Episode 56: Rebuilding After 9/11: The Strength of New York

Charlie Harary (0:00)

This is Crossing the Chasm, your front row seat to how leaders think in real time. My name is Charlie Harary, RXR's Chief People and Organizational Strategy Officer, and I'm joined with RXR's CEO and leader, Scott Rechler. Join us as we break down what's happening in the world, and we pull out the leadership lessons behind the headlines. Scott, thanks for taking the time.

Scott Rechler (0:17)

It's great to be here.

Charlie Harary (0:18)

This is a interesting period of time right now as we enter into September, post-Labor Day, and of course, if you're from New York or from around the world, as you get to being in September, you get right to September 11th. And I know this is a big year, 25th anniversary, it is really hard to imagine 25 years since that day. And I know you've got a lot going on that day, it is a day that means a lot to you, and you'll be going to the city, going to the museum. Can you share a little bit of that, what's on your heart entering to this day?

Scott Rechler (0:43)

September 11th is not something distant to me, it's something very personal to me. I saw the first two planes fly into the buildings, I watched the buildings collapse, I watched all that horror, I walked uptown in the soot with everyone that did that day. So it's a day that really sits heavy with me, and then I had an opportunity to help rebuild the World Trade Center when I was appointed as vice chair of the Port of Tharn, and at the time the World Trade Center redevelopment had been stopped with a lot of tensions between a lot of different parties there, and ultimately we broke through. It was honored to be one of the people to help get that rebuilt. But when I think about September 11th, I can't think about it without really thinking about September 12th, right? September 11th is the day that we mourn the people that we lost. We honor the people that were the heroes of that day, that ran to help all those people that needed help.

And we think about what can happen when you have extremism and hatred, how bad those outcomes can be. But September 12th, I think, is we saw the best of humanity, the best of New Yorkers, right? That came together as a community and put everything aside and said, we're going to be there for each other. We're going to be there for the people that lost loved ones. And we're going to be there to rebuild our city and lower Manhattan in a way that was going to be better than before. People say that a lot, we're going to be built better than before. This really happened this time, right? And it's an extraordinary model of when you have people coming together and you have good policy and good vision to build something that is a place for people to come remember those that we lost. But at the same time, it's part of a live city. And it was actually a place that was built to help bring back more life, more livelihood. And if you look at Lower Manhattan today, where there's almost three times as many people living there full time than there was pre-9-11, it speaks to the volume and the energy and the transformation that has taken place with the 9-11 site being at the center and the core of it.

Charlie Harary (2:40)

Why does that happen for? Why is it that when a society faces challenge or crisis, especially in an area that it's unexpected or beyond what they think they can handle, why is it that some societies manage to rebound, come back together? I remember the 12th and now that you brought it up, and I appreciate you bringing it up because the feeling now shifted from mourning to excitement because I remember being in the city and that's right, there was a sense of resilience and renewed energy. What do you think happens in humanity when that happens?

Scott Rechler (3:11)

I think that it also speaks to the soul of what New York City is all about, and we've seen that going back to the 70s when it was on its financial brink, and then obviously 9-11 was this horrific and much more challenging in scale and humanity. But then again, COVID, we saw it with COVID, and every time people say, New York, it's not going to come back. It's always the writing, the obituary of New York too early. I never bet against New York. Every time you see something like this or some point when New York's on its heels, it's when I bet on New York because New Yorkers are civically engaged, they believe in this city, they're committed to this city, and it's at every level. It's whether you're a business leader, civic leader, small business leader, obviously the first responders, all of the people at the health care and hospitals, everyone came together and said, we are going to rebuild. And it's that commitment to getting it done. Now, when you're living through the messiness of it, and particularly in 9-11, because the emotions following 9-11 were rightfully so strong by so many stakeholders, whether it was family members with different views, different parts of government that had different views, private owners that had stakes into this, the insurance companies, right? There was a lot of different perspectives and conflict that you had to work your way through to be able to get this done. And that's really what the remarkable thing is about this is, we got through all that conflict, and we were able to rebuild this whole World Trade Center complex, which is now really a heartbeat of life for lower Manhattan. And it's a model that people around the country and the world look at as to how can you actually use an opportunity to rebuild something better. It could have just been a memorial, right? It could have just been places where people just went and paid respect, but instead it's a park, it's a performing arts center, it's millions of square feet of office buildings, it's restaurants, and now it's all these communities that have built up around the 9-11 memorial, the 9-11 site, right? So it helped become the trigger for so much growth, which is really, I think, a phenomenon. And I remember when we were going through it, and people were, there was questions about budgets and being delayed, Mike Bloomberg said to me, Scott, can you tell me how long it took to build Central Park and how much it cost? And I had no idea. And he said, no one has any idea. But I assure you, it was very much delayed and way over budget. But look how much of an asset it is to New York. No one's going to look back and say, what was 9-11, was the memorial site in development over budget by blank, or took this long? Let's get it right. Let's do it right. And let it be the, something that we can all have pride in and properly pay the respects, but also pay it forward by having a more vibrant future for Lower Manhattan.