Content area
Full Text
Judy Wald loved people-watching from her table at Laurent, the classic French restaurant on 56th Street. Salvador Dali and his wife were regulars. Jackie Onassis would drop by. Pete Rozelle started showing up when "21" closed for renovations.
So Ms. Wald, a well-known recruiter for advertising agencies, was shocked when she returned from vacation last August and found the 41-year-old restaurant closed.
"It used to be so reassuring to sit at the same table and see the same people," Ms. Wald says.
These aren't reassuring times for local businesses. As the recession drags on and the business-failure rate soars, more and more venerable New York institutions are disappearing.
From the restaurants Laurent and Le Cygne, to trend-setting Unique Clothing Warehouse, to the 40-year-old law firm Olwine, Connelly, Chase, O'Donnell & Weyher, businesses that have outlasted several recessions, as well as the treacherous 1970s fiscal crisis, are failing.
Their downfalls illustrate the depth of this recession and suggest ways it is different from others. Although wisdom often comes with age, some of these companies got caught up in the wildly optimistic expansion and over-leveraging of the 1980s. That's sunk established companies that otherwise might have squeaked through on the strength of their reputations.
Other businesses, particularly those companies that are going through ownership changes, have been trapped by the crisis in banking. As financial institutions throttle lending, even established businesses have had trouble getting financing when new owners are in charge.
But the economy is not the entire difference. Life in New York is simply tougher today because of a host of social problems like crime, AIDS, and homelessness, which have weakened many businesses and intensified the city's fiscal crisis.
"These things just make it more difficult for an owner to see through to the other side of the recession,"...