Callousness

(Photo by Noroton, taken from Wikipedia @: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StamfordCTUBSNorthAmericanHQ11112007.jpg)

UBS, the massive Swiss bank, might be pulling out of Stamford, Connecticut.  It moved there in 1997, building the largest trading floor in the world - roughly the size of two football fields - and quickly became the town's biggest employer.  UBS is now considering moving back to Manhattan, specifically to the re-vamped World Trade Center.  To those who have been following the story, this is old news. The New York Times began following the deal around June 9th. UBS says it is contemplating the move because of some of its employees' frustration with the reverse commute, though retribution for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's increases in business taxes, needed for balancing the budget, is a possibility. Here are a few telling quotes from the articles discussing the move and it's ramifications. 

The move would be the latest sign that New York has regained its allure as a caldron for the young and creative.  Six months ago, Google paid nearly $2 billion for a large building just north of the meatpacking district, in the same Manhattan neighborhood where many of its employees live.(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/nyregion/ubs-may-move-back-to-manhattan-from-stamford.html)

And, in reference to the question of what Stamford is to do with what will be a massive vacant building:

Recreate the shoulder-rubbing cultural ferment of late-’90s Williamsburg by subdividing the space into 171 600-square-foot apartments, each with a minimum occupancy of seven persons with liberal arts degrees? Create a locavore destination consisting of gigantic greenhouse and attached food court? World-class skateboard ramp course and museum?  

(http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/what-would-you-do-with-stamfords-ubs-space/)

Create, in essence, a billable "experience," as has occurred already in Williamsburg, or other parts of Brooklyn?  The author already knows exactly what kind of people should move into these hypothetical new lofts before they've even been built?

...

Most people think of places like Stamford as boring, and it is.  But to me it stands out, for a number of reasons.

First off, when I think of all of those highway-side mini down-towns that orbit NYC like moons, like White Plains, New Rochelle, Rye/Port Chester - what journalist Joel Garreau calls "Edge Cities" - Stamford, CT stands out as the nicest. It's not as rich as Greenwich Ct, for example, but I still think it's nicer (the Greenwich Police, who guard that town's endless rows of absurdly- priced boutiques, are practically as mean and omnipresent as the Gestapo.)  Indeed, only the very rich think of non-rich as "well, not very nice." The down-town is bisected, east and west, by the tracks of Metro North's New Haven Line. The western portion is gentrified, with new restaurants and businesses opening all the time, despite the recession. On the eastern half sits Stamford's working class and immigrant community. This bit of geographical segregation is indeed unjust, but both sides thrive as working communities. Both are more than worthy of being called "home" by the people who live there.  

Stamford also has a special meaning for me.  I live across the Connecticut/ New York border, in Pound Ridge.  Pound Ridge is rural and isolated, and for those of us who live near the town line, Stamford is the nearest urban and sub-urban location.  Since moving to the area in '95, when I was eight, Stamford has been the destination whenever there arises a need only the suburban strip can fulfill.  The bigger hardware store, the 24/7 supermarket, multiple ice-cream and doughnut venues -  a playground of the munchies-beset.  

More importantly, Stamford is where one of my best friends, Ben Hoffman, lived.  He, my other great friend Alex and I together formed an inseparable trio, but it was mostly Ben and I alone who explored Stamford together.  We'd discuss philosophy (of which I knew some and he a lot) history, Star Wars spaceships, non-Star Wars spaceships, anything that set our imaginations to work while we walked to Sharif's turkish coffee place, or over to the pizza joint, across from which sits Connecticut Music, where I got all of my guitar stuff.  Run by three or four brothers, it's the best.  

And so Ben and I would walk around, being giant nerds. He could get his mind off of the divorce situation at home, and for my part I could experience the magical feeling of walking from one place to another on a sidewalk, without a ride from Mom.

Two old comic book stores.  One was called A Timeless Journey.  I bought most of my Magic cards there. The other's name I totally forgot.  I just remember it being run by a solitary old man, and that upon its dusty shelves lay rare goodies not to be found elsewhere.  A massive, newspaper print-sized collection of old Uncle Scrooge comics, or a stack of fantasy and sci-fi themed mouse pads (I'm sure you could get those elsewhere, but who has a stack of them lying around?)  That place shut down about a year after I moved in. Timeless Journey closed in the middle of last decade, to be replaced with a fancy nail spa.

Seems like a lot of small stores got replaced with fancy nail spas. Ever since companies like UBS moved into Stamford (Royal Bank of Scotland as well; also other big companies like Thomson Reuters and Tasty Bite), the city experienced the old predictable tale of gentrification.  Trendy restaurants began to appear, while Curley's Diner heroically refused to leave, despite eminent domain attacks from the city. Many of Stamford's new small businesses that have appeared in the last decade are because of the disposable income of UBS employees. 

Maybe I just don't get it. Perhaps the too naive, not up to speed on how the invisible hand of capitalism works. I just think it's wrong to see a town grow and change before my very eyes, only to suddenly face imminent disaster, all because of the actions of one company. It disgusts me that UBS went out of there way to build a piece of real estate so massive in scale and cost, and then to find only fourteen years later that they might be better off selling the place for more expensive real-estate in Manhattan. Just like that, all of those banking and service jobs will be lost to Stamford forever. It is callous, and it shows how dangerous massive too-big-to-fail banks are. They're not just dangerous when they're on the brink of collapse, they're dangerous when they're in their element, doing just fine!  They make fickle, casual decisions that destroy lives. They move at a pace that lets their latest victim grow and die in a little more than ten years. Detroit, Cleveland, and other towns in the mid-west had hay-days that lasted decades before they fell to rust. The bigness of these institutions ensures that in moving, ants like us will get squished. 

America, we have too many company towns, where one large business is the sole employer, if not the largest by leaps and bounds. Such an arrangement breeds so much dependence on the company that the townspeople are forced to love them, in spite of all that happens.  They are forced to buy into the idea of the big corporation, to bask in its light, to willingly surrender before its awesome visage. The fake feeling of reassurance that the company brochure is designed to invoke becomes the mood of the entire city. They must create the fantasy that it only gets better and better when control is given to the captains of industry, finance and consumerism.  

And no one dare pay any mind to what might happen if they leave - or, more importantly, for what reason might they do so, and is that reason beyond the agency of the town's government or people to mitigate.  

The story of the outsourced ghost town has been old news since the 1980s. Within the vast ocean that is teh interwebz dwell countless polemics like the one you've just read. But this time, the company town isn't in West Virginia, or rural Ohio. This time it's near the center of things, in the shadow of New York City. And it will be blue-collar service workers and middle class office types slated for the grueling process heretofore reserved for the miner or auto-parts assemblyman.  

Now it's close to home. Now it's fifteen minutes away.  

    

(The reader should remember that UBS has not yet left Stamford, and still might not.)