NYC-WTC_000230692

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9,2001

Glad to Be in the Pits, Wherever They Are Commodity Traders Had Backup Plan By SARAH KERSHAW sugar traders at what he called his "luxu­ It was 1 p.m. and sugar was done, rious office," a concrete ramp In front of the building. ‘‘No one has asked that fl preci.sely 90 minutes after the commod­ now.” ities traders had packed themselves into Board officials said that after the 1993 T two pits on the floor for a frenzied and w roaring rush of buying and selling that attack, they determined that if their high­ ly competitive commodities markets i; made their old way of doing business seem somewhat leisurely. were shut down for even one day, the pl Cotton was next, and so the sugar trad­ industry would lose J3.5 million. But the is ers, wearing blue coats or blue tags on alternative workplace they established, c: their lapels, poured out of the converted considered a safety net in the event of a fc warehouse in Queens and crowded onto blackout or other temporary disruption, the sidewalk of 43rd Avenue, in an indus­ has now become home for the foreseeable trial nook of Long Island City that has long been the domain of truckers and Continued on Page D2 forklift operators. This is where the New York Board of, Trade, the parent company of the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange and the New York Cotton Exchange, is doing business, after its trading floor at 4 World Trade Center was destroyed in the Sept. 11 ter­ rorist attack. Trading resumed in Long Island City on Sept, 17, as much a tribute to foresight- edness as to fortitude. After the trade center bombing in 1993, the Board of Trade leased the warehouse space, paying 1300,000 a year for a backup trading floor. It was equipped with trad­ ing pits and computer monitors but was devoid of traders and never used — until I'r’ three weeks ago. "Many times people were asking us why we were spending the money to pay for a facility that was empty," Mark D. Flchtel, the president and chief executive of the Board of Trade, said last week, shortly before holding a meeting for the

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NYC-WTC_000230692