125 CEDAR 1 OF 2

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document TE ARON ys reg OR er NYC-WTC_000155967 \y Me Ny aa 03 Back at home on Cedar St. Chased from their homes by a storm of World Trade Center debris, the tenants of the closest apartment building to Ground Zero were kept out for 15 months by a . blizzard of bureaucratic bungling. Their wait finally has ended. In recent weeks, anxious and optimis- ‘tic tenants of 125 Cedar St. received per- mission to return to the 12-story building on the southern perimeter of the Trade Center site. Five of the building's 23 fami- lies have returned. All are expected to move back within the next month. “This has been our home for 22 years,” said Ed Serrapede, 58. “It’s not like the normal building in New York City. We know everyone here.” The building was one of the first in the Financial District to be converted from of- fices into apartments. The tenants, who have rent-stabilized apartments, did the work themselves. : ; Yesterday, many of them gathered in a dusty loft to th the person they credit with getting them back home: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Last year, Silver (D-Manhattan) pulled ‘the building’s management, utility com- panies and representatives of various city, state and federal agencies into one room to resolve the problems keeping the building closed. Electricity was restored, insurance claims were completed and the building was cleaned by the city Department of En- vironmental Protection. For his help, Silver was named an hon- orary tenant, prompting him to joke, “As lon as you keep the refrigerator stocked I get the remote when I’m here, we'll get along fine.” Greg Gittrich