Yet Gentile marveled at the way emergency planning had functioned to prevent more crushing damage, and how the round-the-clock work of Hartz staff, utility crews and disaster teams made rapid recovery possible where it had appeared unlikely.

Gentile said that recovery operators had been contacted in advance of the storm, and that Hartz “got on their list,” so that help could come quickly.

“Still, my first estimate, right after the storm, was two to four weeks for getting the majority of our hardest-hit buildings back up,” he said. “It’s only been a week. It’s fairly incredible.”

Gentile, whose company is based in Secaucus, included “little heroes” and “positive surprises” in his description of what went right: He gave a warm shout-out to a Meadowlands pizzeria– Natoli’s on Secaucus’s Clarendon Street – that stayed open throughout the storm’s aftermath. “If not for them, I would not have been able to feed my guys. My crews are responsible for getting companies back in business, thousands of people back to work – and many days, that’s the one meal they got.”

UBS Financial Services, a 1 million-square-foot tenant at Hartz’s Lincoln Harbor complex in Weehawken, and Ernst & Young and the National Basketball Association, both with offices at Harmon Cove in Secaucus, have all been able to continue operations with only minor hitches, Gentile said. The NBA has just begun its new season, he noted.

Harmon Cove was fully operational by last Wednesday, he said. There are 2,000 hotel rooms at the complex, which were open and fully occupied within a few days of Sandy’s worst.

The Hartz executive mentioned that his companies’ extensive use of solar panels on the roofs of its warehouse buildings had been a surprise bulwark amidst Sandy’s high winds. “We thought the panels would go flying,” Gentile said. “Instead, where the roof started to peel back, the weight of the panels held them down.”

Hartz Mountain owns and operates 200 properties with 38 million square feet in northern New Jersey and New York.