Posted May 7, 2020, 3:19 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 51,900
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https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-t...-call-tra.aspx
May 5, 2020
Vornado Realty Trust Q1 2020 Earnings Call
Steven Roth -- Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
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Here are some final thoughts for you, actually a plug for New York. We continue to believe in New York, and all it has to offer. Its large and highly educated workforce, eight professional sports teams, concerts, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Broadway, great museums, great restaurants and nightlife, the best hospitals and universities, and of course, the largest concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters, the world's banking center, the world's media center and now a growing tech center. You get the message. New York's human infrastructure is unparalleled, and New York is the business capital of the world, and New York has always come back bigger and better from every crisis.
While we are now working from home, we do not believe working from home will become a trend that will impair office demand and property values. The socialization and collaboration of the traditional office is the winning ticket. Also I believe the densification trend has bottomed, the victim of lots of things and now including social distancing. In sum, we are respectful of the severity of the current situation and cautious for the next couple of years. We are actually optimistic after that and excited about Vornado's business prospects.
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John William Guinee -- Stifel, Nicolaus -- Analyst
First, very sad to hear about the furlough of over 1,800 people. And I want to congratulate you on a brilliant execution of selling 50% of your retail about a year ago. Thinking about Hotel Pennsylvania and the Manhattan Mall, I know those have been on the redevelopment page for a long time. Is there any thought to just using this opportunity to decommission both of them and demolish them sooner or later?
Steven Roth -- Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
First of all, thanks for your comments about the furloughing. The facts of the matter are under the new unemployment insurance, augmented by the PPP Federal program, almost everybody that was on the furlough list is getting the same or maybe even more in terms of wages than before. So we did this with a great deal of sensitivity and care for our employee group, and this was done not to hurt anybody. In fact, we cut the furlough list off where we thought that people would not be able to get recompensed by the government programs. So I thank you for your sympathies, but we did this very carefully with a great deal of feeling and care for our folks.
The Hotel Pennsylvania has been an enigma for a long time. It's obviously a parking lot for a development site. We've closed it in the pandemic because the occupancy rates went down to low teens, single digits. So it was uneconomic. We have thought internally about using this and just never reopening it. And that might happen, but I doubt it.
So that's step 1. The Manhattan Mall, the Manhattan Mall is really a building with two components to it in one building. There is a large office building on top of it, which is fully let and performing well. And then there is a mediocre retail a couple of floors below it. So you can't really you could shut down the retail, but you can't really demolish it because of the office building up above.
So in our development plans, the first and by the way, as you know, the Manhattan mall backs up to the Hotel Pennsylvania. So that's one giant, giant block that would support three million, four million square feet, maybe even more of development. So the first that's going to go is the Hotel Pennsylvania at some future date, and the Manhattan wall is way, way in the future.
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NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
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