New York faces comeback hurdles

Newspaper office shut

Reporters, editors and other members of staff at the New York Daily News－once the largest-circulation newspaper in the US－no longer have an office.

Its owner, Tribune Publishing, announced on Aug 4 that the newspaper was permanently closing the newsroom in Lower Manhattan.

The company said its reporters and editors have been working remotely since the pandemic started in March. It insisted it would keep the print edition of the paper alive. Employees will be given until Oct 30 to collect their belongings from the office.

Major tech companies, including Facebook and Google, have extended work-from-home policies. Google told its 7,000 workers in the city to operate from home until next summer, while Twitter said its hundreds of employees could work remotely forever if they want to and if their position allows.

There has been some good news about office space.

Facebook agreed to lease all 730,000 square feet of space in the renovated Farley Building early last month, bringing its total footprint in the city to more than 2 million square feet of office space. Amazon recently bought the former Lord & Taylor Building on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan for offices.

But the stay-at-home order for most workers because of the virus resulted in a decline in consumer demand and reduced spending that have hit the city's retail industry, which has been struggling as consumers turn to online shopping.

J. Crew, the women's preppy retailer, luxury department store Neiman Marcus, Lord& Taylor, the US' oldest department store, and Brooks Brothers, which has dressed all but four US presidents and put its overcoats on Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and Donald Trump for their inaugurations, filed for bankruptcy.

Also gone are many of the mom and pop stores that punctuated so many neighborhoods and became victims of high rents before the pandemic, and then the pandemic and no customers.

"Anthony the Tailor from Italy" reads the sign on the green door to an Upper West Side shop. For the past 20 years or so, the owner closed every August and spent the month in Italy. Now, he's not coming back and has put his business up for sale.

The Partnership for New York City said about 33 percent of the city's small businesses may never reopen. So far, the sector has lost about 520,000 jobs.

The hotel industry in New York City is facing its worst crisis in nearly 100 years, according to Vijay Dandapani, CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City.

How bad?

"About 200 of the city's 700 hotels have closed temporarily or permanently and another 200 are housing the homeless as part of the effort to limit spread of the coronavirus."

Recovery?

"Not until the third quarter of next year, with revenue approaching 2019 levels in 2025."

Amid the gloom there is some good news about two iconic city events.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will be held, but nobody is sure what it will look like, with a mixture of virtual and on-the-ground events planned.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting will be done in different formats.

There are those who remain optimistic that many New Yorkers will return, and that other people will move to the city because of its status as a global center for industries like advertising, banking, creative arts, finance and media.

"People want to get out of Dodge," Brenton Raymond, a licensed broker with Oxford Property Group, said. "But I think they'll come back because of the intellectual capital in New York."

Businessman Larry Silverstein, who leased the twin towers at the World Trade Center six weeks before the 2001 terror attacks destroyed them, said: "I went through 9/11. I remember people telling me we were never going to be able to get people to come back to Lower Manhattan.

"Never bet against New York, because New York always comes back bigger and better than ever before."

New York-born comedian Jerry Seinfeld had a message for those who have left, those who have stayed and those thinking of coming to the city.

In an op-ed article on Aug 4 in The New York Times, headlined "So You Think New York Is 'Dead' (It's not)", Seinfeld wrote: "Real, live, inspiring human energy exists when we coagulate together in crazy places like New York City. Feeling sorry for yourself because you can't go to the theater for a while is not the essential element of character that made New York the brilliant diamond of activity it will one day be again."

Perhaps even thriving and hectic.