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A NATION CHALLENGED: IN NEW YORK

A NATION CHALLENGED: IN NEW YORK; New York Carries On, but Test of Its Grit Has Just Begun

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October 11, 2001, Section B, Page 1Buy Reprints
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Imagine being told a month ago that security checkpoints would be established at the bridges and tunnels leading into Manhattan. Imagine being told a month ago that the police would prevent single-occupant cars from crossing into Midtown or Lower Manhattan on weekday mornings.

Imagine being told a month ago this morning -- while commuting to work or taking your child to school -- that before noon the World Trade Center would collapse, thousands would die, and New York City would be jolted into the first frenzied stages of a war prompted by terrorist attacks.

Imagine all that. And then imagine adapting.

A month after hijacked jetliners crashed into the twin towers on that blue-sky morning of Sept. 11, New York is carrying on -- not completely and not always prettily, but carrying on. It has become a city in which drab-green National Guard uniforms blend in with the blur of dark blue suits at Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal. A city in which subway trains actually stop at the World Trade Center/Chambers Street station, just a few hundred yards northeast of that mournful place inadequately christened ground zero.

A wonderful paradox has resulted, according to Steven A. Cohen, vice dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Even with a foreign-born population of about 40 percent, New York is now seen by the rest of the country ''as the most American of cities,'' he said. ''We're tough, we're resilient, we fight back, and we're undaunted.''

But the test of the city's resilience has only begun. In the current mayoral campaign, which includes a runoff today between the two Democratic candidates, heated words have been exchanged over one candidate's pre-attack suggestion that there are two New Yorks. His words now ring true, though not quite the way he intended.

While most of the city grinds on as before -- though in a state of heightened psychic alert -- the western slice of Lower Manhattan has become an island within an island. Dozens of shops, restaurants and businesses, along with their thousands of employees, struggle to survive in the restricted zone that rings the girder-and-concrete remains of the World Trade Center complex. At the same time, thousands of residents fret over air quality, maneuver past exposed utility lines, and otherwise live in what approximates this country's war zone.

''The fact that our subway system functions, it's great,'' said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the New York Partnership and Chamber of Commerce, a leading business group. ''The lights stay on, we have communications, it's great. But there are so many consequences that we haven't understood yet.''

The sensory perception of the many thousands who witnessed the collapse of the twin towers has been affected, she said. ''It was not real, yet we were seeing it.'' And beyond the personal loss of so many dead, there is the physical loss of 13 million square feet of office space, the rough equivalent of Chicago's central business district.

''It's those kinds of things,'' Ms. Wylde said, ''that make you realize: we lost a lot.''

Here are the rough estimates of how much, according to Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi: as much as $105 billion over the next two years, including $34 billion in property damage and up to $60 billion in economic costs. Nearly 17,000 people -- flight attendants, restaurant workers, salespeople -- have applied for unemployment benefits as a result of disaster-related job loss; the number is expected to top 100,000 by June.

In addition, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said this week that the terrorist attack cost the city about $1 billion in lost tax revenues. His successor will soon have to deal with a budget deficit -- perhaps as much as $4 billion -- in addition to the recovery efforts and all those issues that loomed large before the attack, from the paucity of moderately priced housing to a profoundly troubled school system.

A month later, the extraordinary devastation of a 16-acre tract in Lower Manhattan has become almost an accepted condition by a city turning its attention to war. Nearly 260,000 tons of debris, about a fifth of the total, has been carted away, much of it to be pored over in the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island by investigators looking for evidence and body parts. A roaring void has been created in the financial center of the world.

But Steven Spinola, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said that he had been surprised by how easily many of the displaced businesses were able to find temporary quarters, and by how quickly some of the damaged buildings were being restored. ''Deals or handshakes'' have been made for about 6.2 million square feet of office space, much of it in Midtown, he said, while the businesses relocating to New Jersey and Connecticut are signing short-term leases of three and four years.

''A month ago, I would have said to you, 'We need to go buy new buildings,' '' he said. ''But because of where the economy is going, the majority of the need can be handled with the existing space that we now have. That doesn't mean we shouldn't build more office buildings. But we shouldn't go crazy building office buildings.''

Mr. Spinola acknowledged that many who worked in the vicinity of the World Trade Center may resist returning to the scene of an international nightmare. ''For the people who saw this firsthand, it's going to be an emotional challenge to go back,'' he said. ''But on the other hand, that's what we have to do.''

Initially, the terrorist attack also crippled the city's arteries, particularly its subways. Now, all but seven of the city's subway stations are open, but the isolated damage was significant. For example, parts of the tunnel for the 1 and 9 lines that ran beneath the World Trade Center are gone; transportation officials say that full service will not return for at least two years, but they will not provide cost estimates for repairs.

To help pay for those repairs -- and to make New York whole again -- Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Giuliani are asking the federal government for $54 billion worth of subsidies, tax breaks and incentives. Although some in Congress have already questioned whether the request is a bit bloated, few doubt the need for significant federal assistance to jump-start the city's shellshocked economy.

Significant federal aid, along with the money collected from insurance, is going to go a long way toward hastening the city's recovery, said Dr. Cohen of Columbia. ''Obviously, over the short term there's going to be a struggle to recover economically. But I think the long-term outlook is quite good, with billions and billions of dollars in construction priming the pump in a big way.''

Dr. Cohen agreed with Mr. Giuliani in saying that as bad as the current economic situation is, it has been worse. ''In terms of a one-day event that shook the city to its core, there's never been anything like it,'' he said. ''But during the Depression, over a third of the city was out of work. It doesn't approach that kind of dislocation.''

Dr. Cohen's glass-half-full view of a wounded city seems typical. New York has new problems on top of its old ones, from a steep drop in tourism to a soaring rise in traffic congestion, to the pervasive sense that every public building is ripe for the next terrorist attack. But there has emerged a strange, encouraging sense of community within a city of eight million.

''We don't really love each other, and we're too different to feel like we're going to be soul mates with each other,'' said John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. ''But there's an underlying identity with the city and its toughness.''

And so, a month later, the city pushes on, accepting that a kind of gritty innocence has been lost, that a military presence at its borders is required, and that even the best of recoveries will not bring back the 5,000 dead.

Imagine Deputy Mayor Joseph J. Lhota, a burly, gruff presence in City Hall, comparing the World Trade Center site to Gettysburg yesterday, and calling it ''hallowed ground.''