New York’s shattered financial district is hoping a combination of low tax, high art and corporate charity will throw a lifeline to local businesses still reeling from the attacks of September 11.
An eclectic mix of incentives provided by the municipal authorities and independent organisations offers New Yorkers a day of tax-exempt shopping combined with a more highbrow tour of works by top-ranked contemporary artists.
And should the outing prove inspirational enough, you can always wrap up the day by adopting an ailing small business.
More than nine months after the terrorist strikes that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Wall Street and surrounding areas in Lower Manhattan are slowly embarking on a path of retail, residential and cultural regrowth.
Some 100 000 jobs were lost as a direct result of September 11, and thousands of small businesses went to the wall as 20% of the district’s residential population moved elsewhere.
The authorities have already announced grants totalling hundreds of millions of dollars to expand existing business recovery and retention programs and to retain and attract residents.
In the meantime, short-term steps are being taken to get people — and more importantly, shoppers — back to Lower Manhattan fast and in numbers as large as possible.
One organisation, Wall Street Rising, knocked on the doors of the city’s artists, galleries and private collectors to set up five simultaneous contemporary art shows in the Wall Street area.
The shows feature works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel and Robert Mapplethorpe.
”Our mission is to revitalise Lower Manhattan, and these shows are designed to bring in the foot traffic that is the lifeblood of the retail industry,” said Wall Street Rising’s director of development and programming, Karen Plitt.
?We pulled in around 500 on the first weekend but expect tens of thousands to show as word spreads,” Plitt said. The art shows were put together in just four months — one-quarter of the time it would take a museum to assemble a similar collection.
All of the works were loaned without charge, as were the exhibition spaces in the lobbies of several large financial institutions.
The shows will run all summer long, alongside other incentive programmes, which include tax-free shopping sprees in Lower Manhattan stores.
The first three-day bonanza earlier this month saw thousands of shoppers drawn by the prospect of not having to fork out the usual 8,25% sales tax that accompanies most purchases in New York. The experiment will be repeated in July and August.
In another move, New York’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has been running a special ”adopt-a-company” programme, asking large firms to act as big brother to troubled small businesses in Lower Manhattan.
The matchmaking rules are simple: The adoptee must have fewer than 50 employees and be adversely affected by September 11, while the sponsor can donate whatever is deemed helpful.
More than 350 small businesses have been adopted so far, with sponsors sometimes supplying their staff with vouchers to shop there, or providing office space and supplies.
”Give on your own terms, in your own way, but give,” exhorts the EDC website, www.adoptacompany.net. – Sapa-AFP