Panel: Credit Fallout Isn't Discriminatory

NEW YORK CITY-The pullback on lending has the potential to hammer a number of different sectors of real estate, if worst-case scenarios play out, said speakers yesterday at a Real Estate Board of New York lunch panel here called “Credit Markets Impact on NY.” Downtown isn’t safe, retail isn’t safe and an increase in transactions isn’t expected any time soon.

“The East Side of Lower Manhattan is pretty much going to be dead,” predicted Stuart Rothenberg, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, whose firm is relocating from a number of locations in that area to a site across from the former World Trade Center. “That’s a lot of space that’s not going to get eaten up for a very long time.”

Rothenberg said that the likelihood of former office space in the financial sector getting snatched up en masse by residential developers is unlikely. And his prognosis for the West Side of downtown isn’t a whole lot rosier – he says developments there are “going to take longer” than projected.