Michael Appleton for The New York Times
On Stone Street, technicians worked over the weekend to repair issues brought on by severe flooding from Hurricane Sandy.
In the streets that surround the New York Stock Exchange, the air is filled with the odor of generator fuel and frustration over the slogging recovery from Hurricane Sandy.
Along the water-damaged blocks below Wall Street and around the South Street Seaport, small businesses are closed or are limping along without phone service, their regular customers, and, in some cases, their employees, who were laid off just before the holidays.
There is no official tally, but local leaders estimated that a few thousand small businesses had been shuttered or were operating at less than full strength since the storm and that as many as 10,000 jobs had been lost, at least temporarily. About 3,000 apartments in Lower Manhattan remain uninhabitable, according to Daniel L. Squadron, a Democratic state senator who represents the area.
"We're really in disaster recovery mode down here, there's no question about that," said Ro Sheffe, who will lead a disaster-relief task force for small businesses in Community Board 1.
Mr. Sheffe, who has lived near the World Trade Center for 19 years, said he feared the financial district would fall into a slump, as it did after the terrorist attacks 11 years ago.
"The nightmare I'm fighting day and night is this vision of the downtown area filled with empty shops and 'for rent' signs," Mr. Sheffe said. "That's something that we saw after September 11 and I never want to see it again."
Among the obstacles to recovery is the slow restoration of phone and Internet service, business owners and city officials said. Many merchants have been able to accept only cash payments for more than a month, an inconvenience they are loath to impose on the customers trickling in.
At Pizza Pizza N.Y.C. on Pearl Street, Eddie, the only person behind the counter one recent afternoon, has been giving his personal cellphone number to customers who want to call in for slices or pies. The restaurant is surrounded by generators and trailers providing heat and water to neighboring buildings and could not take orders on its Web site.
Many of the displaced workers had been in the business of feeding the hordes of people who work on and around Wall Street. Marcia Gordon was one.
Ms. Gordon, 55, had worked in the cafeteria at 4 New York Plaza for 26 years until Hurricane Sandy sloshed ashore. She and 40 others who worked for the Aramark food-service company in that building or the cafeteria at 55 Water Street are now collecting unemployment benefits and waiting to hear when they will be able to work again.
"What I'm getting from unemployment can't even make my rent," said Ms. Gordon, who said she paid $1,550 a month for her home in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.
Guests at the New York Marriott Downtown near the 9/11 Memorial could not order room service more than a month after the storm. The restaurant and bar in the lobby had been so wrecked by flooding from the storm that the Marriott shut them and laid off all 38 of their employees.
Amanda Byron Zink has been trying to keep her dog-grooming business going even though her shop, the Salty Paw in South Street Seaport, could be washed out for months, and possibly for good. Ms. Zink and some of the groomers who worked in her shop have been operating temporarily from the basement of an animal hospital near the Seaport, but she said they "can only do little guys" because they only have a small sink to bathe the dogs in.
The Salty Paw was in the Historic Front Street development, which took on so much water that it will be closed for months. The complex of shops and apartments was powered by a set of geothermal wells drilled deep into the bedrock of Manhattan. The flood water, which Ms. Zink said rose to 11 feet in her ground-level salon, swamped the heating and electrical systems in the basement, she said.
Ms. Zink said she had received no payments from her insurance company even though she was covered for business interruption. Like most of the small businesses around hers, she had no flood insurance.
She said she had applied for a grant from the Downtown Alliance but learnedthat she would receive it only if she reopened in the same location within a few months, which seems impossible. The only other sources of financial assistance are loans, but she said she was reluctant to borrow more for a business whose future was so uncertain.
A 17-year resident of the neighborhood, Ms. Zink has been living with her husband and two young sons out of hotel rooms paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency since the storm drove them from their apartment on South Street. Hurricane Sandy arrived on her older son's fourth birthday. She had hoped in vain to get back into their apartment before her younger son's birthday over the weekend.
"Now, my goal is to get home before Christmas," she said.
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