How SI Newhouse saved not one but two New York neighborhoods
SI Newhouse, the Condé Nast chief who passed away over the weekend at 89, was more than a mere media titan. He was a New York City visionary who helped rescue both Times Square from its long, dark age and Lower Manhattan from its post-9/11 paralysis.
Newhouse drove two momentous, game-changing real-estate moves. In the 1990s, he boldly relocated his fabled media empire to the Durst Organization’s Four Times Square. The first of four planned office towers at the “Crossroads of the World,” it had not yet signed any tenants.
Although other Condé Nast executives also pushed for the move, the final say was Newhouse’s. He bravely airlifted his glamorous glossies like Vogue and Vanity Fair from safe, secure, media-centric East Midtown to a still-grungy West 42nd Street corner where full redevelopment remained mostly a dream.
Even after “Disneyfication” had tremulously arrived, much of the “Bow-tie” remained forbidding. There were gulps from media mavens when news broke that glamorpuss editors such as Graydon Carter and Anna Wintour were headed to what was long called “Slime Square.”
It almost didn’t happen. Durst revealed to The Post that Newhouse rode to the rescue of 4 Times Square just in the nick of time. “The city [under Mayor Rudy Giuliani] was about to sign a lease with The Gap for a store at the corner, which would have delayed the tower for years.”
“They wouldn’t sell us the [ground] lease until we had a term sheet for an office tenant, and Si stepped up,” Durst said.
Condé Nast’s lease signing on Aug. 1, 1996, changed everything. Three more office buildings went up. Companies such as Skadden Arps, Reuters and Ernst & Young followed. The district was transformed from a dangerous pimping and mugging ground into a pride of the city and a lure to visitors from around the world.
Newhouse proved a hero again 14 years later. When he first sat down with Durst in spring 2010 to talk about One World Trade Center, none of the other planned “ground zero” towers had broken ground — a replay of the Times Square saga.
Nine years after 9/11, downtown still desperately needed help. Remnants of the old Deutsche Bank building’s blackened hulk had yet to come down. Both the PA’s “Transportation Hub” and the MTA’s Fulton Transit Center were spinning their wheels. Wall Street companies wanted to leave the area and uptown firms ignored the temptation of lower rents downtown.
There were doubts that any tenants would want to move to One World Trade Center — which was helpfully described by Donald Trump as “terror target No. 1 with a bulls-eye around its neck.” Then, on May 17, 2011, Newhouse announced he’d sign a 1 million square-foot lease at the “Freedom Tower.”
That Condé Nast enjoyed favorable lease terms with the Port Authority, Durst’s partner at One World Trade, in no way minimized the magnitude of its commitment. The influx of famous editors and media executives to a district still struggling to regain its footing inspired other companies to head downtown as well.
Durst plans to darken the spires of One World Trade Center, One Bryant Park and Four Times Square on Tuesday night in Newhouse’s honor.
“He was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” Durst said on Monday, adding, “and one of the quietest.” But his city-changing actions will speak loudly for decades to come.
scuozzo@nypost.com