Michael Bloomberg addresses ABO

Real Estate Weekly, Oct 24, 2001

Republican mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg recently offered his prescription for getting New York back on its feet again to the members of the Associated Builders and Owners of Greater New York.

Bloomberg made his speech on October 11, one month after the destruction of the World Trade Center. He used the fact that it was also the date of the Democratic mayoral candidates' run-off election as fodder for a political joke, saying the results that day would determine "who is going to come in second on Nov. 6," and drawing laughs from the crowd.

Then Bloomberg turned serious, saying that one of the toughest parts of Mayor Giuliani's job right now is "urging people to go out and laugh... We need to do this to get the economy back and functioning."

"How do you tell people outside of New York City that it is a safe place to come and visit?" asked Bloomberg. "It's not going to be done quickly," he said. Bloomberg recalled a trip to Chinatown last week where he and his group were the only customers in a typically crowded Chinese restaurant.

He offered suggestions about how to bring the economy back to life from its current economic slump, including a significant effort to keep businesses in the city, and a balanced budget, which he said was necessary to keep taxes down and revenue up. "If companies move out to New Jersey," he said, "they'll be hard to get back."

Bloomberg own company; Bloomberg LP, has provided 2,500 SF of its own office space to some of the businesses it works with that were dislocated in the destruction of the World Trade Center, free of charge.

Bloomberg also believes that keeping companies in New York is a two-fold effort. The government needs to act to retain companies and to improve quality of life for employees that live in the city.

Bloomberg noted that financial companies have been moving their offices out of the lower Manhattan for years. "Fortunately, their headquarters have stayed in Manhattan, he said. "But if you look at Long Island City, our failure at keeping their back offices here is evident." He added that in New York's favor, "There are people who think that you need to be where you competitors are, where your customers are and where the media is."

"We can't look at the rebuilding effort and address it as a single area," said Bloomberg. "We need to have short term solutions, such as fixing the subway system so people can get down to the financial district, and support businesses there, as well as long term ones."

Among the long-term solutions is solving the city's housing shortage, a difficult problem that predates the terrorist acts of Sept. 11. According to Bloomberg, the most conservative estimates say that no fewer than 100,000 new units are needed just to resolve the current needs for housing. That translates into roughly seven developments the size of the Bronx's Co-op-City.