Posted on 09/11/2001 7:07:13 PM PDT by NativeNewYorker
New York, Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
& Co. was the largest tenant in New York's World Trade Center,
which was hit by two airplanes in a terrorist attack, causing
explosions and collapse of the 110-story, twin tower complex.
Morgan Stanley occupied 12.5 percent of the space in tower 2,
followed by the 10-million square foot complexes' owner, Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey, which occupied 9 percent of
the space. Other large tenants include AON Corp., Empire Blue
Cross and Blue Shield and Marsh & McLennan Cos.
As many as 200,000 people passed through the complex on a
typical weekday, including about 40,000 who worked there and
50,000 taking the PATH trains that connect New York and New
Jersey. The number of dead and injured couldn't be determined.
Morgan Stanley, which housed its asset management and retail
brokerage units in the center, has ``no idea'' if its employees
were evacuated in time, said Judy Hitchen, a company spokeswoman.
``We are working with local authorities.''
Morgan Stanley's headquarters is at 1585 Broadway in midtown
Manhattan. The second largest securities firm has established an
emergency telephone number for employees of the firm and their
families to call, said Hitchen. The number is 1-888-883-4391.
Prominent buildings across New York City, including the
Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center were evacuated, said
Steven Spinola, head of the Real Estate Board of New York, a trade
association. There was an undetermined amount of damage to
buildings surrounding the Trade Center, he said.
Waiting Accident
``The World Trade Center was an accident waiting to happen,''
said Eric Darton, author of ``Divided We Stand: A Biography of New
York's World Trade Center.'' ``There's something about the hubris
of building a structure so monstrously out of scale, that makes us
forget not only our humanness, but the humanness of the people in
that structure.''
Other well-known buildings in the U.S. were also evacuated as
a precaution, including Chicago's Sears Tower, Boston's John
Hancock tower and San Francisco's Transamerica Building. Federal
buildings in Washington were closed after an airplane crashed into
the Pentagon.
The Trade Center's fifth largest tenant, Marsh & McLennan,
urged employees who had left the complex to call 212-345-6000.
Klaus Thoma, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank AG, the seventh largest
tenant, said to his knowledge its offices, located in the lower
floors, were evacuated on time.
The center opened in 1970 and was a brainchild of then New
York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his brother, David
Rockefeller, the chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and patriarch of
the Rockefeller family.
Sale
Silverstein Properties Inc. bought the center's 99-year lease
in July from the Port Authority in a transaction valued at $3.2
billion, in what is the largest real estate transaction ever.
Australia's Westfield Holdings Ltd. operates the 425,000 square
foot retail portion of the complex.
A spokesman for Silverstein said the investor was monitoring
the situation but had no further information. Westfield officials
weren't available for comment.
The property was also attacked in February 1993, when
terrorists set off a bomb in an underground garage in an effort to
cause the collapse of both towers. The explosion killed six and
caused $525 million of damage.
It is not the first time a plane has crashed into a New York
City skyscraper. In 1945, at the end of World War II, an Army Air
Corps B-25 twin-engine bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New
York's Empire State Building in dense fog, according to the Empire
State Building Web site.
The Trade Center cost about $1 billion to build. Its space
represents 10 percent of lower Manhattan's office market, and is
almost twice the size of the entire downtown office market of
Tampa, and larger than those of Miami, San Diego and San Jose.
It's one of only three New York properties with its own zip code.
The complex, besides the two towers, also includes a 47-story
office building, two nine-story office properties, a 22-story
hotel owned by Marriott International Inc., an eight-story U.S.
customs house and 542,000 square feet of storage areas.
Until 1974, the towers were the world's tallest buildings,
when Sears Tower was completed. Other taller buildings included
the Petronas Towers in Malaysia and the Jin Mao Building in
Shanghai.
The following is a list of top 10 World Trade Center tenants:
*T Company Square Feet % of Space
1. Morgan Stanley 1.19 Million 12.5
2. Port Authority 858,641 9
3. AON Risk Services 464,629 4.9
4. Empire Blue Cross 450,939 4.7
5. Marsh & McLennan 361,043 3.8
6. Bank of America 331,227 3.5
7 Deutsche Bank 310,727 3.5
8. Oppenheimer Funds 261,164 2.7
9. Guy Carpenter 265,196 2.8
10. Credit Suisse 243,953 2.6
I feel as if someone took a switchblade to by childhood sweetheart.
I was turned away trying to donate blood (they have enough of my type) and yes, I cried.
There is NO longer a office vacancy rate in NYC....
Wanna bet as to when somebody files the first lawsuit?....
My prayers go out to those that did not and the brave souls that went in to help.
Morgan Stanley Says WTC Staff Survived
Miraculously, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, distributed a memo to employees in other cities earlier Tuesday saying that Trade Center personnel had survived the attack and apparently were all right.
The memo also said the investment firm's senior management had been at the company's midtown Manhattan headquarters when the deadly assaults on the towers occurred.
"As a dual-headquartered firm, we expect to have operations up and functioning tomorrow," a Morgan Stanley employee said the memo reported.
It added that financial advisers should reassure clients that their records are safe, and pass on a hotline number to call should they have questions.
An estimated 3,500 employees worked for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower, where the firm occupied about 50 floors.
An earlier message from Morgan Stanley's chairman, Philip Purcell, posted on the company's Web site (www.morganstanley.com), expressed sadness and outrage at the attacks. It said the company had limited information about the disaster but "our key focus and concern are for the well-being and safety of Morgan Stanley employees."
Mr. Purcell added that "in spite of this tragedy, all of our businesses are functioning and will continue to function. We are committed to resume full operations as exchanges and markets reopen.
"All our clients should rest assured that their assets are safe," Mr. Purcell's message said.
Following a terrorist attack on the Trade Center in the early 1990s Morgan Stanley tightened security and took a series of steps to protect records. It is understood that computers containing financial and trading records are far from Wall Street to insure their well-being.
Among the operations in the World Trade Center were believed the company's bond-trading desk, as were some mutual fund personnel. Securities analysts are at the midtown Manhattan site, a company employee said.
--Dow Jones Newswires
I wonder if there are "terrorism" escape clauses in the insurance/reinsurance contracts.
Stay safe.
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