NEW YORK FORUMABOUT MONEY - IIThe Engine That Couldn't CITY Edition

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: Robert Fitch. Robert Fitch, an urban planner, is the
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 19.10.1988
• Edition: Combined editions
• Subjects: Silverstein, Larry

AT ONE END of the train, a drooling giant with no shoes screams at the subway car ads, shaking his fist in fury. At the other, frightened passengers pretend to read their newspapers and struggle to avoid eye contact. On the first anniversary of the stock market crash of 1987, New Yorkers are locked into their A Train, nut-case defense mode. Maybe if we pretend not to notice Mr. Depression, he will calm down, get off at the next stop or go bother the passengers in another car. People were saying this for months after the 1929 crash, too, as Rockefellers raced DuPonts to begin construction of Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building - products, like today's planned Times Square development, of a speculative boom continuing even after chances for profitability disappear. Like the hair that continues to grow on a corpse, "Office Leasing is Picking Up the Pace," a post-crash real estate survey reported in The New York Times last weekend. It cited real estate magnate Larry Silverstein as anticipating "major lease-up activity in the very near future." And in a press conference last week to announce his agency's latest "Regional Perspectives" report, Stephen Berger, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said he always knew the impact of the crash would not amount to much: "In fact, we were not optimistic enough."