NEW YORK -- The hum of massive mobile generators, boilers and
pumps emerges blocks from Manhattan's Financial District and turns into a
steady din south of Wall Street - the now-familiar sound of an area
laboring to recover from Superstorm Sandy.
Other parts of the city
have gotten mayoral visits and media attention after the Oct. 29 storm
killed dozens of residents and tore apart homes in coastal
neighborhoods. Less obvious were the millions upon million gallons of
sea water that wreaked havoc on subterranean electrical panels and other
internal infrastructure throughout lower Manhattan, making them
unusable even after power was restored to the area.
"There were
waves on Wall Street, and it all ended up here," Mike Lahm, a building
engineer who rode out the storm at 120 Wall Street, said during a recent
tour of the skyscraper's basement.
Nearly a month later, some of
the high-rises that are home to investment banks, large law firms and
luxury apartments have bounced back quickly. But others buildings remain
eerily dark and vacant.
Landlords have warned full power won't be
back for weeks, if not months, leaving businesses and residents
displaced and uncertain about when - and even whether - they'll return.
JP Morgan Chase, the Daily News and the American Civil Liberties Union
are among tenants still operating in satellite locations after getting
washed out of their headquarters in lower Manhattan.
Heavy
flooding also hit a complex of multimillion-dollar apartments along the
Hudson River, whose well-heeled owners - reportedly including Gwyneth
Paltrow and Meryl Streep - could quietly retreat to second or third
homes on higher and drier ground.
"What you're looking at here is a
mass exodus," downtown resident Gail Strum said as she retrieved some
files and other belongings from a rental apartment building that's still
without power. "It feels like there's no coming back."
On paper,
Strum's assessment sounds too pessimistic. The city Buildings Department
declared only nine buildings in lower Manhattan unsafe because of
structural damage from the storm, and the power company, Consolidated
Edison, says all buildings citywide had access to electricity and steam
power by Nov. 15.
A real estate consulting firm that's tracking
the lower Manhattan recovery, Jones Lang LaSalle, says 49 of the 183
office buildings in the business district were closed because of
mechanical failures. By the latest count, at least half were back in
full operation, even if it has meant relying on temporary power. More
are expected to follow.
"We see that as a very healthy pace," said John Wheeler, a Jones Lang LaSalle executive.
One
success story was 120 Wall Street, a 600,000-square-foot, 34-story
skyscraper built near the East River that's home to nonprofits such as
the National Urban League, the United Negro College Fund and the
Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration.
Even before Sandy hit, landlord
Silverstein Properties got ahead of a scramble for recovery resources by
securing portable diesel generators each capable of providing 2
megawatts of power. Afterward, the building brought in its own fuel
tanker from Pennsylvania - and a security team from Florida to guard it -
so it could keep the generators going during the gas crunch.
Using
a mix of generator power and restored Con Ed service, engineers had the
elevators, lights and heat up and running by mid-November.
To the tenants, "It's as if the building's operating normally," said Jeremy Moss, a vice president with Silverstein Properties.
What
tenants don't see in the bowels of 120 Wall Street is a thicket of
temporary, exposed wiring that runs everywhere. The warning "LIVE WIRE.
KEEP OUT" is spray-painted in red on the door of a room housing
switches, fuses or circuit breakers after it was submerged. The air is
clammy and musty - "the smell of the East River," said Lahm, the
building engineer.
Fearing the East River might one day try again
to meet the Hudson, 120 Wall Street and other buildings are facing an
even bigger, more expensive job: Moving critical infrastructure to
higher floors or even roofs.
"We're going to need to relocate equipment so history doesn't repeat itself," Moss said.
Farther
uptown, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center had put
generators on high floors where they could be protected in a flood. But
they still suffered failures with Sandy, apparently because other
critical components of the backup power system, such as fuel pumps and
tanks, remained in basements just a block from the East River.
While
120 Wall Street enjoys a degree of normalcy, other newer and taller
glass towers around it remain shut as teams of contractors and workers
struggle to restore power, phone and other services. Tractor-trailers
providing emergency services such as "microbial remediation" crowd the
streets. Cabs are few.
Fire engines became a part of the mix on
Friday with the report of a fire in the basement of another vacated
office building at 55 Water St. - the address for financial services
company Standard & Poor's and the city Department of Transportation -
that left two dozen people suffering from smoke inhalation and sent
four to a hospital. The cause wasn't immediately clear.
The lower
Manhattan disarray has also reached the courtroom. Last week, a resident
of a still-evacuated luxury high-rise filed a $35 million lawsuit
against his condo board and management company, accusing them of "gross
negligence" in the wake of Sandy.
The management company, Cooper
Square Realty, fired back in a letter from its chief executive, David
Kuperberg, claiming that contractors recruited from as far away as
Wisconsin and Michigan have been working nonstop to tear out wet walls,
carpeting and wallpaper to prevent mold; installing new generators;
rebuilding a water pump; and mopping up residue left by oil-tainted salt
water.
"While Cooper Square Reality did not cause the storm, the
company is doing everything it can" to get people back in their homes,
Kuperberg wrote.
The uncertainty also is evident at South Street
Seaport, a cluster of early 19th-century mercantile buildings converted
to retail shops and apartments. Usually teeming with tourists, the
seaport remained a ghost town late last week, despite postcard-perfect
weather.
Inside a shut-down brew pub still without lights, workers
wearing masks and white jumpsuits scrubbed down the bar, floor and
tables. Many businesses, including Ann Taylor, Body Shop and Guess
outlets, were still boarded up with plywood.
Also shuttered was
"Bodies ... The Exhibition," the show featuring dissected human cadavers
that has been a fixture there since 2005. Its website says that due to
"damage to our venue, we are closed until further notice."
Some
seaport residents have electricity back but no heat or hot water. Liz
McKenna, 54, who was living in a third-floor apartment overlooking the
East River when a deluge filled the entire first floor with water, said
she expects to be able to move back in a couple of weeks - maybe.
"That's
only a guess," she said as she picked up her mail. "Look around. Nobody
really knows how bad it is down here. ... We've been ignored."
One of the few businesses to open its doors, Meade's bar and restaurant, had no customers at lunchtime.
"We're open, but who are we open for?" said 28-year-old bartender Nichole Osborne. "All of my regulars are displaced."
An etching on the front window, quoting Dylan Thomas, offered a glimmer of resolve: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."