By Liz Berger
How strange and wonderful, six years after 9/11, to reflect not on where we have been but where we are going and how we are getting there; to stop telling the story of that day and start talking about today and tomorrow; to look out the window and see an extraordinary community rising from the dust and scaffolding — great architecture, a robust and growing corporate citizenry, shopping on Wall St., cafés on Stone St., culture and street life, the lowest commercial vacancy rate in six years and so many residents that two new schools are under construction. For Downtown, it’s déjà vu all over again.
I have lived south of Fulton St. for 25 years. It is where my husband and I bought our first apartment and where we brought our children home from the hospital. We remember life Downtown before there was a single all-night deli, when restaurants closed early Friday evening and didn’t reopen until Monday lunch, when the nearest movie theaters were in New Jersey. In those days, we schlepped grocery bags on the subway and, before FreshDirect, Netflix and the long-departed Urban Fetch, found ways to have everything else delivered.
It was hard but fun and we loved being Downtown. We loved the huge buildings on the narrow, winding streets, being so close to the water and really knowing in some powerful, visceral way which seemed to escape everyone else that Manhattan was an island. We loved the views, the beach that became Battery Park City, the weird subway and bus lines and the feeling that we were at the center and beginning of everything.
O young pioneers! Things changed. The Fairway bags got heavier. My babies wouldn’t eat the kale that Urban Organics delivered week after week. Midnight Express went out of business. The thrill of our own version of manifest destiny faded and though we still loved our neighbors we longed for a neighborhood.
An otherwise smart man used to tell me that I would move to the Upper West Side when I grew up, but that wasn’t it. We longed for a new kind of place, where people lived and worked and that was the point. A neighborhood that was active, alive, clean and safe, local and authentic; with places to shop, eat and hail a taxi around the clock, a late night drug store, a great lawn, a theater or two, and good take-out.
We wanted more from Downtown, and that is exactly what we got. Slowly, in fits and starts, and then there it was: A 24/7 community, the result of an intense and enduring partnership between government, business, real estate developers, artists, entrepreneurs, residents and a visionary Business Improvement District, the Alliance for Downtown New York.
The genius of the Downtown Alliance was to understand that the best way to support business was to support the entire community, and as the new president of the organization I am committed to working with our partners in government and the non-profit and private sectors to continue making daily life better for everyone Downtown.
Six years ago, I stood outside P.S. 234 and watched the world we had spent so many years building end in 18 minutes. The World Trade Center, where my family and I had spent part of every day of our children’s lives, was in flames, and our community in shambles. Life as we had known it was over, and no one was sure how it would begin again.
Today, however, I am not in despair. I am full of hope, more optimistic than ever about the future. I see new possibilities everywhere. In my vision, Downtown is a place where people keep having ideas, getting involved and moving beyond their own experience to create things bigger and better than what came before. This is why I live here and how I want to help rebuild.
Liz Berger is the new president of the Alliance for Downtown New York.
