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Is There Life After Larry?

July 21, 2009 | 6:37 p.m
<br /> (auburnxc via flickr.)
auburnxc via flickr.
More than three months into an impasse over the financing for the World Trade Center, officials and executives involved with the project are increasingly contemplating a new scenario: a long-term stalemate in which private developer Larry Silverstein does not build his office towers.
The fight has led the Port Authority, which owns the site, to craft a plan to essentially build around the private developer should two of his 85-foot-deep sites stay fallow.
The plan, which the Port Authority has been working on since late spring, would be a drastic step, and would change the design of major Port Authority-built components to allow the site to function without Mr. Silverstein’s towers.
That would mean changes to the (at least) $3.2 billion PATH station, which sits in the middle of the “east bathtub,” flanked by the sites for Mr. Silverstein’s Towers 2 and 3. The current design has ventilation, safety equipment, exits and structural support built into the Silverstein towers. All would need to be moved elsewhere, much of it within the PATH station, according to multiple officials involved.
The plan would also call for a major redesign of the Vehicle Security Center and roadway that allows deliveries throughout the site, along with a bus parking garage planned in the east bathtub, according to a Port Authority official. Designs around the Freedom Tower (known now as 1 World Trade Center) would have to change in order to allow for deliveries to get to the building; and the site’s power plant, planned to be within Tower 2, would also need to be pushed elsewhere.
If all of this is indeed physically possible (the Port says it is, but it entails major alterations, and others involved have not gotten a detailed look), it would surely mean additional costs, perhaps in the hundreds of millions, according to others familiar with the general plan. And then there are potential legal complications, as Mr. Silverstein has already challenged much smaller changes to the site’s plan, saying design tweaks made without his permission violate the lease.
FOR MONTHS, MR. SILVERSTEIN and the Port have been battling as they try to craft a new financial agreement. The developer does not have the money to build three massive office towers with no private tenants and claims the agency owes him damages for delays.
But by not starting construction on his two largest buildings, Towers 2 and 3, the stalemate threatens functionality in much of the rest of the 16-acre site, which is a tangle of interwoven infrastructure. Components such as the PATH hub, a crucial service roadway, and a bus parking lot are heavily dependent on buildings rising in the east bathtub based on the current design.
At the same time, Mr. Silverstein and his deputy, Janno Lieber, seem to be girding for a long fight. The two have threatened to initiate binding arbitration against the Port Authority to receive money awarded for the agency’s delays, a process they expect to take months. Should they go to arbitration, the issue of dates and obligations would likely still be unresolved.
The sides are very far apart—the Port Authority has offered enough money to build one tower, but Mr. Silverstein insists on two—and have barely moved during weeks of intense talks. After the Port Authority had put together a new two-tower offer last week, Mr. Silverstein rejected the proposal as spurious, saying it was not financially feasible, a claim other officials involved support.
And as the fight grows into a prolonged stalemate, it seems to get increasingly difficult to find a resolution. The Port is delayed in officially delivering the sites for Towers 2 and 3, but once it does, Mr. Silverstein will begin paying rent (it’s currently being abated), drawing down the insurance money intended for rebuilding. Meanwhile, every day that the towers do not rise is another that the Port Authority will not take in rent or money from retail, drawing down on the hundreds of millions of dollars the agency was expecting over the next decade.
This has left others involved frustrated—Mayor Bloomberg and top aides have been desperately trying to craft a resolution, to no avail—as neither side is willing to budge on seemingly irreconcilable points (for Mr. Silverstein, that means two towers; for the Port Authority, it does not want to further divert money from transportation to speculative real estate).
“They’re headed for a train wreck,” said a city official.

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Radically Wrong

Submitted by ML Donovan on Tue, 07/21/2009 - 22:23.

The political miscalulations at Ground Zero have blighted the public's hopes for too long -- but it is the media's refusal to look into and report on the fully developed plan to build new Twin Towers that is borderline crazy. If the general public only had the facts, this increasingly dysfunctional spectacle would have been over before it began.

There has been a deliberate effort by civic reactionaries to pretend that the movement to rebuild the Twin Towers has something to do with putting back 40-year old buildings, but that is like comparing a ‘69 Mustang to a 2009 Mustang. "Twin Towers II" has won the admiration of eminent authorities in the field. And everyone knows that new Twin Towers is the popular favorite, so what is the media's angle? Why aren't you pointing out the sheer insanity of all these officials beating a dead horse and actually expecting it to get up and run?

While the current project gets sadder all the time, “Twin Towers II” keeps getting better. It is by far the more elegant and appropriate architecture and would result in a far more profitable investment. And the flexibility of the mixed-use Towers makes the office space controversy irrelevant. So, both the material and spiritual rewards vastly outperform the ridiculous excuse for a World Trade Center that they are trying without success to build.

But the real news is that, using the money that the Port Authority and Westfield America have already -- under the right circumstances -- pledged, “Twin Towers II” is already PAID FOR! $3 billion+ to the Freedom Tower, $3 billion+ to the transit hub, $2 billion for Towers 2 and 4, $1.5 billion from Westfield America for stumps = “Twin Towers II”. How does the media plan to keep that cat in the bag? More importantly, why would you want to?

The far more efficient construction would result in savings that would pay for the transition and it would take three years, as opposed to 30, to complete. So just around $10 billion of mainly public money would give us a really spectacular World Trade Center. The people would get what they have wanted all along — and the construction workers wouldn’t have to get drunk at lunch hour to forget that they are part of something so unworthy of the price our country paid on 9/11.

The Twin Towers Alliance has spent years trying to engage the media in becoming part of the solution, instead of being such a big part of the problem. When is the press going to get on the winning side of this issue? It is depraved indifference to try to enforce something so pathetic and to ignore something so inspiring.