"Large organizations will be the core of New York City and they will want a different kind of space," Speyer told a Nov. 29 gathering of real estate professionals sponsored by Shulte Roth & Zabel, a Manhattan-based law firm. "We will meet that need through new zoning and new construction in areas that haven't been looked at before including the far West side of Manhattan and Long Island City."
Large corporations forced by the tragic events of Sept. 11 to re-evaluate how they operate won't flee CBDs, Speyer told the audience at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, but will instead manage risk in new ways.
"The likelihood is that companies will want to disperse space in a given area--millions of sf of space in different phone systems and electrical grids that are within a five-minute walk of each other. Companies don't want to face the risk of being wiped out, but don't want to disperse their people," Speyer said.
Speyer predicted that developers in New York City will be able to build more cost-effectively and quickly when the city's tangled morass of zoning and building approvals are streamlined during the administration of newly elected Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "Hopefully, new zoning in the city that will let us build faster and better. The torture that Vornado had to go through in constructing the new building for (Bloomberg Inc.) was outrageous," Speyer said.
Speyer serves as one of 56 members of the new Mayor's transition team charged with suggesting candidates to fill managerial positions in the new administration.
New buildings in New York City will have larger floors of 30,000 sf to 35,000 sf and feature more inspiring architecture than seen over the past 20 years, Speyer said. "We will see less luxurious building with better architecture-- buildings like the Seagram's building. People are tired of the pedestrian buildings of the past."
Structures that combine office and living uses will hold great appeal for large corporations competing for a dwindling pool of workers in the coming decades, Speyer said. "We will see much more mixed use products than in the past. This will be a great thing for New York and will effect economies of scale and make it more affordable for companies to be in New York and for people to live here."
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