The state provided tens of millions of dollars in additional tax breaks for downtown tenants and employers.
Carl Weisbrod, the president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, said the Freedom Tower would be marketable to traditional downtown tenants like financial and law firms and new tenants like media companies and advertising agencies.
In the meantime, downtown tenants and landlords said that it remained difficult to move around the district because of the loss of a PATH rail terminal and three subway stations at or near the trade center.
A long-dormant office corridor along Interstate 287 east of the White Plains central business district is drawing some downtown tenants, as landlords offer competitive rents in refurbished buildings with gleaming lobbies and free parking.
New York city property being dumped in ever greater amounts after the Internet crash may now be grabbed by dispossessed downtown tenants who need space by the weekend and will welcome the Aeron chairs, high-speed connections and other flourishes installed for a new economy that never arrived.This picture is hard to reconcile with the scene of Tuesday's disaster.
"Having a lease on an apartment does not provide any guarantee that the neighborhood you're in is going to be safe," said Lucas Ferrara, a Manhattan lawyer who has received calls from downtown tenants who vacated their apartments after the disaster and have either moved back or been told by landlords it's all right to do so.
Traditional downtown tenants like law and finance weren't interested in them at the time.
Ox-Bow artists, including musicians giving informal performances on the grounds of the center, still come and go all summer, and the rest of the town, meanwhile, has expanded into other art forms, including a series of productions performed most nights at the Mason Street Warehouse downtown, a tenant within the Saugatuck Center for the Arts.
In 1991, after the zoning laws were modified, Ms. Fisher became one of the original downtown studio tenants.
