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When Tazz Latifi set out to open a pet supply store two years ago, she never thought she'd end up two blocks from the World Trade Center site.
"It was the last place I expected to be," Latifi said. "It was the absolute last place I even looked at."
What she found were reasonable rents in a surprisingly livable environment, one that is attracting more residents and small businesses.
"This area is really going to boom," said Latifi, whose Petropolis store opened on Washington Street in February.
Wall Street, the historically gray financial district, is becoming more like a bustling, colorful Main Street. Once desolate at night, the area pulses with new vibrancy, increasingly resembling the rest of the city.
"I think I fell off my chair the first time I saw someone walking a dog on a Sunday morning," said Alan Scott, head of corporate real estate at Deutsche Bank. "The financial district, especially this area around Wall Street, is becoming a 24/7 community."
The transformation, though underway for years, was accelerated by the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, which forced some Wall Street stalwarts such as bond trader Cantor Fitzgerald and investment bank Lehman Bros. to find new office space. They chose Midtown Manhattan, which has long been the locale of choice for corporate headquarters, boasting the city's finest restaurants, hotels and nightlife, as well as its signature office buildings and easier access to New York's major rail depots and airports.
Their departures continued a decades-long decampment of leading Wall Street firms to Midtown.
Years ago, brokerages had to cluster on Wall Street so that "runners" could deliver stock certificates, but improved technology eliminated the need...