Although it pains me to point it out, after a fire, pretty soon actually, green shoots of new growth appear.
So it will be with closed businesses. The old businesses might be dead and gone, but new and eager entrepreneurs will come to the conclusion that they may as well try it for themselves.
A function of recession and the covid scare is the weeding out of weak and marginal enterprises. There was recently an article morning the passage of a business operated by a 71 year old man. The presstitute was wanting the owner to talk about rebuilding.
My thought was the guy was probably relieved. He no longer had to worry about the business and what to do.
Please do not take this as praise for the Governor and mayor who purposely caused the deaths to promote some foolish political end. Both have forfeited all rights to call themselves American
I work on major infrastructure planning projects, and before the COVID-19 fiasco the latest numbers I had seen were that something on the order of 1.6 to 1.7 million people commuted into Manhattan on a typical weekday. That number effectively doubles the island's population of 1.6 million residents every day of the work week.
The "green shoots of new growth" you mention are going to happen. But they're going to happen in the places where those 1.6-1.7 million people LIVE, not where they used to WORK.