Fred Alger Management Inc., originally located at 75 Maiden Lane, occupied 36,000 sf on the 93rd floor of One World Trade Center on Sept. 11. All 35 staff who were in the building when the bombs hit perished, including company president David Alger. The 18 surviving Alger employees from the trade center joined staff from the firm's evacuated Jersey City offices and resumed operations at the company's disaster recovery center in Morristown, NJ.
Alger's new space is 40,000 sf on the entire second and third floors of the Constable Building at 111 Fifth Ave. The firm signed a 10-year direct lease with building owner Benjamin J. Winter for $38 per sf. Grey Advertising previously occupied the space at Fifth Avenue and 18th Street under a long-term lease. Grey was represented by Insignia/ESG on what was originally structured as a sublet to Alger, but bowed out when Winter recaptured the space and made a direct deal with the finance firm. Colliers ABR vice chairman Peter Riguardi represented Alger in the transaction.
Keys to the company's survival have been its Morristown backup facility and the vigilance management showed over time in keeping employees up to speed on disaster recovery procedures. "We ran drills," Alger executive vice president Jim Connelly tells GlobeSt.com. "We would go to different areas of the firm and say 'Here's a problem. Let's go out to the disaster recovery site.' They each had a full package telling them what to do, how to get there and such."
Connelly credits president and chairman Fred Alger with the decision to create a backup facility when the firm moved into the World Trade Center. "Fred said, 'You have a Jersey City office that's right on the river, you have a World Trade Center office that's also right on the river. Get a third site that would back up both offices.'"
Keeping the 16,500-sf Morristown facility in turnkey condition afforded Alger a seamless transition to its temporary space. "It's tight by design but fully equipped to handle the whole firm," Connelly says. "All our systems are backed up out there. We were ready to go with a trading floor and everything. It's not just a bunch of phone jacks. Computers were there. Everything was there."
And being back in Manhattan has brought a semblance of closure, of "leaving that chapter behind," Connelly says. "Everybody is just thrilled to be back in New York. The place is beautiful and people are very excited to be here. Now, Morristown goes back to what it was, a disaster recovery site.
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