green. Kiosks serving sandwiches and salads will open this summer in Battery Park; patrons can sit at café tables set amidst 57,000 square feet of newly planted perennial gardens and enjoy the views of New York harbor.
Governors Island
Governors Island, that 172-acre gem located just 800 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan, is a magnificent wildcard in the future of Lower Manhattan. In 2003, the federal government transferred control of most of the island to the State and City of New York. The public entity created to decide the island’s future has sketched out varied possibilities for redevelopment, ranging from entertainment park to innovation center. This spring more than two dozen proposals for development flooded in to meet a May deadline.
Live, Work, Visit, Enjoy
Meanwhile, the boom in residential population in Lower Manhattan—more than doubling in the past 15 years to 36,000—is also a boon for workers and visitors. As is the case with Bin No. 220 on Front Street, many of the businesses that are opening to serve residents also make it a nicer place to visit.
Lower Manhattan is now the fastest growing residential neighborhood in New York City, and not only in the traditional residential area of Battery Park City. Wall Street has been synonymous with finance for hundreds of years, but many of the older office buildings there can’t accommodate the high-tech wiring needed for modern trading.
So every building on the south side of that famous row from Broad Street to Water Street has been or is being converted to condos or rentals. “At 6 p.m. I now see people coming out of the sub- way on Wall Street on their way home,” says real estate broker Vanessa Low Mendelson, who not only sells luxury condos downtown, but also lives there with her husband and 18-month-old baby.
The Sound of Hope and Renewal
Of course, all these changes can’t happen without disruption. There’s a huge amount of construction going on downtown, bringing with it noise, blocked streets and sidewalks, and weekend subway station closures. “What’s going on in Lower Manhattan is like having open heart surgery while running a marathon,” says Eric Deutsch, president of the neighborhood business group Downtown Alliance.
But many people find in the commotion the sound of hope and renewal. In a 2002 speech, Mayor Bloomberg outlined his vision of Lower Manhattan as a bustling global hub of culture and commerce, and a live-work-and-visit community for the world. “If you study New York history,” he said, “you realize that it is often at the moments when New York has faced its greatest challenges that we’ve had our biggest achievements.”
Also read: 7WTC: A New Home, A Return to Downtown
About the Author
Guest Editor Pamela Sherrid is a veteran of U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, and Fortune magazines.
