NEW YORK | One World Trade Center | 1,776' Pinnacle / 1,373' Roof | 108 FLOORS

[BINARY SYSTEM]

Now come people,...gather around and look at the nice little buildings. :D

http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/environmentdec/2006b/wtcbuildings11006.jpg

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/project/uploaded_files/841_WTC%20Silverstein.jpg

http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL456/8062419/15121982/228511253.jpg

This one is nIce! :worship:

http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL456/8062419/15121982/228511280.jpg

http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL456/8062419/15121982/228511270.jpg

The best time to view the LMDC cam is early morning. It really sucks though...huh!

http://www.renewnyc.com/WebCamImages/cam07020608000200.jpg

[CoolCzech]

Fitting for New York:

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/72105229/original.jpg

I think people forget how gigantic these buildings really are, primarily because they are so big. There's no sense of scale, but place 4 WTC in LA and it would eat up its skyline, place any of the other towers in any other American city other than Chicago and New York and it would completely devour it. One thing that I'm looking forward to the most is the awe-inspiring vistas these monoliths will provide looking through the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan.

What's really mind boggling is that Vornado is set to build a "Twin World Trade Center" uptown!

Forget Twin Towers... Twin Centers!

[Daquan13]

That should make the ones who have been ranting and raving for the Twins happy.

And BTW, why is Libeskind still hanging around? Wasn't he thrown out of Ground Zero, s**tcanned and sent packing? I guess it's true about what they say. Cockroaches DO come back multiple times!

[ATLksuGUY]

With such a tower going in Manhattan, I wonder what the defensive measures will be that are installed?

[NYguy]

NY Post

SAVING FREEDOM
WHY GOV. SPITZER SHOULD PUT PATAKI'S 'ICONIC' PLAN ON HOLD

http://www.nypost.com/img/cols/stevecuozzo.jpg

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02072007/photos/po031.jpg


February 7, 2007 -- FIVE and a half years late, Ground Zero is finally showing progress. The Port Authority is industriously building the east bathtub so developer Larry Silverstein can start work on towers 3 and 4. It's the right time for Gov. Spitzer to liberate Pataki's Pit from the Freedom Tower - a defeatist scheme inappropriate to today's resurgent Downtown.

Spitzer needn't outright kill the "iconic" edifice that's now the PA's to build and rent. He doesn't even have to meddle directly in its design (as his predecessor did, with disastrous results).

But the Freedom Tower needs a caring intervention - which means putting it on hold. Not forever; only until Silverstein's first two new office buildings are rising and on their way to being leased. They will bring world-class architecture (by Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki) and vibrant life into the hole. Just as important, they'll re-legitimize the site as a place to do business - something the Freedom Tower, for now, can't.

ESSENTIAL work on the Freedom Tower's underground infrastructure, now in progess, must be completed. It is absolutely necessary to finish that job (likely to take 18 more months) so that everything will be in place once above-ground construction is ready to start.

But let's hold up on leasing efforts and letting out any more contracts (beyond what's already committed), until we know exactly what we want a "Freedom Tower" to be.

Properly handled, it can be the most valuable property in the world by late 2009 or 2010. That's when steel for towers 3 and 4 will be filling the sky.

Those buildings will be among the largest and tallest in town, rising to 1,155 feet and 957 feet. Once they're under way in earnest, no one will any longer be able to say that Ground Zero is going nowhere (as this newspaper first accurately called it four years ago).

Moreover, the plan on the table - calling for all four Ground Zero office buildings to open around the same time - threatens a glut. With the "iconic" tower on hiatus, Silverstein can bargain with tenants able to pay market rents - without being undercut by Freedom Tower's subsidized prices.

DOUGLAS Durst, builder of 4 Times Square and the new One Bryant Park, is one of many developers who know the Freedom Tower should wait for Silverstein's towers to be under way - but one of the few willing to say so. In his view, "as the World Trade Center site gets developed and people see progress, the value of it will increase, just as the value of 7 World Trade Center increased as people saw it was being completed and occupied."

Now, maybe Durst would rather minimize competition with his own buildings (although he has no argument with the 4.5 million square feet that towers 2, 3 and 4 will bring to the market). Or maybe, like others in his league, he secretly dreams of one day having a crack himself at what should be the city's most desirable development site.

But his argument embraces the reality of Downtown today: It's one of the hottest business districts in the world, commanding office rents unimaginable a few years ago and drawing ever more people to glamorous new apartment buildings, hotels, parks and stores.

The Freedom Tower should be the exclamation point proclaiming the area's rebirth. But an exclamation point must come last, not first.

After all the delays at Ground Zero, it's worth waiting a few more years to get the site's crowning achievement right.

TODAY, nothing about the Freedom Tower is right. The PA has little more enthusiasm to build it than Silverstein did. The project as now conceived, designed and scheduled was born out of desperation and political expediency four years ago, when Downtown's plight looked desperate. No one had any idea how to rebuild the WTC. No one was sure if companies would ever again want to be there.

The infamous Daniel Libeskind master site plan (chosen by then-Gov. Pataki) called for an "iconic" tower to reclaim the skyline while also, somehow, relating to the Statue of Liberty. Absent any other serious planning at Ground Zero, and with Silverstein tapping accomplished architect David Childs for the project, it seemed a good idea at the time.

It might even have worked. But Pataki brought the scheme to ruin - by letting Libeskind "collaborate" on it, by personally interfering in the design and by causing a 14-month delay that resulted from his inattention to NYPD security concerns.

The result, after a rushed redesign in 2005, lacks the majesty of Childs' original. Yet cost estimates are already rising - to $3 billion, as The Post's Tom Topousis reported this week. And the design isn't even truly finished - plans for its most symbolic feature, a "sculptural" broadcast antenna rising to 1,776 feet above ground, are still mired in the early stages.

YET, despite its staggering cost, the PA is prepared to peddle the project on the cheap. To kick-start leasing, the PA is negotiating with the federal General Service Administration and the state Office of General Services to take about half its total 2.6 million square feet.

That was Pataki's last and perhaps most lethal blunder. If those deals go through, the PA will likely have to find even more government offices to fill the remaining half. Why? Because private-sector firms of the sort that should be at a "World Trade Center" don't want to share a building with public-sector bureaucracies paying subsidized rents. "Having government tenants will take away from the value being created," Durst warns.

THE starting rent for GSA and OGS, which wouldn't take effect until the tower opens at least five years out, is $58.50 per square foot - more than government should pay, but ridiculously low compared with what new, first-class Downtown office space is certain to command by 2012. (Many real-estate insiders believe the rent is really $50 a foot because, they say, the PA undercounted the floor space.) By comparison, Silverstein is asking more than $60 a foot today for the remaining floors at his new 7 WTC.

Why should the most important new building ever to rise in New York be peddled as if it's damaged goods?

Well, because the Freedom Tower now on the table is damaged goods to the corporate world and the real-estate community. Its tortured history enables the negativism of brokers and prospective tenants who claim, without any rational basis, that the tower's great height - maybe even its Orwellian name - will encourage terrorists to strike again.

But naysayers just a few years back told us all that no one would want to live anywhere Downtown, and that the new 7 WTC would never draw tenants. All it took to refute the cynics was for the first new residents and office tenants to break the ice. Today, every apartment nearby is taken, and 7 WTC is more than 60 percent leased.

So it will be with the Freedom Tower, once the first companies sign leases for towers 3 and 4 - projects with giant floor plates specifically tailored to Wall Street firms.

PAUSING the Freedom Tower entails risk: If any thing goes wrong with the other office buildings, we could be left right where we were before. But in a booming market, and with dire financial penalties if he stalls, Silverstein has every reason to build in a timely fashion.

With a little good will all around and some luck, the PA ought to be able to name its price for the Freedom Tower by 2010. It will find corporate tenants who can pay what an iconic location is worth. It's not too devilish to suggest that the PA might even want to put it up for bid to private developers - who, if recent history tells us anything, would go to war over the rights.

Who knows? A pause might even prompt Spitzer to finally drop "Freedom Tower" and call the project by its rightful name: 1 World Trade Center.

[Daquan13]

Why does Couzzo all of a sudden want the Freedom Tower stopped or put on hold, so that the Twins can be rebuilt? Haha!!

Not gonna happen.

[kznyc2k]

Daquan, what you just did was pull a "straw man."

Definition: The arguer makes up a proposition never offered by their opponent (usually weaker than the true proposition) and then attacks it as if their opponent had offered that proposition. This is most common on Internet chat sites.

Did Cuozzo mention anything at all about the Twin Towers? No. Let me guess, as soon as you saw him say anything about impeeding the progress of the FT you immediately labelled him a "Freedom Tower hater" and decided not to actually read the article and think a little bit.

So, try again: re-read the article and comment on the substance of his argument. Does he not have a point that if holding off for a little while will mean the FT will have more value and perhaps won't have to be subsidized so much? Or is that premise flawed somehow? Does he not make another good point in that private tenants don't want to rent space in a "World Trade Center" where 70% of the tenants are wasteful bureaucrats? If Douglas Durst, an MVP-calibre developer if there ever was one, says doing these things hurts the value of the tower, don't you care about that?

Oh, that's right, none of that matters.. just "build the Freedom Tower!!" and everything else be damned. Given your recklessness towards this incredibly sensitive matter, I'm almost inclined to label you a... Freedom Tower hater!

[TAFisher123]

Who knows? A pause might even prompt Spitzer to finally drop "Freedom Tower" and call the project by its rightful name: 1 World Trade Center.
Not to bring up the name controversy again......does the name world trade center make any sense......although it was meant to be, it never became a 'world trade center' more than any other complex.......now that the complex is broken up into public/private development and is not one cohesive project, the name is pointless

[Nowhereman1280]

Daquan, what you just did was pull a "straw man."

Definition: The arguer makes up a proposition never offered by their opponent (usually weaker than the true proposition) and then attacks it as if their opponent had offered that proposition. This is most common on Internet chat sites.

Did Cuozzo mention anything at all about the Twin Towers? No. Let me guess, as soon as you saw him say anything about impeeding the progress of the FT you immediately labelled him a "Freedom Tower hater" and decided not to actually read the article and think a little bit.

So, try again: re-read the article and comment on the substance of his argument. Does he not have a point that if holding off for a little while will mean the FT will have more value and perhaps won't have to be subsidized so much? Or is that premise flawed somehow? Does he not make another good point in that private tenants don't want to rent space in a "World Trade Center" where 70% of the tenants are wasteful bureaucrats? If Douglas Durst, an MVP-calibre developer if there ever was one, says doing these things hurts the value of the tower, don't you care about that?

Oh, that's right, none of that matters.. just "build the Freedom Tower!!" and everything else be damned. Given your recklessness towards this incredibly sensitive matter, I'm almost inclined to label you a... Freedom Tower hater!

I normally would never defend Daquan, but you guys just always seem to want to provoke him.

You clearly have no knowledge of argument seeing as how you cannot even identify an argument in the first place. Suggesting someone may have alterior motives (as Daquan just did) is in no way an argument. Therefore it is impossible for him to be making a straw man arguement since he is not making an arguement. You are just being obnoxious and trying to start another annoying arguement about nothing...

[JMGarcia]

Cuozzo has been and continues to be a Silverstein crony but this takes the cake. Stop the FT so Silverstein won't have the competition for his own towers. Ha! What a joke.

[CitySkyline]

NY Post
...
The Freedom Tower should be the exclamation point proclaiming the area's rebirth. But an exclamation point must come last, not first.
...


That may be true in sentences, but not for office buildings! (especially when we've already been waiting far too many years for the gap in the sky to be refilled).

This article talks as if all that matters is economics. What about the pyschological effects that seeing the FT go up will have on everyone?

Frankly, it's WAY too many years since 9/11 to even suggest delaying anything at all. As a NYer, I'm tired of waiting. Every day, I look at the Downtown tip of Manhattan and mutter to myself, "Any day now... any day." (well, I don't really mutter, I just think it ;) ) Enough delays! Just build the darn thing! (And, frankly, in about 10 years, all this economic talk will be a thing of the past, as I'm sure by then, many companies will be climbing over themselves to be a part of FT.)

[CoolCzech]

Cuozzo has been and continues to be a Silverstein crony but this takes the cake. Stop the FT so Silverstein won't have the competition for his own towers. Ha! What a joke.

Agreed.

My lower jaw dropped when I read his column today - suddenly THE tower all New York wants done as soon as possible should come LAST? And what the hell is wrong with federal agencies as tenants, anyway? What, federal workers aren't worthy of rubbing shoulders with greasy insurance salesmen?

The costs of the FT kept growing due to delays. There is no sense in creating even MORE delays, and inevitably HIGHER costs. The fact is, the FT hasn't even been built yet and ALREADY all the naysayers that said there was too much office space in NYC have been proven exactly 180 degrees WRONG.

[Daquan13]

Daquan, what you just did was pull a "straw man."

Definition: The arguer makes up a proposition never offered by their opponent (usually weaker than the true proposition) and then attacks it as if their opponent had offered that proposition. This is most common on Internet chat sites.

Did Cuozzo mention anything at all about the Twin Towers? No. Let me guess, as soon as you saw him say anything about impeeding the progress of the FT you immediately labelled him a "Freedom Tower hater" and decided not to actually read the article and think a little bit.

So, try again: re-read the article and comment on the substance of his argument. Does he not have a point that if holding off for a little while will mean the FT will have more value and perhaps won't have to be subsidized so much? Or is that premise flawed somehow? Does he not make another good point in that private tenants don't want to rent space in a "World Trade Center" where 70% of the tenants are wasteful bureaucrats? If Douglas Durst, an MVP-calibre developer if there ever was one, says doing these things hurts the value of the tower, don't you care about that?

Oh, that's right, none of that matters.. just "build the Freedom Tower!!" and everything else be damned. Given your recklessness towards this incredibly sensitive matter, I'm almost inclined to label you a... Freedom Tower hater!



I read the article and yes you're right, he didn't mention anything about the Twins, and who's to say that he ISN'T thinking about them? Haha!!

Who in the Sam Hill wants to wait any longer for the tower to start being, or be built after waiting for five long years and being forced to put up with Pataki's mind games, along with him giving us all false starts, false hopes and empty promises on the tower's constr. start?

He ran yet another fast one when he had those 6 or 7 steel columns put up, knowing full well that the steel won't start coming above street level until sometime next year. So in a way, this is yet another false start that he threw on everyone!! Of course, the core has to be partially built at least, so that the steel beams and girders can be fastened to it.

I for one, and I'm quite sure that others will agree with me also, think that it's high time that they finally just get off that high horse of theirs and get the towers in the skyline. Stop wasting the taxpayers' money and give everyone what they promised a new WTC!

As CoolCzech once said in an eariler post, "just finally build the damn thing already!!"

[CoolCzech]

Cuozzo has been and continues to be a Silverstein crony but this takes the cake. Stop the FT so Silverstein won't have the competition for his own towers. Ha! What a joke.

I'd say the fact Silverstein is worried about the FT being competition for his own towers gives the lie to the assertion the FT is not commercially viable.

[Thefigman]

Every day, I look at the Downtown tip of Manhattan and mutter to myself, "Any day now... any day."

Ditto. I need the void in downtown filled. When I was a kid in Jersey, I use to use the towers as a reference point to figure out what direction I was going in. I don't see downtown nearly as often now, but when I do, I keep hoping see some steel rising.

[NYguy]

That may be true in sentences, but not for office buildings! (especially when we've already been waiting far too many years for the gap in the sky to be refilled).

This article talks as if all that matters is economics. What about the pyschological effects that seeing the FT go up will have on everyone?


That's true. The Freedom Tower is being built basically to restore the city's skyline with an "iconic" tower, its not about economics. Which is why everyone was suggesting that Silverstein forget about profits and just build the tower. Now with the PA involved, suddenly everyone wants to just look at the pricetag.

The tower will be built as planned.

[NYguy]

I'd say the fact Silverstein is worried about the FT being competition for his own towers gives the lie to the assertion the FT is not commercially viable.

Silverstein isn't worried about the Freedom Tower being completed. In fact, he was the one that sent Vantone there, away from 7 WTC. And Silverstein is also building the tower. The only concerns over Freedom Tower have come from the Port Authority, the agency that never wanted anything to do with it in the first place.

[NYguy]

Photos taken in January


http://www.pathrestoration.com/drp/images/gallery/wtcth/2007/01/fredmtwr01.jpg


http://www.pathrestoration.com/drp/images/gallery/wtcth/2007/01/fredmtwr03.jpg


http://www.pathrestoration.com/drp/images/gallery/wtcth/2007/01/fredmtwr05.jpg


http://www.pathrestoration.com/drp/images/gallery/wtcth/2007/01/fredmtwr06.jpg


http://www.pathrestoration.com/drp/images/gallery/wtcth/2007/01/fredmtwr07.jpg


The WTC site overall is very busy:

http://www.pathrestoration.com/drp/images/WTCSiteOverlay5.jpg

[Ghost]

I love these pictures! Thank you really much NYguy!

[austin356]

If I was Adam Sandler and I still had that remote I would use it to see this complex.....

[NYguy]

It's great to see that the Freedom Tower at least has a "presence" on the site. Yet, its still just a small presence in the entire development, the tallest massing of towers in the city's history. At 947 ft, even Tower 4 will be a giant, one we would be excited to get anywhere.

[charger1966]

Thank you NY Guy. Those pictures are really great. It's allot better to see the area up-close and personal. The web cam shots are just too far away.
Thanks Again.
Lance

[NYguy]

CNNmoney.com

Private funds eyed for WTC site
Report says government agency in talks with private equity firms, hedge funds to take stake in $3 billion "Freedom Tower" that will replace twin towers.

February 12 2007

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The government agency that owns the World Trade Center site is trying to attract private equity or hedge funds into investing in the $3 billion replacement Freedom Tower, according to a published report.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, also is in talks to sell development rights to one of the five planned skyscrapers there to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co (Charts).

A government agency now building a replacement tower at the World Trade Center site reportedly is hoping to attract private equity or hedge fund investment to the project.

The paper said that if the agency is able to win commitment of significant private-sector money, it would be a major advance for the development, which has struggled to advance so far by basically using only government support and insurance proceeds.

Robert Sammons, director of research for the real-estate services firm Colliers ABR Inc., told the paper there has been a recent a flood of investors - from private-equity firms to pension firms to foreign interests - looking to own a piece of Manhattan commercial real estate.

"Certainly you're not going to find a better time to try to sell that equity interest," he told the Journal. Just last week, private equity firm Blackstone Group won a bidding war for Equity Office Properties (Charts), the nation's No. 1 owner of office buildings, with a $23 billion bid.

The foundation of the Freedom Tower, the key building in the development, is now under construction, with lease commitments from the federal and New York state governments to take one million of the 2.6 million square feet of available office space.

But at a symbolic 1,776 feet tall, some worry that the tower that will be about 400 feet taller than the former twin towers and will be a terrorist target, and that it could have trouble attracting tenants worried about an attack. The first 20 stories of the tower will be taken up by a mostly unoccupied concrete structure to protect the building from possible truck bombs. It is due to be completed in 2012.

Because of those obstacles, the paper says a deal for ownership of the Freedom Tower is not imminent.

But a deal for Tower 5 of the complex could be as close as a month, the paper reports, with J.P. Morgan considering the purchase of a long-term ground lease from the Port Authority to build and occupy a 57-story, 1.6 million-square-foot office building.

Still, the paper reports there are problems with the plans being discussed for Tower 5. The plot is currently occupied by the building that formerly housed the New York offices of Deutsche Bank AG (Charts). Demolition of that building, which was seriously damaged in the attacks but remained standing, has been slowed by environmental concerns and the discovery on its roof of human remains from the attacks.

The current footprint of Tower 5 also is not big enough for the trading operations planned by JP Morgan Chase. To expand its footprint would involve encroaching on adjacent land, currently reserved for a park and to rebuild a Greek Orthodox church that was also destroyed in the attack.

Still if there are deals to develop Tower 5 and for equity investment in the Freedom Tower, the Journal reports it would be a blow for private developer Larry Silverstein, who had the lease to the former Twin Towers and is using insurance proceeds from those buildings' destruction to build three other office towers on the World Trade Center site.

Spokesmen for Silverstein and the Port Authority would not comment to the Journal.

[CoolCzech]

I just hope Silverstein wouldn't react with a lawsuit or something in the event WTC 5 suddenly went commercial: in a way, I wouldn't blame him (because I think he got railroaded royally) but I just don't want to see any more delays at the site. It's exciting that we may see plans for 5 WTC within a few months. Any guesses at possible heights? I bid 850 feet...

And let's hope JP Morgan chooses an architect that can rise to the general caliber of the other architects at the site!

[Dac150]

If its taller than tower 2, 3 or 4 then it wouldn't look right. But thats a problem I can live with. BUILD AS HIGH AS YOU CAN!

[NYguy]

I just hope Silverstein wouldn't react with a lawsuit or something in the event WTC 5 suddenly went commercial: in a way, I wouldn't blame him (because I think he got railroaded royally) but I just don't want to see any more delays at the site. It's exciting that we may see plans for 5 WTC within a few months. Any guesses at possible heights? I bid 850 feet...

I say somewhere between 850 and 900 ft. They could get away with 900 ft.

As far as Silverstein, yeah he got screwed. That's because so many people are shortsighted (witness the article still talking about fears of people working in the new WTC).

But Downtown is now at it's peak, even more so than pre-9/11. Not only are the new WTC towers being built, but you have the Goldman and the 876 ft Gehry tower as well. Not to mention the other large residential towers popping up down there. No one could have imagined a greater rebirth.

[NYonward]

Here's the WSJ article...

Wall Street Journal
Feb 12, 2007

Private Funds Show Interest in WTC Site, A Move That Could Bolster Development

Alex Frangos and Jennifer S. Forsyth

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the World Trade Center, has begun discussions to shop the Freedom Tower, hoping to lure private equity or hedge funds into owning all or part the $3 billion skyscraper, people familiar with the situation said. Separately, the agency is in talks to sell development rights to one of the five planned skyscrapers there to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the people said.

Taken together, the interest by private-sector money in the site would represent a major advance for the much-maligned development, which has thus far relied almost completely on government support and insurance proceeds.

Steve Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman, said, "We don't comment on discussions we may or may not be having." A spokesman for J.P. Morgan, New York, declined to comment.

Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. is representing the Port Authority as broker in the negotiations.

David Lichtenstein, chief executive of Lightstone Group, a Lakewood, N.J., real-estate investment firm, said he thinks that depending on the price and conditions, any number of private investors, including his own firm, would be interested in equity in the Freedom Tower, whose foundation is under construction. "In this market, I think anything in Manhattan would generate interest," he said. "That's a no- brainer, isn't it?"

Mr. Lichtenstein said he didn't think private investors would necessarily shy away from the tower just because of the site's legacy or the tower's potential as a new terrorist target. "That's what you have insurance for," he said.

Robert Sammons, director of research for the real-estate services firm Colliers ABR Inc., said a flood of investors -- from private- equity firms to pension firms to foreign interests -- are looking to own a piece of Manhattan, driving prices to record levels. "Certainly you're not going to find a better time to try to sell that equity interest," he said.

Designed as the signature skyscraper at Ground Zero, the Freedom Tower will rise a symbolic 1,776 feet. The structure, which has been redesigned several times, including a complete overhaul to better protect it from terrorist attacks, is set to be completed in 2012. The tower has lease commitments from the federal and New York state governments to take one million of the 2.6 million square feet.

Critics have decried the tower as an obvious terrorist target and a financial white elephant that private-sector tenants will shun. The first 18 stories of the tower will be taken up by a mostly unoccupied concrete structure to protect the building from possible truck bombs. The concrete will be covered with thousands of pieces of decorative glass to minimize any bunkerlike effect, say the architects.

Any deal for the Freedom Tower is unlikely to occur right away, people familiar with the matter said.

A move on Tower 5 by J.P. Morgan, on the other hand, could take place as soon as a month, though people familiar with the matter stress the firm is also exploring sites in midtown Manhattan or could choose to do nothing.

If a deal is made, J.P. Morgan would purchase a long-term ground lease from the Port Authority for what is known on plans as Tower 5. J.P. Morgan would build and occupy a 57-story, 1.6 million-square-foot office building, housing its trading and analyst operations. Such a move would be a major shot in the arm for the Trade Center site, which has so far failed to land private-sector tenants. Because the tower can't be ready for occupancy before 2012, the move reflects the panic New York firms are in to secure office space for the future as the cost of new buildings skyrockets. Investors have raced in the past year to pay record prices for Manhattan office real estate.

If J.P. Morgan goes ahead with Tower 5, it would be a disappointment to private developer Larry Silverstein, who is building three other office towers on the World Trade Center site. He unveiled fanciful architectural designs for his towers with great fanfare last year, hoping to lure financial firms to make an early commitment. Mr. Silverstein's towers are scheduled to be completed at least a year in advance of Tower 5.

(In a deal struck last year, the Port Authority took responsibility for the Freedom Tower and Tower 5. Mr. Silverstein would build towers 2, 3 and 4.)

A Silverstein spokesman declined to comment. The Tower 5 site, however, has its own problems. The plot is currently occupied by the building that formerly housed offices of Deutsche Bank AG and was heavily damaged when the Twin Towers collapsed across the street. The razing of that building, at 130 Liberty Street, has been stymied for more than three years because of environmental concerns and the discovery of human remains from the 9/11 attacks on its roof.

Also, as currently configured in plans, Tower 5 is too small to accommodate a floor plan large enough for trading operations. To expand its footprint would involve encroaching on adjacent land, currently reserved for a park and to rebuild a Greek Orthodox church destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. The Port Authority has presented the option of creating enough space by building a cantilevered trading floor that would overhang the adjacent land.

A J.P. Morgan move to Tower 5 would reflect a broader change in the value of residential real estate compared with office buildings. Last year the Port Authority, with the encouragement of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, indicated Tower 5 would likely be built as a condominium or hotel, given the then strong demand for anything with a bed in it. Since then, the residential market has slowed, while demand for office space keeps rising.

Real estate has been an important issue for J.P. Morgan as the bank cuts costs under Chief Executive James Dimon. Mr. Dimon said in October that the bank had trimmed its real-estate portfolio by 10 million square feet in the past two years to 67 million square feet. Furthermore, Mr. Dimon is a fan of state-of-the-art technology, so he would likely embrace a facility with the latest tools.

J.P. Morgan has other ties to the redevelopment of downtown Manhattan. Charles Maikish, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which coordinates the construction, is a former J.P. Morgan real-estate executive.

[NYguy]

Nothing shocking here...

(NY Times)

Spitzer, in Reversal, Is Expected to Approve Freedom Tower, Officials Say

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
February 13, 2007

With the downtown real estate market improving rapidly, Gov. Eliot Spitzer is expected to abandon his criticism of the Freedom Tower as a looming white elephant and to approve construction of the tower, which would rise 1,776 feet at ground zero, according to city, state and Port Authority officials.

When the new governor took office in January, his administration had put the Freedom Tower, one of five towers planned for the downtown site, under review. But with tenants leasing about two-thirds of the newly completed 7 World Trade Center and vacancy rates falling in Lower Manhattan, officials say that the prospects for the 2.6-million-square-foot Freedom Tower are improving.

Officials say that the point of no return is fast approaching for the $3 billion tower. Critics of the project, who regard it as poorly designed for corporate tenants and too big and expensive, had hoped that Mr. Spitzer, or his partner at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey, would delay or kill the project.

Mr. Spitzer is expected to make an announcement about the Freedom Tower before a Feb. 22 meeting of the authority, which plans to vote on $460 million in contracts for concrete and electrical and plumbing work on the building. Next month, there will be another $300 million in contracts for curtain walls, elevators and escalators.

A spokeswoman for the governor, Christine Anderson, declined to comment.

The Port Authority, however, was buoyant about both the downtown real estate market and the tower. “While we are pleased that the market conditions continue to be strong and that the building is on schedule and on budget,” said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the authority, “we have not reached any final conclusions or moved to final authorization.”

The officials said that the governor’s change of heart is not an indication that corporations are suddenly lining up to lease space in the Freedom Tower, which some potential tenants fear is a possible terrorist target. Yet some authority executives say those anxieties are subsiding as the city’s economy improves.

Indeed, a state official and two senior executives at the authority say the authority has received unsolicited inquiries from hedge funds and investment banks about buying the tower, but officials have not taken any formal steps down that road. In the last year, the city has been awash with investors eager to invest billions in real estate, be it office towers or large residential complexes. For example, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, adjoining apartment complexes in Manhattan, sold for a record-breaking $5.4 billion in November.

A senior Port Authority executive said that a sale or lease to a private owner would entail the buyer’s guaranteeing that the tower would be completed on schedule. It would also mean that the authority would not have to finance nearly $1 billion to build the skyscraper, and it would not suffer continuing losses until the building was fully leased. The buyer, in turn, would enjoy the future appreciation on the property.

Still, some real estate experts questioned why the Freedom Tower was being built at the same time that the developer Larry A. Silverstein was getting ready to build three office towers with more than six million square feet of space. They complained that it had attracted only government tenants who were being forced to pay higher rents than they should.

The developer Douglas Durst and the real estate investor Anthony E. Malkin say the tower is ill conceived, the result of a hasty six-week “redesign” after the police raised security concerns.

Mr. Durst said that the value of the tower would increase over time, but added that it made little sense to build everything at once.

“People want to see an economically viable building in a resurging downtown,” Mr. Malkin said. “Why is government building a skyscraper for government tenants in what should be the most valuable cornerstone of the project, and maybe all of downtown? Private capital has shown a willingness to build, but perhaps not with this design.”

Mr. Durst and Mr. Malkin say they are continuing in the footsteps of their families.

Mr. Durst’s father, Seymour, and Mr. Malkin’s grandfather, Lawrence A. Wein, were ardent opponents of the original plan for the World Trade Center. In 1964, they formed the Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center, which argued that the complex would flood the real estate market with subsidized space and compete unfairly with private landlords. By some accounts, the complex was not fully occupied and successful until shortly before it was destroyed.

Under the terms of a deal struck last fall, the Port Authority has taken over financial responsibility for the Freedom Tower from Mr. Silverstein. At $3 billion, the tower will cost $1,155 per square foot, which real estate experts said would require a net annual rent of as much as $80 a square foot.

The authority expects to get about $1.2 billion in insurance proceeds, $250 million from New York State and nearly $1 billion in tax-free bonds. That still leaves a considerable shortfall, although the state and federal governments have signed nonbinding agreements to lease one million square feet, or 38 percent of the skyscraper, for initial rent of $59 a square foot.

In order to get construction financing, lenders usually require private developers to secure leases for about half the space in a proposed office building. In addition, investment banks, companies often paying the highest rents in the market, have no interest in the tower, principally because the floors would be too small for trading operations.

State, city and Port Authority officials, even some who had been critical of the Freedom Tower in the past, say that the downtown market is improving faster than anyone expected. Mr. Silverstein is getting rents as high as $70 a square foot for 7 World Trade Center, they say.

JPMorgan Chase is talking with the authority about the possibility of acquiring the site of the former Deutsche Bank building near ground zero, soon to be demolished, and Midtown corporations and law firms are beginning to move downtown, drawn by rents that are 30 percent cheaper than those uptown.

Port Authority officials say that if the Freedom Tower is delayed, they will be unable to capitalize on the current market.

According to Newmark Knight Frank, a real estate firm, the vacancy rate for office space downtown has fallen to 10.3 percent, from 13.9 percent only a year ago. The Dutch bank ABN Amro recently signed a lease for 140,000 square feet at Mr. Silverstein’s 7 World Trade Center, at the northwest corner of Vesey and Greenwich Streets. But Goldman Sachs plans to vacate as much as 2 million square feet in several office buildings when it moves to its new headquarters at Battery Park City.

Barry M. Gosin, the chief executive of Newmark and a former critic of the Freedom Tower, said that he could now go “either way” on the project. “There’s some merit to building it later,” he said. “You’d get the full benefit of the created value. On the other hand, building now is fine.”

[Daquan13]

Well now, THAT'S good to hear!!

No more delays and stalling tactics, and the tower will be built and completed on schedule as planned.

[-GR2NY-]

Construction has already started though, right? I dont follow this....

[NYonward]

NY Post
Steve Cuozzo
2/13/07

So, what about yesterday's Wall Street Journal report that the Port Authority has begun talks to "shop the Freedom Tower" in hopes of luring private equity or hedge funds into owning a piece of the $3 billion project?

A source familiar with the "discussions" says the PA has been "approached," but that so far, "it's a bunch of no-names - hedge fund types, not Wall Street institutions." Although the PA is "opportunistic" and will consider offers, "don't expect any overnight bombshells," our source said.

[NYguy]

NY Post

FREEDOM RING$
BLACKSTONE EYES $3B ICONIC TOWER PURCHASE

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02142007/photos/business033.jpg

DOWNTOWN DEALMAKERS: Super moneyman Steve Schwarzman (above), the head of private-equity titan Blackstone Group, could be pouring dough into the heart of lower Manhattan with a Freedom Tower buy.

By TOM TOPOUSIS and STEVE CUOZZO
February 14, 2007

Fresh off its acquisition of the largest collection of office towers in the nation, the Blackstone Group has set its sights on the Freedom Tower, The Post has learned.

Blackstone made an unsolicited approach to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey about acquiring the 1,776-foot-tall tower now under construction by the agency and due to be completed by 2012, sources said.

Sources said Blackstone is just one of several real estate investors expressing interest in the iconic tower, which will host a combination of federal, state and private tenants.

The Port Authority is considering a range of options for the Freedom Tower, including one or more private investors for all or part of the building, slated to cost roughly $3 billion. But any discussions with potential investors are in a very preliminary stage.

A Port Authority spokesman declined to comment. And a Blackstone spokesman last night denied his firm is trying to purchase the tower.

Port Authority officials in the past have been clear that the agency's investment in the Freedom Tower would have to work financially so as not to deprive resources from the core mission of building and operating regional transportation systems.

The Port Authority agreed to take over control of the Freedom Tower and a fifth World Trade Center tower a block south of the main campus in a restructured deal with Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein.

J.P. Morgan Chase, as first reported in The Post, has expressed interest in developing Tower 5 as a commercial building, signaling that the Port Authority is open to reversing an earlier plan to use the 57-story building for housing and a hotel.

Silverstein will develop three towers, including about 6 million square feet of office space, along the Church Street side of the Trade Center.

As part of the deal, the Port Authority will get $900 million of the $4.6 billion World Trade Center insurance money, and access to $1 billion in low-interest Liberty Bond financing for the Freedom Tower.

Also part of the deal moving the Freedom Tower to the Port Authority are leasing commitments for 1 million square feet of space in the building from federal and state agencies.

But it's the boom in demand for Manhattan office space that has turned what was once viewed as a potential white elephant into a hot property. The Freedom Tower will include 2.6 million square feet of office space - a quarter of what the Twin Towers held.

Word of Blackstone's interest in the Freedom Tower comes on the heels of the firm's $39 billion acquisition this month of Equity Office Properties' portfolio of 543 office buildings across the nation with a total of 103 million square feet of space.

[Daquan13]

As long as the tower gets built, that's all I care about right now. The rest can come later.

[neverdone]

If they feel that building all 4 is adding way to much square footage to the market then they should space out there construction. I hope they build the freedom tower first though, as the other buildings are even more so mediocre when it comes to design. I would still prefer to see two freedom towers instead of the different buildings and that ugly train station.

Is there really 18 floors of only concrete? Do they really need that much to stop truck bombs, that seems very excessive

[Dac150]

^Its been proven that you can never be too careful.

[CoolCzech]

NY Post



But it's the boom in demand for Manhattan office space that has turned what was once viewed as a potential white elephant into a hot property. The Freedom Tower will include 2.6 million square feet of office space - a quarter of what the Twin Towers held.

Word of Blackstone's interest in the Freedom Tower comes on the heels of the firm's $39 billion acquisition this month of Equity Office Properties' portfolio of 543 office buildings across the nation with a total of 103 million square feet of space.

OK, so does this mean that the NY Post and Cuozzo now want to buy an equity interest in the Freedom Tower? :haha:

[Daquan13]

A week or so ago,Cuozzo had given an indication that the tower should be put on hold for a while.

Has he had a change of heart since then and now wants to throw his name in the hat since Blacksone stepped up to the plate and is thinking about buying the tower?

My, my, my, how the tide has changed!!

[CoolCzech]

Spitzer likely to OK Freedom Tower start

2/14/2007

ALBANY (AP) - Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer is expected to approve construction of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower and give up his criticism of the project amid a booming real estate market in lower Manhattan, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The Times said Spitzer is expected to make a decision on the tower before a Feb. 22 meeting of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, when it is scheduled to vote on $460 million in construction contracts for the project.

Spitzer said last year that he planned to look again at designs for the tower because of concerns over the project's financial feasibility.

Now, with tenants grabbing office space at the newly completed 7 World Trade Center and demand growing for office space in lower Manhattan, the Freedom Tower is becoming a more attractive investment, the newspaper said, citing unidentified state, New York City and Port Authority officials.

Lengthy negotiations over who would build the tower and security concerns have delayed the project for years.

Federal and state agencies, including the governor's office, have already agreed to occupy half of the office space.

[CoolCzech]

Spitzer interview:

Q: Have you changed your mind on the Freedom Tower?

SPITZER: There will be an announcement with respect to the Freedom Tower down the road at an appropriate moment. But I haven't changed my mind. What I said early on was that I was frustrated as many were at the pace of the redevelopment and the cost escalation we were seeing in some of the analyses of development.

All that continues to be true but you get into an office, you're presented with a set of circumstances and you push and inquire and you then make the best business judgment and best judgment in the context of what Ground Zero is that is plausible and possible and I will announce that in due course.

Q: What type of announcement is it? A status report or a sea change?

SPITZER: A status report or a sea change? My lawyer should object and say there's an ambiguity here. I don't want to say any more than I've said.

http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070214/NEWS01/702130389/1006

[CoolCzech]

Spitzer about to back Freedom Tower he once doubted
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
BY RON MARSICO
Star-Ledger Staff
Despite once calling the Freedom Tower a "white elephant," New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is now planning to endorse construction of the iconic 1,776-foot skyscraper at Ground Zero, according to Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials.

Spitzer's announcement is expected before the bi-state agency's board convenes Feb. 22 to consider about $460 million in construction contracts for the next phase of work on the site's signature structure, officials said. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because Spitzer has not authorized anyone to discuss his initiative publicly.

[N0rthcar0lina]

If i had to work in this new tower..

Well quite frankly i'd be terrified :(

But i love the design, this should be a fun construction

[NYguy]

A week or so ago,Cuozzo had given an indication that the tower should be put on hold for a while.

Has he had a change of heart since then and now wants to throw his name in the hat since Blacksone stepped up to the plate and is thinking about buying the tower?

My, my, my, how the tide has changed!!

One article was an opinion piece, the other just reporting news. Which is why I don't make decisions based on people's opinions. Everyone could see the market in Manhattan was increasingly tight. And even with the Twin Towers and 10msf of extra office space, Downtown Manhattan had run out of space.

The towers will be built, and they'll have tenants.

[Daquan13]

Well as I said earlier, I don't give a crap WHO wants to buy the tower. I just want to see it get built!

[antinimby]

Hehe. I think you've made that quite clear. :D

[NYguy]

Another opinion on the Freedom Tower

(NY Times)

Freedom From Fear

By GUY NORDENSON
February 16, 2007

THERE is still time to take the fear out of the Freedom Tower. Despite reports that Gov. Eliot Spitzer has now decided to back the project, the fact is that with a little time it is still possible to rethink the tower and make it both secure and welcoming without setting back the overall ground zero construction schedule.


The current design, which was unveiled in 2006, was created under pressure from former Gov. George Pataki, who tied his presidential ambitions to its swift completion. In this plan, the architects and engineers, for several reasons, took a very conservative approach. The result, a 20-story fortified wall around the base of a 1,776-foot tower, hardly evokes freedom — rather, it embodies fear and anxiety.

I write from experience. Some four years ago I began working with David Childs, the principal architect, on the first version of the Freedom Tower. This was a 2,000-foot-tall structure of torquing glass and steel; the bottom half contained the office building while the top half was a broadcast tower composed of an open framework of cables and trusses. (Also in 2002 The New York Times Magazine published a proposal of mine for a 2,000-foot-tall broadcast tower on the site that we have been working on intermittently ever since.)

The structure would have given the tower the widest TV broadcast capacity possible, at the maximum height allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The office floors ended at about 70 stories, matching the tallest downtown office building, with as much overall floor area as the current design and with every floor having direct access to the ground level by elevator. The open, cable-stayed upper 1,000 feet of the structure would have had wind turbines that would have met more than 20 percent of the building’s energy needs, a fitting symbol for a city whose seal includes a windmill.

While the basic design won over almost everyone involved with the project, including many of the governor’s advisers, Mr. Pataki asked the architect to amend it in late 2003. Specifically, he wanted Mr. Childs to reduce the upper structure from 2,000 to 1,500 feet, and to add a slender 276-foot antenna to make it a symbolic 1,776 feet tall. The alterations, unfortunately, made the design impossible to build, and eventually the entire concept was abandoned.

So Mr. Childs presented the revised Freedom Tower, which meets Mr. Pataki’s interests but bears no resemblance to his initial design. It is in every way inferior, and those flaws — in terms of aesthetics, economics, security and ethics — are all rooted in the way in which it was conceived.

First, the aesthetics. The critics have not been kind to the Freedom Tower. The solid geometry is self-centered — this newspaper’s critic wrote that it “evokes a gigantic glass paperweight with a toothpick stuck on top” — without any sense of orientation or any recognition of its place in the skyline. This is a shame, especially considering what the same architects showed they were capable of next door, in the elegant new 7 World Trade Center building.

But it is understandable: not only were the architects rushed by Mr. Pataki, but after the ordeal of the first design’s development and rejection, it seems natural that Mr. Childs would reach for a simple geometry the second time around. The result, unfortunately, would be second rate in Chicago, Dubai or Shanghai, and should not be the symbol of New York City, let alone freedom.

Second, the finances of the new building are a disaster. The Freedom Tower will most likely cost around $3 billion to build, for 2.6 million square feet of office space. The cost of $1,150 a square foot is nearly twice what it cost to build the new Museum of Modern Art, for which I was also the engineer. Of the cost, about $1 billion will be paid with insurance money collected by the ground zero leaseholder, Larry Silverstein.

Assuming that the owners of the Freedom Tower, the Port Authority, are able to sign government or other tenants on at market rate rents of $50 to $60 per square foot, the income on the entire property, after expenses and taxes and including the rent on the TV antennas, will be at most $100 million dollars a year, which is less than 4 percent return on the investment. The Port Authority would do better buying back its bonds, which now offer a return of greater than 5 percent. What is more, the property is probably uninsurable, so the Port Authority will be spending billions for a below-market return and a substantial risk.

Third, the security concerns that have blocked so many facets of the plan remain unresolved. Last January, I sat in a meeting in the New York City police commissioner’s conference room and listened to a debate on various security plans and blast-resistant designs for the different projects at ground zero. In the end, James Kallstrom, Governor Pataki’s senior counterterrorism adviser and the security coordinator for ground zero, closed the discussion by saying, “Structural engineers will have to certify that the design meets the threat basis.”

I understood this to mean that as long as the engineers signed off on the design, everything would be considered fine. This is worrisome, especially given that that the computer software that is being used to simulate the blast effects is proprietary and classified by the federal government, and that the structural engineers being asked to certify the building do not have clearance or direct access to the program, only the data given them by the software.

In contrast, the approach taken by most private building owners in the city — which generally includes physical tests, repeated independent computer simulations and help from the Defense Department’s technical support working group — provides real assurances of security. The Freedom Tower deserves the same sound engineering approach as any commercial project.

The final problem with the tower is less obvious: the politically charged situation under which it was conceived has led to ethical problems in terms of tenancy. Mr. Silverstein never wanted to build the Freedom Tower, and few could blame him. The site is awkward, too far from public transportation and Wall Street, and the tower is too big for the downtown real estate market to absorb in time to realize a good profit. Last year, he exchanged this problem for the three towers he is now developing on the site, leaving the Port Authority saddled with the Freedom Tower.

The authority itself, however, will not occupy the Freedom Tower but will rent space from Mr. Silverstein in Tower Four, at the opposite corner of the site. So far, state agencies, under pressure from Mr. Pataki, have signed on for about 400,000 square feet (roughly one-sixth of the tower’s floor space) Federal agencies including the Customs Service and the Secret Service will most likely sign on for 600,000 square feet.

In other words, government employees are being conscripted to occupy a tower that no private company or authority — including the building’s owner — will take. At a time when there is considerable anguish over the 20,000 additional troops that President Bush wants to send to Baghdad, it seems that the ethics of forcing thousands of state and federal employees to work in fear in the Freedom Tower is fundamentally flawed.

The good news is that it is not too late to change things. The current construction of the foundation and subterranean levels does not lock us into a final design above ground. The work should continue up to the ground level and stop (this should take about a year) so that the architects and engineers are given another chance to design a Freedom Tower that, like other buildings rising downtown, is financially viable and a secure and welcoming work environment worthy of its place in the skyline.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/29/nyregion/20050630_appraisal_graphic.gifhttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/06/28/nyregion/28cnd-freedom.5.450.jpg

[CoolCzech]

^Oh, enough already.

Cut thru the self-righteous blather, and what you wind up with is, This guy is upset that the design HE worked on wasn't selected.

Tough titties.

[CoolCzech]

Boomberg.com

Port Authority Should Sell Freedom Tower Site Now: Joe Mysak

By Joe Mysak

Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey should sell the World Trade Center site's proposed Freedom Tower. And then it should rebuild Pennsylvania Station.

It was a good idea for the Port Authority to get out of the real estate business back in the 1990s, when the idea of selling or leasing the World Trade Center was first discussed. It is an even better idea now.

Especially now, because there are so many investors looking to buy or lease public assets, things like toll roads, lotteries and airports, and manage them for a profit. States and localities from coast to coast are looking at their assets and considering which businesses to sell.

Surely developing real estate, and then acting as a landlord, isn't exactly one of the core competencies of any municipal government. As more than one observer has pointed out, the original World Trade Center was a white elephant for years after it was opened in 1970.

As for Pennsylvania Station -- maybe now it is time to restore one of the glories of New York, almost four decades after one of the worst acts of urban vandalism was perpetrated in the name of commerce.

I'm not talking about the Port Authority somehow getting involved in the long-delayed transformation of the Farley Post Office into a new, ersatz Pennsylvania Station. That's been talked about for years. No, I am talking about rebuilding the old Pennsylvania Station.

Train Stations

The American Institute of Architects released the results of a poll on ``America's Favorite Architecture'' on Feb. 7. Almost without exception, the architecture favored by Americans is old.

The Empire State Building was No. 1 on the list, which also contained a lot of the usual suspects: the Chrysler Building in New York; the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina; the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego; Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There were also a lot of train stations on the list. That's not surprising, because so many of the train stations were built at the turn of the century, in the grand Beaux-Arts style, like Grand Central Terminal in New York, and Union Stations in Washington, Chicago and St. Louis. Those buildings were imposing. They filled the eye and lifted the soul.

Rallying Preservationists

Pennsylvania Station was on the AIA's list, too, down at No. 143, although it isn't even a memory for most people. The building was demolished between 1963 and 1966. Its destruction proved decisive in rallying the urban preservation movement, both in New York and elsewhere.

New Yorkers now know that pulling down Penn Station was a very great mistake, if not outright insane, and sadly diminished the city. But it's not irreversible. The McKim, Mead & White architectural plans are on file at the New York Historical Society. Sure, there are office towers and Madison Square Garden and real estate moguls to deal with, but nothing is ever simple in New York.

Rebuilding Pennsylvania Station may be a dream. Getting the Port Authority out of the Freedom Tower makes lots of sense and is eminently achievable.

The Port Authority leased the Trade Center site to developer Larry Silverstein six weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. The authority got back control of the Freedom Tower site last year after a new agreement with Silverstein.

Mass Transit

The World Trade Center was the brainchild of Austin Tobin, the Port Authority's executive director from 1942 to 1972, who thought of it as a modern-day version of the Tontine Coffee House, site of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1790s.

The Trade Center was the result of a swap -- New Jersey allowed the Port Authority to build the center, but only if it also purchased the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, a commuter train that ran from New Jersey into lower Manhattan. The Port Authority had resisted any involvement with commuter transit since its inception, saying it would be too much of a financial drag on an agency that was entirely self-supporting.

Some New Yorkers called for the Trade Center to be sold even before it officially opened. Labor leader Theodore Kheel, in a November 1969 article in New York magazine entitled, ``How the Port Authority Is Strangling New York,'' called upon the agency to embrace mass transit.

``The World Trade Center is a striking example of socialism at its worst -- a state agency needlessly and inefficiently intervening in a market already well served by private capital,'' Kheel wrote.

That was 1969. Private capital is clamoring for investment opportunities today. Maybe now, six years after 9/11, private capital and new blood can make a difference in lower Manhattan.

(Joe Mysak is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Joe Mysak in New York at jmysakjr@bloomberg.net .

[CitySkyline]

^Oh, enough already.

Cut thru the self-righteous blather, and what you wind up with is, This guy is upset that the design HE worked on wasn't selected.

Tough titties.

Exactly!

I, for one (and many others), am happier with the current design than the previous design with all that upper lattice-work (and a lower observation deck, I might add). And, for all the talk of this being an "inferior" design ("The result, unfortunately, would be second rate in Chicago, Dubai or Shanghai, ... " :rolleyes: ), what would the author have said if they had actually rebuilt the Twin Towers as they were? I mean, they were just two big boxes, nothing "fancy". Would he have been as critical?

I hope this sort of article is just a lot of hot air. I always have a small fear that someone in an upper level position will read something like this, start "thinking" and say, "He's right! Let's stop everything and get it right!" And, then 10 years from now, we'll still be waiting... :(

[NYguy]

The Freedom Tower is being built as planned.

[Daquan13]

^Oh, enough already.

Cut thru the self-righteous blather, and what you wind up with is, This guy is upset that the design HE worked on wasn't selected.

Tough titties.



You're right!!!


Let's just cut through the jibber-jabber.

I'm getting sick of all these damn changes and delays! Why doesn't this guy go try to get a life and stop pulling on Ground Zero's strings?

He needs to just grow up and stop acting like a spoiled and selfish little boy. It's a done deal, and I've only got one thing to say to him; Deal with it and get over it.

[NYguy]

NY Times

A Tower That Sends a Message of Anxiety, Not Ambition

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/19/arts/design/19towe_CA1.600.jpg

A rendering of the Freedom Tower plaza at West and Vesey Streets.

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
February 19, 2007

Ground zero has gone through its own kind of war fatigue. With every step forward in the reconstruction process, New Yorkers were asked to buy into the rhetoric of renewal, only to be confronted by images that reflect a city still in a state of turmoil and delusion.

Perhaps if we close our eyes, one might wishfully imagine, it will all just go away.

But the widely anticipated announcement that Gov. Eliot Spitzer will support the construction of the Freedom Tower may signal an end to any hope that a broad vision — or even a level of sanity — can be restored to a project tainted by personal hubris and political expediency.

The most recent debate over the tower has centered narrowly on real estate values. With the developer Larry Silverstein set to build six million square feet of office space in three buildings just alongside the Freedom Tower, some have questioned whether it will be possible to lease enough of the $3 billion project at a high enough rate to make it profitable. The tower’s symbolism alone is likely to scare off tenants who will see it as a potential targets for terrorists. The suggestion that we simply pack the building with government offices is almost perversely Strangelove-ian.

Yet the problem is not simply whether enough bureaucrats can be coerced into working there one day; it’s also what the building expresses as a work of architecture. Governor Spitzer may recall the looming presence of the twin towers on the downtown skyline, at once proud and intimidating; the Freedom Tower will have an equally powerful effect on the daily lives of New Yorkers as well as on the city’s image throughout the world. Yet its message will be very different from the old towers.

Hurriedly redesigned more than a year ago after terrorism experts questioned its vulnerability to a bomb attack, the Freedom Tower, with its tapered bulk and chamfered corners, evokes a gargantuan glass obelisk. Its clumsy bloated form, remade by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, vaguely recalls the worst of postmodernist historicism. (It’s a marvel that its glass skin hasn’t been recast in granite.)

Recently cities like Paris, London and San Francisco have held major architectural competitions for towers that will reshape their skylines. All of them drew on an array of ambitious architectural talents; many of those designs pushed technological and structural limits while reimagining the skyscraper as part of a holistic urban vision.

Even in New York, which has lagged behind much of the world in its architectural ambitions over the last decade or so, projects like Norman Foster’s new Hearst Tower suggest that a higher standard is demanded in the design of our urban structures.

If built, the lamentable Freedom Tower would be a constant reminder of our loss of ambition, and our inability to produce an architecture that shows a genuine faith in America’s collective future rather than a nostalgia for a nonexistent past.

Nowhere is that failure of ambition more evident than in the tower’s base. In a society where the social contract that binds us together is fraying, the most incisive architects have found ways to create a more fluid relationship between private and public realms. The lobby of Thom Mayne’s Phare Tower in Paris, for example, is conceived as an extension of the public realm, drawing in the surrounding streetscape and tunneling deep into the ground to connect to a network of underground trains.

By comparison the Freedom Tower is conceived as a barricaded fortress. Its base, a 20-story-high windowless concrete bunker that houses the lobby as well as many of the structure’s mechanical systems, is clad in laminated glass panels to give it visual allure, but the message is the same. It speaks less of resilience and tolerance than of paranoia. It’s a building armored against an outside world that we no longer trust.

There is no reason to accept this as fate. Although construction has begun on the tower’s foundations, we are still a year or so away from the point that the building will begin to rise. The foundations could even be completed while a process is set in motion to begin rethinking the design. Meanwhile construction could begin on Mr. Silverstein’s towers to the south, which should prove much easier to lease.

Governor Spitzer of course would have to summon the will to venture into one of the most emotionally and politically charged sites in the world less than two months into his tenure. To do so he must first accept that the Freedom Tower’s message is not directed solely at real estate-obsessed New Yorkers but at the world, and that the message it’s sending now is the worst of who we are.

[GVNY]

I agree with the author (regarding the overall design), but it must be too late.

If it were at all possible for a redesign which would provide for us a superior design, I'd say go for it.

[CoolCzech]

CBS/AP) NEW YORK State leaders are looking at budget cuts and new private investors to help cover the billions of dollars needed to rebuild Ground Zero with office towers, a 9/11 memorial and a transit hub.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is scheduled to make an announcement Tuesday about financing for the Freedom Tower.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey owned the destroyed World Trade Center and is building the Freedom Tower. It recently has been approached by private investors for ownership and development rights to the skyscraper and a second tower under the P.A. control.

Spitzer once referred to the Freedom Tower as a "white elephant" and questioned its economic viability. However, he's apparently now in favor of the 1,776 foot tall building because it is two-thirds rented.

But construction costs for the tower and four other buildings are thought to run higher than that, with prices for concrete, steel and labor rising.

[Dalton]

NY Times

A Tower That Sends a Message of Anxiety, Not Ambition

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/19/arts/design/19towe_CA1.600.jpg

A rendering of the Freedom Tower plaza at West and Vesey Streets.

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
February 19, 2007

Ground zero has gone through its own kind of war fatigue. With every step forward in the reconstruction process, New Yorkers were asked to buy into the rhetoric of renewal, only to be confronted by images that reflect a city still in a state of turmoil and delusion.

Perhaps if we close our eyes, one might wishfully imagine, it will all just go away.

But the widely anticipated announcement that Gov. Eliot Spitzer will support the construction of the Freedom Tower may signal an end to any hope that a broad vision — or even a level of sanity — can be restored to a project tainted by personal hubris and political expediency.

The most recent debate over the tower has centered narrowly on real estate values. With the developer Larry Silverstein set to build six million square feet of office space in three buildings just alongside the Freedom Tower, some have questioned whether it will be possible to lease enough of the $3 billion project at a high enough rate to make it profitable. The tower’s symbolism alone is likely to scare off tenants who will see it as a potential targets for terrorists. The suggestion that we simply pack the building with government offices is almost perversely Strangelove-ian.

Yet the problem is not simply whether enough bureaucrats can be coerced into working there one day; it’s also what the building expresses as a work of architecture. Governor Spitzer may recall the looming presence of the twin towers on the downtown skyline, at once proud and intimidating; the Freedom Tower will have an equally powerful effect on the daily lives of New Yorkers as well as on the city’s image throughout the world. Yet its message will be very different from the old towers.

Hurriedly redesigned more than a year ago after terrorism experts questioned its vulnerability to a bomb attack, the Freedom Tower, with its tapered bulk and chamfered corners, evokes a gargantuan glass obelisk. Its clumsy bloated form, remade by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, vaguely recalls the worst of postmodernist historicism. (It’s a marvel that its glass skin hasn’t been recast in granite.)

Recently cities like Paris, London and San Francisco have held major architectural competitions for towers that will reshape their skylines. All of them drew on an array of ambitious architectural talents; many of those designs pushed technological and structural limits while reimagining the skyscraper as part of a holistic urban vision.

Even in New York, which has lagged behind much of the world in its architectural ambitions over the last decade or so, projects like Norman Foster’s new Hearst Tower suggest that a higher standard is demanded in the design of our urban structures.

If built, the lamentable Freedom Tower would be a constant reminder of our loss of ambition, and our inability to produce an architecture that shows a genuine faith in America’s collective future rather than a nostalgia for a nonexistent past.

Nowhere is that failure of ambition more evident than in the tower’s base. In a society where the social contract that binds us together is fraying, the most incisive architects have found ways to create a more fluid relationship between private and public realms. The lobby of Thom Mayne’s Phare Tower in Paris, for example, is conceived as an extension of the public realm, drawing in the surrounding streetscape and tunneling deep into the ground to connect to a network of underground trains.

By comparison the Freedom Tower is conceived as a barricaded fortress. Its base, a 20-story-high windowless concrete bunker that houses the lobby as well as many of the structure’s mechanical systems, is clad in laminated glass panels to give it visual allure, but the message is the same. It speaks less of resilience and tolerance than of paranoia. It’s a building armored against an outside world that we no longer trust.

There is no reason to accept this as fate. Although construction has begun on the tower’s foundations, we are still a year or so away from the point that the building will begin to rise. The foundations could even be completed while a process is set in motion to begin rethinking the design. Meanwhile construction could begin on Mr. Silverstein’s towers to the south, which should prove much easier to lease.

Governor Spitzer of course would have to summon the will to venture into one of the most emotionally and politically charged sites in the world less than two months into his tenure. To do so he must first accept that the Freedom Tower’s message is not directed solely at real estate-obsessed New Yorkers but at the world, and that the message it’s sending now is the worst of who we are.


What a joke.

First of all, there is concern about getting tenants to accept the risks and anxiety of working in a building that will always be a potential target regardless of what is built there. The author's answer? Create "a more fluid relationship between public and private realms". Brilliant. The kind of "brilliance" that, unfortunately, is all too common in the editorial pages of the NYT. Is the author suggesting that the symbolism of the site and hence its value as a terrorist target can be mitigated by designing something that the terrorists find more aesthetically pleasing to them?

Secondly, there's the matter of context. The author seems to suggest that an amorphous blob of a building proposed for a Paris suburb is something that would look at equally at home in the heart of the financial district of New York City. The "progressives" always point to Europe (and usually to France) for all the answers. Just as they did in the 19th century. There were all sorts of ridiculous "progressive" proposals for the WTC site that thankfully were thrown in the trash. There are very real political, economic and aesthetic limits to what can be done at the site. The Freedom Tower design is hardly perfect. But after a tedious and drawn-out process of designing and redesigning with input from everyone from the world's top architects to school children and Donald Trump, it is the best compromise to come along for the site. This isn't Dubai, where one person can decide to build the "World's Highest Sundial" or a rotating skyscraper without someone asking if he's insane and stopping him. It's time to stop arguing and start building.

Finally, given his criticism of the Freedom Tower as "clumsy" and "bloated", I'd like to see this author's review of the New York Times Tower. :haha:

[NYC2ATX]

After all this, I don't know what to think. At this point I would say don't bother redesigning it because I'm tired of this shit, but I don't know what to say, what to think ...

[NYguy]

^ There'll be no more redesigns. You can't please everyone, and there'll be critics for each new version of the tower. People just have to realize that what we have is getting built. That's the reality.

NY Times

Spitzer backs Freedom Tower spending

BY EMI ENDO AND HERBERT LOWE
February 20, 2007

Gov. Eliot Spitzer threw his support Tuesday behind existing plans to finance and build the Freedom Tower and office space at Ground Zero.

"Today, I am here to say that I am in support of the construction of the Freedom Tower as it is designed," Spitzer said at a news conference at an office of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "We will move forward."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine stood at the news conference beside Spitzer, who once referred to the Freedom Tower as a "white elephant" and questioned its economic viability.

Spitzer offered no new details about the multibillion-dollar effort to build office towers, a Sept. 11 memorial and a huge transit hub. The 1,776-foot Freedom Tower has been under construction since last April.

The New York governor said after he was elected that he and the Port Authority would look again at the project's financing. After weighing the alternatives of not going ahead with it, Spitzer said it was evident that it was best to proceed as planned. An important factor was the strength of the real estate market, Spitzer said.

The Port Authority, which owned the destroyed World Trade Center and is building the Freedom Tower, has been solicited recently by private investors for ownership and development rights to the skyscraper and a second tower under the authority's control, officials said.

Last year, the Port Authority renegotiated its lease with private developer Larry Silverstein and agreed to split more than $7 billion in insurance proceeds and tax-exempt Liberty Bonds available to rebuild office space destroyed by the 2001 terrorist attack.

But construction costs for the five planned towers are thought to run higher than that; the city is building several massive projects all at once and prices for steel, concrete and labor have been steadily rising.

One of the trade center's many insurers still hasn't agreed to terms of the renegotiated lease and another is going out of business, jeopardizing hundreds of millions of dollars in rebuilding money.

The Sept. 11 memorial was redesigned last year to cut its $1 billion budget; it will still cost more than $700 million in private and public funding to build.

Earlier this month, the Port Authority's executive director said the $2.2 billion transit hub -- a winged dome designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and under construction since fall 2005 -- would have to undergo design changes because it is more than $1 billion over budget.

The latest budget for the station, which replaces a hub that served fewer than 70,000 commuters a day before the attacks, is "unacceptable," said the executive director, Anthony Shorris. He ordered budget cuts that would not change Calatrava's signature wing design at street level.

[NYguy]

Bloomberg news

New York's Spitzer Approves Building of Freedom Tower

By Henry Goldman
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg)

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer said he will support construction of the $2.4 billion Freedom Tower, a 1,776-foot-high skyscraper at the heart of the rebuilt World Trade Center after ordering a review of the project when he took office last month.

Spitzer, who questioned the tower's economic viability and called it a ``white elephant'' while he was running for governor last year, said he set aside his past reservations because of the growing vitality of lower Manhattan's real estate market and need for the city to remain a world finance capital.

"This should not be interpreted to mean this is the project I would have designed at its initiation,'' said Spitzer, referring to decisions made by his predecessor, Governor George Pataki. ``But where we are today, this is clearly the best and the wisest alternative,'' Spitzer said during a lower Manhattan news conference with New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The governor's approval removes the last impediment to the project going forward, Bloomberg said. The announcement was made today because the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site and is responsible for building the tower, had to sign contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with concrete, plumbing and electrical suppliers, Spitzer said.

"This should put to rest any doubts about the future construction of the Freedom Tower,'' Bloomberg said. "We are totally committed, the three of us, to making sure that this remains the financial center of the country and the world.''

Possible Sale

John McCarthy, a port authority spokesman, said the tower is projected to be completed in 2012. Spitzer and Corzine, who share control of the port authority, said they didn't object to the idea of the agency eventually selling or leasing the property to a private developer.

Corzine said a sale would let the agency reduce its role as a real estate owner and focus on its "primary mission:'' operating transportation facilities between the two states, including airports, shipping terminals, bridges, tunnels and a trans-Hudson River rail link.

The governors said the port authority has received inquiries from private investors interested in buying the building and perhaps taking over construction of the project.

That's "one market indicator of the vitality of the building and the marketplace in general,'' Spitzer said.

"We will cross that threshold and make that decision when and if this becomes a possibility in terms of real economics,'' Spitzer said. ``But I would say as a premise, I do not have any opposition at a philosophical level at selling the tower.''

Memorial

Spitzer said public control over a memorial and cultural facilities planned for Ground Zero should continue because they ``reflect our deep commitment to ensuring that history is served by proper reverence for those who lost their lives there.''

The Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center killed 2,752 people, including the crews and passengers of two hijacked jet planes that crashed into the buildings.

Spitzer noted that state government has agreed to lease almost 1 million of the 2.6 million square feet of office space planned for the building. He also praised the port authority for so far proceeding within its budget.

"We have construction costs -- this is important -- that are on target,'' he said. ``This is a testament to the port authority's capacity to build on budget to design on budget and bring home a project that we hope will be iconic at a price that we can afford.''

Architecture Issue

Spitzer said his approval of the project didn't mean he's taken a position on some people's aesthetic criticisms of the tower, which will feature a 187-foot-high bomb-resistant concrete base.

"One area I won't delve into is the area of architecture and aesthetics,'' Spitzer said. He said the entire project, with plans for four other office towers, the memorial and a museum ``will be a remarkable addition to our urban landscape.''

Bloomberg said architect David Childs "did a masterful job'' in changing the building's design to protect it against a terrorist attack.

"I don't think it will look like a fortress,'' the mayor said. ``We just live in a day and age when we want to make sure people that live and work in that building feel protected.''

The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Daniel Libeskind, the Freedom Tower's original architect, hailed the governor's approval of the project as "a great day for really bringing Ground Zero back to life.''

[Daquan13]

Let Freedom ring!!

Glad to hear that! Now we can be certain that there will be no more delays!

[NYguy]

NY Post

GOVS GIVE GRUDGING NOD TO TOWER

By DAVID SEIFMAN
February 21, 2007

The Freedom Tower won reluctant go-aheads yesterday from Gov. Spitzer and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, while a prominent developer is making a last-minute plea for the project to be revamped.

"We looked at all the various alternatives that might have been presented - downsizing, redistributing the square footage, delaying the project in its entirety, waiting for the project to move in a different direction," Spitzer said at a lower Manhattan press conference with Corzine and Mayor Bloomberg.

"None of them made sense, and hence, we move forward."

Spitzer noted that investors have expressed interest in the building, reflecting a strong downtown real-estate market.

Both governors made it clear they would have done things differently had they been in office five years ago.

"This should not be interpreted to mean that this is the project that I would have designed at its initiation, that this is how I would have desired it to be built," Spitzer said. "But where we are today, this is clearly the best and wisest alternative."

Corzine added, "Maybe you would have done it differently if you could roll it all the way back to another day, but we live in the world we live in."

Meanwhile, Douglas Durst, one of the city's top developers, argued that the Freedom Tower should be the last thing built on the World Trade Center site, rather than the first, to help it attract tenants other than government agencies.

In an ad in today's Post, he also suggests a redesign, saying, "The current design submission will be extraordinarily expensive to build and cumbersome to tenants."

[Daquan13]

Why in the Sam Hill won't this guy Durst go find some other unbuilt towers other than those for Ground Zero to poke at and pick on?

It is now etched in stone and he needs to back off and let the officials handle
things for Ground Zero!!

[STERNyc]

Why in the hell won't this guy Durst go find other unbuilt towers other than those for Ground Zero to pick on?

It is now etched in stone and he needs to back off and let the officials handle
things for Ground Zero!!

Its simple he's one of the city's largest landlords and he's afraid of competition.

[antinimby]

But he does make a good point though, you have to admit.

The FT doesn't have to be the first to rise.

[NYguy]

The FT doesn't have to be the first to rise.

It doesn't have to be, but it needs to be. But because of all the delays it's had, the Freedom Tower will rise at the same time as the other towers. They'll all be completed at around the same time.

[NYguy]

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
February 13, 2007

The developer Douglas Durst and the real estate investor Anthony E.
Malkin say the tower is ill conceived, the result of a hasty six-
week “redesign” after the police raised security concerns. Mr. Durst said
that the value of the tower would increase over time, but added that it made
little sense to build everything at once.

Mr. Durst and Mr. Malkin say they are continuing in the footsteps of their
families. Mr. Durst’s father, Seymour, and Mr. Malkin’s grandfather, Lawrence
A. Wein, were ardent opponents of the original plan for the World Trade
Center. In 1964, they formed the Committee for a Reasonable World Trade
Center, which argued that the complex would flood the real estate market
with subsidized space and compete unfairly with private landlords.

The return of, The Committee
(ad in today's NY Post)


http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/74671915/large.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/74671916/large.jpg

[STERNyc]

But he does make a good point though, you have to admit.

The FT doesn't have to be the first to rise.

I don't agree, the Freedom Tower should be the first to rise to symbolically show lower Manhattan is alive and well.

[NYguy]

I don't agree, the Freedom Tower should be the first to rise to symbolically show lower Manhattan is alive and well.

I agree. And as everyone has repeatedly been telling us and Silverstein, it's not ordinary office building, so costs shouldn't be a factor in it's development.

It's more of a symbol of the rebirth, as well as the signature element of the new WTC.

[NYRY85]

Just when it hasnt been delayed enough.

Good work Spitzer, it should be the first to rise.

[Daquan13]

Its simple he's one of the city's largest landlords and he's afraid of competition.



Oh well, Ground Zero needs to be put back together again, so he'll just have to get over it.

Why doesn't this little boy gather up his sand & building blocks and go build a tower of his own if it's competition he's afraid of?

"Mommy, Kyle's building is taller than mine. He's cheating! I won't get as many tenants for my building like he will. Whaaa, whaaa, whaaa!!!" Haha!!

[Thefigman]

Good work Spitzer, it should be the first to rise.

Agreed. Good move on his part to openly endorse the building and keep it moving. The big hole at ground zero needs to be obliterated.

[Daquan13]

I second that emotion!

The Freedom Tower is coming off paper and becoming a shure thing!!

[NYguy]

Observer

The Dursts and The Malkins
Still Don't Like the World Trade Center


"Everybody who called me or responded said they agreed with what we said," Douglas Durst, developer of One Bryant Park, told The Real Estate on Wednesday afternoon.

He was talking about the reaction to the ad that Mr. Durst and fellow real estater Peter Malkin placed that morning in major New York newspapers. The ad objected to moving ahead with the Freedom Tower.

The $2.4 billion tower, the ad said, "is the legacy of poor planning and decision-making by the Pataki administration," and will be "occupied by government agencies at overly expensive rents."

The duo called the 2005 redesign by David Childs "extraordinarily expensive to build and cumbersome for tenants."

Mr. Durst said that the ad, written like an open letter, was planned well before Monday's announcement by Governor Spitzer that he supported building the Freedom Tower after all.

"We had been working on doing an op-ed for a while," Mr. Durst said. "When it became apparent that something was happening this week with the Port Authority, there wasn't time for that. For an op-ed, they do a lot of fact-checking. It would have gone through a procedure."

The Port Authority on Thursday will discuss and likely approve construction contracts for the Freedom Tower. Mr. Durst said that he did not expect the ad buy, in The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News and The New York Observer, would change the commissioners' minds.

"I don't know if we have made any impact except we feel we can sleep at night," he said. "What's being done now is so wrong that we both felt we could not keep silent about such an important project."

Both the Malkin and Durst families own considerable commercial real estate in Midtown. Mr. Durst said they were not worried about competition from Ground Zero because Lower Manhattan rents are much lower.

Rather, he said they were continuing a family tradition: his father, Seymour Durst, and Mr. Malkin's grandfather, Lawrence Wien, had formed the Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center to protest the original twin towers in the 1960s.

The ad this time around was sponsored by something called The Continuing Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center.

- Matthew Schuerman

[Daquan13]

Observer

The Dursts and The Malkins
Still Don't Like the World Trade Center


"Everybody who called me or responded said they agreed with what we said," Douglas Durst, developer of One Bryant Park, told The Real Estate on Wednesday afternoon.

He was talking about the reaction to the ad that Mr. Durst and fellow real estater Peter Malkin placed that morning in major New York newspapers. The ad objected to moving ahead with the Freedom Tower.

The $2.4 billion tower, the ad said, "is the legacy of poor planning and decision-making by the Pataki administration," and will be "occupied by government agencies at overly expensive rents."

The duo called the 2005 redesign by David Childs "extraordinarily expensive to build and cumbersome for tenants."

Mr. Durst said that the ad, written like an open letter, was planned well before Monday's announcement by Governor Spitzer that he supported building the Freedom Tower after all.

"We had been working on doing an op-ed for a while," Mr. Durst said. "When it became apparent that something was happening this week with the Port Authority, there wasn't time for that. For an op-ed, they do a lot of fact-checking. It would have gone through a procedure."

The Port Authority on Thursday will discuss and likely approve construction contracts for the Freedom Tower. Mr. Durst said that he did not expect the ad buy, in The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News and The New York Observer, would change the commissioners' minds.

"I don't know if we have made any impact except we feel we can sleep at night," he said. "What's being done now is so wrong that we both felt we could not keep silent about such an important project."

Both the Malkin and Durst families own considerable commercial real estate in Midtown. Mr. Durst said they were not worried about competition from Ground Zero because Lower Manhattan rents are much lower.

Rather, he said they were continuing a family tradition: his father, Seymour Durst, and Mr. Malkin's grandfather, Lawrence Wien, had formed the Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center to protest the original twin towers in the 1960s.

The ad this time around was sponsored by something called The Continuing Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center.

- Matthew Schuerman



Oh, please.

Why won't these damn dillusional nut jobs grow up and go get a damn life!! Most of us DIDN'T like it at first, but as time went by, it got better and beautiful.

They are acting like spoiled and selfish little children, for God's sakes!! The WTC is what it's going to be and that's that!!

I'm so sick and tired of these individuals who are snobbish, snotty-nosed and spoiled to the point where they think that THEY are the only ones that should matter ultimately when it comes to things for Ground Zero!!!!!

[kznyc2k]

Reeelaaxxxxx, Daqaun. Nothing is being delayed by this ad. And you do know who Durst is, correct? If so you wouldn't be saying he needs to get a life.

The one thing I applaud them for saying is the blurb at the bottom of their ad, talking about naming the FT as being a WTC tower instead, since I hate the current name. Although, if you think about it, their logic is a bit goofy because they say why steal a name in use elsewhere when we already have our own - and yet by now most every city of medium or greater size has some mundane office building/complex named the "World Trade Center," including one here in Boston. Oh well, I guess it is NY's after all.

[Daquan13]

He we go again!!

Why the hell is there always so much damn controversy surrounding this project?

Yeah, I can see it now - them going back to court trying to back out of the deal with Silverstein and him having to sue them for breach of contract!!

[NYguy]

amny

Building contracts approved for Freedom Tower

BY HERBERT LOWE
February 22, 2007

The Port Authority Thursday approved contracts for the building of the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero, the agency announced.

In addition, the authority's Board of Commissioners OK'd spending $2 million toward creating a second vehicle access ramp to the subgrade at the World Trade Center site, the agency said in a news release.

The money will fund planning and preliminary engineering of a vehicle ramp connecting Vesey Street with the Freedom Tower parking level, a truck loading area and related infrastructure, the release said.

The authority, which owned the destroyed Trade Center and is building the Freedom Tower, has been recently solicited by private investors for ownership and development rights to the skyscraper and a second tower under the authority's control, officials said.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer threw his support Tuesday behind existing plans to finance and build the Freedom Tower, a multibillion-dollar effort to build office towers, a Sept. 11 memorial and a huge transit hub at Ground Zero. The 1,776-foot Freedom Tower has been under construction since last April.

______________

Star Ledger

Port Authority OKs $492M for Freedom Tower projects

February 22, 2007

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey today approved more than $492 million worth of early-stage construction projects for the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero, financially advancing a project officially endorsed this week by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

The projects include ventilation, electrical, plumbing, heating, air-conditioning and concrete for the structure's 200-foot-high, security-reinforced base, agency officials said.

The Port Authority pegged the overall cost of the site's 1,776-foot, signature skyscraper at $2.88 billion, with completion anticipated in 2012. The Port Authority took control of the project last year from developer Larry Silverstein, who will now develop three other smaller skyscrapers instead at the former World Trade Center site.

Spitzer, who once called the Freedom Tower a "white elephant," reversed course on Tuesday, saying a review showed "the best and wisest" course now is to proceed with the current design. Improvements in recent months within the city's commercial real-estate market played a large role in the decision, Spitzer said.

Seven columns for the tower's southern facade have been sunk and much of the concrete foundation already has been poured.

Contributed by Ron Marsico

[NYguy]

Bloomberg News

Port Authority Approves Construction of Freedom Tower

By David M. Levitt and Alan Mirabella
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg)

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved the construction of the Freedom Tower, removing the last impediment to redevelopment of the World Trade Center site more than five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The agency, which owns the site, estimated the 1,776-foot tower will cost $2.88 billion to build. The Port Authority authorized $492.3 million in contracts for construction and professional services at a meeting in Manhattan today.

The decisions came two days after New York Governor Eliot Spitzer said he supports construction of the building after earlier questioning its economic viability. Development of the Freedom Tower has been delayed by design and security concerns raised by government officials and families of the victims of the attacks, as well as a dispute with New York developer Larry Silverstein.

"Yes, it's full speed ahead and we are committed to the development plan,'' said Anthony Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority. "There is still a great deal to be done, no question. There will be challenges. But it's our full expectation that we will build out this site.''

The tower is being designed as the tallest building in North America with 2.6 million square feet of space and a 187- foot-high bomb-resistant concrete base.

Critics of the project include developer Douglas Durst who said in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times yesterday that the tower was hastily designed and construction should be delayed.

`We've Made a Decision'

"There are many opinions,'' said Coscia, responding to Durst. "It would be very surprising to me if there were complete consensus on a project as significant as the Freedom Tower. We've made a decision on how to proceed.''

The Port Authority has so far lined up the U.S. Customs unit of the Department of Homeland Security and New York state's Office of General Services as tenants for the building.

The Customs lease, for about 645,000 square feet of space, should be completed within a year. The General Services lease should be completed by the end of the first quarter, Michael Francois, the authority's chief of real estate and regional development, said today.

Those leases, for about 40 percent of the building, will ``help substantiate its financial strength,'' said Port Authority Director Anthony Shorris, who was appointed last month by Spitzer. ``That's a pretty good anchor.''

Tower May Be Sold

The agencies had earlier agreed to pay about $59 a square foot for the space, according to the office of New York's then- governor, George Pataki.

The Port Authority may sell the Freedom Tower, Coscia said.

"There's a lot of interest in a property like the Freedom Tower,'' Coscia said. "There are a lot of investors out there who are looking for at assets that have value and generate stable income, and we believe the Freedom Tower will be such an asset.''

Interest has come from ``a wide variety of private sector actors,'' Shorris said. He declined to disclose names or the number of inquiries the agency has received.

Governor Spitzer's approval came at a Feb. 20 press conference with New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also gave their support for the project.

Spitzer's predecessor, George Pataki, laid a cornerstone for the tower on July 4, 2004. Less than a year later, the tower had to be completely redesigned after New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the glass base was too close to streets, leaving it vulnerable to a truck bomb.

The authority began installing beams for the tower foundation, which will also serve as a passageway for a new train station planned elsewhere on the 16-acre site, late last year.

The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

[NYguy]

NY1

Port Authority OKs $1 Billion For Freedom Tower

February 22, 2007

The Port Authority gave the green light Thursday to fund construction of the Freedom Tower, just days after Governor Eliot Spitzer backed the project despite earlier concerns.

At a meeting to discuss the World Trade Center redevelopment, board members agreed to fork over $1 billion to fund construction at the site.

The agency says they will hand out $500 million in construction contracts now and the rest by mid-year.

"I think what your seeing today is that the time for talk is past; the time for building has begun," said Port Authority executive director Anthony Shorris. "These are $500 million of contracts the board contract authorized today. Between now and what we've already authorized and what we will in the next month or two, half of this project is already bid out and it's moving ahead at as rapidly a pace as we can build it."

Officials also authorized a subsidiary to handle construction and service contracts for the tower.

The project is expected to be completed by 2012.

[STERNyc]

NYGUY does this mean that there are no more potential roadblocks for the Freedom Tower?

[JMGarcia]

I would imagine this is pretty well it.

Ultimately though, the PA (Spitzer) can change their (his) mind.

[DUBAI2015]

Hopefully, this means no more BS in the way of the Freedom Tower

[Daquan13]

Likewise!!

First we hear that things are going well, then we hear that there's a stumbling block, then again, we hear that everything is all peaches and cream.

And BTW, I thought the PA approved this thing last spring around the time Silverstein had initiated construction of the tower. What on earth were they objecting to just now?

[NYguy]

NYGUY does this mean that there are no more potential roadblocks for the Freedom Tower?


No more roadblocks, unless there's a strike or something. It's a done deal. People will continue to write opinions on the matter of whether it should be built or not, at least until the tower is more than half leased. But there's no turning back now.

[theWatusi]

So we should see the erection of a perminant crane today and some major core work going on? :thrasher:

[Daquan13]

Reeelaaxxxxx, Daqaun. Nothing is being delayed by this ad. And you do know who Durst is, correct? If so you wouldn't be saying he needs to get a life.

The one thing I applaud them for saying is the blurb at the bottom of their ad, talking about naming the FT as being a WTC tower instead, since I hate the current name. Although, if you think about it, their logic is a bit goofy because they say why steal a name in use elsewhere when we already have our own - and yet by now most every city of medium or greater size has some mundane office building/complex named the "World Trade Center," including one here in Boston. Oh well, I guess it is NY's after all.



It's just that practically every time when things seem to be going smoothly with getting the tower built, some big real estate tycoon or some other person in politics want to try to put the tower at a standstill.

Kind of makes you wonder if there was this much red tape and BS going on when the Twins were getting started.

[CoolCzech]

Office vacancies down to pre-9/11 levels around WTC site in Lower Manhattan

February 25, 2007 (NEW YORK) - Rents are up and vacancies are down to pre-Sept. 11 levels in lower Manhattan's commercial real estate market.

The World Financial Center, just across the street from the World Trade Center site, is nearly full. And six years before its planned opening, private investors want to buy the Freedom Tower, the replacement skyscraper often derided as a new terrorist target.
"Six months ago, people would say that would be absolutely inconceivable," deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff said of interest in the long-delayed replacement for the destroyed twin towers. "It's not just one, but several parties that are interested in it."

More than five years after the terrorist attacks created a gaping hole in the Manhattan commercial real estate market, doubts are slowly fading about the return of the downtown financial district.

"We're in a very good situation in lower Manhattan. We really didn't expect to be there," said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business leaders' group.

The hijacked airliners that leveled the twin towers destroyed 13 million square feet of office space in the trade center complex alone, most of which hasn't yet been rebuilt. Companies in or near the trade center fled to midtown Manhattan, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The vacancy rate for the best office space in downtown Manhattan -- the nation's third-largest commercial market -- hit 17 percent in 2002, according to the Cushman & Wakefield real estate firm. At the end of last year, it was close to 7 percent, Cushman & Wakefield said. Another firm, Colliers ABR Inc., said its vacancy rate was at 6.8 percent last month, its lowest since August 2001 and down from 12.3 percent a year ago.

Monthly rents, around $35 a square foot two years ago, are at $45 today, the firms say. Some developers, including trade center developer Larry Silverstein, are signing $70-a-square-foot deals for space in 7 World Trade Center, which was rebuilt and is two-thirds leased since opening last May.

"To most observers, these signs were not as readable for them as they were for me and for others like me in the business," said Silverstein, who leased the trade center weeks before the terror attack and is building three new towers on the site. "I said to myself, it's just a question of time."

Silverstein and others have several theories why the market has rebounded -- the creation of thousands of new apartments downtown, giving companies the opportunity to have employees work close to home; billions of dollars to rebuild two major transit hubs, although most work won't be complete for at least two years; and the much more expensive, space-squeezed midtown Manhattan market.

"It's the low-cost alternative to midtown," said Melissa Coley, spokeswoman for Brookfield Properties, which owns most of the World Financial Center and other buildings near the trade center. "Plus, there's no space in midtown."

Still, politicians and prospective tenants have continued to express doubts in the success of new office towers at the trade center site, particularly the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower. Several companies have said in recent months they weren't interested, citing higher-than-average prices for downtown and fears that it would become a magnet for terrorism.

But recently, investment banks, hedge funds and others have expressed interest in buying the tower -- which has a construction budget of $2.9 billion -- from the government agency that owns it.

Said Wylde: "I think it's gone from a situation where while people are still not jumping up and down to be the first to move in, increasingly it's seen as a valuable long-term investment."

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[CoolCzech]

NY Post Editorial

'FREEDOM' FOR SALE - PLEASE


February 21, 2007 -- Gov. Spitzer, overcoming some understandable reservations on the Freedom Tower, has decided to go ahead with construction.
"It is clear that after long delay this project - while it may not have been the one we would have designed - must be built and we must get moving," he said.

Not exactly gung-ho, we'd say.

With good reason: The faulty design, inattention to security, bureaucratic inertia and other missteps by his predecessor have left a void at Ground Zero more than five years after 9/11.

Pataki's Pit, as it were.

Spitzer wasn't left a lot of options.

One of them, happily, could be to take advantage of the hyper-hot commercial real-estate market in lower Manhattan and find a private-sector buyer for the Freedom Tower.

Not so long ago, this would have been a preposterous notion.

No one, it seemed, would voluntarily return to Ground Zero - certainly no private-sector interests.

This no longer is the case.

Developer Larry Silverstein's reconstructed 7 World Trade Center building is filling rapidly, and new construction is sprouting wherever there is sufficient space downtown.

And, just last week, The Post reported that the Blackstone Group, an investment consortium, has an eye on the Freedom Tower - with a possible price tag in excess of $3 billion. Indeed, several real-estate-development firms have also expressed interest in the building. (The more, the merrier!)

The original World Trade Center languished for years under the ownership of the Port Authority; ironically, lease of the property to Silverstein was completed only weeks before 9/11.

True, in the immediate wake of the attacks, it made some sense for the PA and other government agencies to become primary tenants in the Freedom Tower.

But, again, that fear no longer exists.

Now, if anything, the subsidized government office space stands to retard growth rather than being a magnet for it.

As the Post's Steve Cuozzo has reported, the rents government agencies would pay for office space in the Freedom Tower at its estimated completion date in six years - $58.50 per square foot - are well below what comparable space is going for today in nearby buildings.

Just imagine what the divergence will be in six or seven years.

So, governor: What about selling the tower?

"We will make that decision . . . when and if [it] becomes an [economic] possibility," said Spitzer yesterday.

"I do not have any opposition at a philosophical level," he added.

Hold that thought, governor.

[jackie60]

Daquan13
Kind of makes you wonder if there was this much red tape and BS going on when the Twins were getting started.

i got a dvd from the library produced by PBS about the planning of the WTC. the rockerfeller's had a huge battle to get them built and it took somewhere around 20 years to do it.
really an amazing documentary.

[Daquan13]

The original plan to build a giant megaplex center though, goes all the way back to '46 when the state and city officials had first thought of the idea.

To equal or rival the Rockafeller Center. Even though massive twin towers were not part of the plan back then. Not until Minoru Yamasaki was given the job of designing and building the complex.

I'd like to buy that DVD if I can get it somewhere!

[NYguy]

Star Ledger

THE SLOW CLIMB BACK
Signs of progress at Ground Zero

Monday, February 26, 2007
BY RON MARSICO

NEW YORK -- Dirt mounds, deep trenches, sprouting metal rods and columns, concrete foundations and cranes are finally dotting Ground Zero's expansive pit, nearly five years after the last twisted World Trade Center ruins were carted away.

After years of intense controversy, nasty squabbling and frustrating delays, progress is palpable at the devastated site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Seven 60-foot-tall columns for the Freedom Tower's southern facade are in place, as is much of the 1,776-foot skyscraper's foundation. Steel column nubs marking the Twin Towers' one-square-acre perimeters have been protected, and foundation work has begun on the 9/11 Memorial.

Workers are readying another part of the site for Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's Phoenix-like PATH rail hub. Long-buried remnants of the old Hudson and Manhattan Railroad are being demolished for office space. A huge concrete wall -- identical to the one created in the 1960s for the Twin Towers -- is being erected on the site's eastern section to extend a protective "bathtub" to keep the ever-churning Hudson River from infiltrating.

Roughly 300 construction workers clamber over the site on any given day, an advance guard on as much as a $15 billion project that eventually will require upward of 3,000 workers and take at least another half decade to complete.

"You're basically rebuilding a city," said Steven Plate, a director with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who is overseeing work at Ground Zero. "We're building four different Empire State Buildings at one time."

In addition to the massive Freedom Tower, which for now will be owned by the Port Authority, three other skyscrapers are set to rise. Office towers 2, 3 and 4 -- slated for 78, 71 and 61 stories, respectively -- will be built by developer Larry Silverstein, who leased the World Trade Center just six weeks before 9/11.

Before work can begin on Silverstein's towers -- slated for completion in 2012 -- the Port Authority must finish the eastern "bathtub," with a major section due by year's end and the entire wall by mid-2008. Silverstein's World Trade Center 7, located just north of Ground Zero, was rebuilt and opened last year.

Nearly three-quarters of the massive concrete foundation for the Freedom Tower has been poured, with 72 rock anchors set in deep bedrock about 150 feet below street level. About 780 tons of steel -- comprising the south facade columns and foundation support rods known as rebar -- have been erected.

"It's a long time coming," said Carmine Castellano, the Freedom Tower's superintendent for Tishman Construction Co., noting the skyscraper's frame will start poking out of Ground Zero's 70-foot pit sometime next year. "Once we hit street level, then it will fly."

At that point, steel columns and beams should be heading skyward as fast as two floors a week, Castellano added.

Before Silverstein and the Port Authority hammered out a revised lease deal last year, bickering between the two sides contributed to extensive delays at Ground Zero. Then there were redesigns prompted by unpopular early proposals and, later, security concerns over the Freedom Tower.

The 9/11 Memorial brought its own share of controversy, a battleground where designers and victims' families sparred and cost overruns threatened to doom the project. Today, those fights still go on and the price tag has been capped at $500 million. Yellow payloaders have been busy at the 9/11 Memorial site, where work on the foundations and footings are about 30 percent complete.

The gargantuan foundation for the new PATH hub similarly churns forward, designed to replace the temporary station that opened in 2003. It is scheduled for completion in 2009.

Work at Ground Zero is a vastly complex labyrinth of interlocking and intersecting projects. PATH trains continue to enter the temporary station, for example, curtailing blasting and forcing some work to off-peak hours.

"This project is so complex -- it's unprecedented," said Plate, noting the agency's chairman has likened it to solving a Rubik's Cube. "You keep turning until everything falls into place."

The Freedom Tower, which would eclipse the Sears Tower in Chicago as the nation's tallest building, is considered the most symbolic and economically risky of the planned projects. Critics deride the design -- likening its truck bomb-resistant base to a bunker -- and question whether prospective tenants will brave a potential terrorist target.

But last week was a good one for the building's supporters.

On Tuesday, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who once termed the building a "white elephant," threw his support behind the current design. Two days later, the Port Authority approved $492 million for early-stage construction and consulting contracts.

Though much of Ground Zero's rebuilding will be borne by 9/11 insurance proceeds, federal government reimbursements and tax-exempt bonds, potential cost overruns loom.

Scaling back the memorial probably saved hundreds of millions of dollars, and earlier this month the Port Authority was forced to hurriedly promise cost-cutting at the PATH hub after a contractor estimated the cost could balloon to $3.4 billion -- up from the original $2.2 billion estimate. The Freedom Tower, also initially slated to cost $2.2 billion, has seen the figure creep closer to $2.9 billion, though officials point out original estimates didn't include things like brokerage and marketing fees.

"It's going to be a struggle to contain costs right to the bitter end," said Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia, who said it is imperative to protect the agency's financial health even as it takes a greater role at the site.

"We have essentially taken over the lion's share of work at the site, beginning in April 2006," said Coscia, who is hopeful Ground Zero's rebirth will show "we can recreate the Port Authority so it can make a significant difference."

Everyone involved with the project also is haunted by the constant, somber reminder of what happened at Ground Zero.

"It's not just a project for us," said Plate, alluding to the devastation 9/11 wreaked on the Port Authority. "We lost our home. We lost 84 of our own."

Castellano, the Tishman superintendent, said the Freedom Tower is the rare project that allows him to rise at 3:45 a.m. each workday with minimum griping.

"I'm motivated to be working here," said Castellano, "building a piece of American history."

[DUBAI2015]

Quick update:
http://renewnyc.com/WebCamImages/pic07022611595900.jpg

[jackie60]

here is a link to the PBS site to purchase the dvd.

http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1418298&cp&keywords=new+york&y=0&searchId=20579774142&x=0&parentPage=search#Details

[-GR2NY-]

[b]"Plus, there's no space in midtown." (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Preposterous. How about the whole west side, south midtown north of ESB, and east side around trump world tower. Many many lowrises with only shops that would sell out in a millisecond.

[STERNyc]

Preposterous. How about the whole west side, south midtown north of ESB, and east side around trump world tower. Many many lowrises with only shops that would sell out in a millisecond.

Not preposterous at all. The author is not talking about space for a retail branch of chase or duane reade, they are talking about available space for companies looking for space, a company looking for say a hundred thousand square feet of space for say a thousand employees is hard pressed in today’s market.

[Daquan13]

Preposterous. How about the whole west side, south midtown north of ESB, and east side around trump world tower. Many many lowrises with only shops that would sell out in a millisecond.



Oh thanks!

But I just remembered the name of the show and remembered that I already have this program. I recorded it when it came on. It's about three hours long.

But thanks anyway. I still might get it just for the hell of it!

[DUBAI2015]

I heard that the core was supposed to rise by the end of February.
Looks like they missed that expectation.

[Daquan13]

I heard that the core was supposed to rise by the end of February.
Looks like they missed that expectation.



And March 1st is right around the corner. Some things with the tower are still lagging behind a little bit.

Hell, they're just now getting around to awarding out additional contract work for the tower, such as the interior walls, ceilings, floors, HVAC, elevators and escelators, etc...

The person whom to blame for all this has left office.

[NYguy]

NY Post

http://www.nypost.com/img/cols/stevecuozzo.jpg


Now that Gov. Eliot Spitzer has blessed the Freedom Tower and OK'd the Port Authority's plan to bid out $500 million in new contracts, we wondered: will the PA shut the door on prospective tenant Beijing Vantone, which last week reneged on a letter of credit for the second time in 8 months?

No, says PA Executive Director Tony Shorris - but Vantone will have to prove its credit-worthiness before, not after, any talks get to the term-sheet stage, much less to a signed lease.

"We are not going to consummate anybody's lease or term sheet unless we think there's adequate financial security demonstrated," Shorris said.

Did that mean Vantone would have to show a letter of credit first? "Yes," Shorris said.

As The Post first reported last week, Vantone scuttled a signed lease with the owners of 195 Broadway by reneging on a promised letter of credit.

Last year, a deal with Larry Silverstein at 7 WTC fell apart for the exact same reason.

Vantone is believed to be interested in as much as 700,000 feet in the Freedom Tower, compared to 200,000 at the other locations.

Shorris said, "Vantone did approach us. We'll see what they're up to in this case. It's in our interest to pursue everything and I wouldn't rule out or rule in anybody."

Shorris said he hoped a tentative agreement with the state Office of General Services for 415,000 square feet, announced last fall, could be completed within a few months.

A larger possible lease with the Federal General Services Administration might take longer because it requires congressional approval.

[Daquan13]

Yeah, it's too bad that the deal with 7 WTC went sour!!

[Dac150]

I walked by the site over the weekend on my way to lunch, and the site was quite active. When you look down from the West Side Highway overpass (the one near the Barclay-Vest Building) the core is quite distinguishable.

I highly suggest you take the time if your in the area to look directly up at 7 WTC right infront. The sight is amazing!!!!!!

And the DB Building Deconstruction is going smoothly. You can notice all the window panels are out, and the aluminum siding is vanishing rapidly. The top of the building is nearing being done. They should have this thing down by this winter if not sooner.

[CoolCzech]

NY Times

February 28, 2007
Square Feet

Lower Manhattan: A Relative Bargain but Filling Up Fast

By TERRY PRISTIN


It was not long ago that prospects for Lower Manhattan seemed so dire that many people predicted it would not survive as a financial center. Within days — even hours — of the destruction of the World Trade Center, a number of companies with offices in Lower Manhattan were searching for space in Midtown or outside the city.

Today, however, space is so tight in Lower Manhattan that the vacancy rate for prime buildings is only 5.1 percent, lower than in any other market but the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, said Steven E. Coutts, a senior vice president at Studley, a company that specializes in tenant representation.

Of course, the 89.5-million-square-foot office market below Chambers Street is 20.3 million square feet smaller than it was before the terrorist attacks — both because of the destruction of the World Trade Center and the conversion of 59 older office buildings into condominiums since 2002.

But the conversion trend appears to have run its course, one of many signs that the downtown office market has bounced back. A total of 5.6 million square feet were leased last year, a 64 percent increase from 2005, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The decline in the overall vacancy rate — from 10.6 percent to 8.4 percent — was more pronounced than it was in Midtown, where the vacancy rate fell to 6.4 percent from 7.8 percent during the period.

Yesterday, another new lease was signed downtown, as Legg Mason, a financial company, agreed to occupy 97,000 square feet at 55 Water St., according to a spokesman for CB Richard Ellis, which represented the building and the tenant.

In the largest lease signed during the last year, Moody’s Investors Service took 589,000 square feet at 7 World Trade Center, the first new office tower in Lower Manhattan in 20 years. The company is about to take two more floors, said John M. Cefaly, the Cushman vice chairman who represents Moody’s. “Their business has grown,” he said. “They went back and reassessed their head counts.”

JPMorgan Chase is negotiating with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to build a 1.6-million-square-foot tower on the site on Liberty Street where the long-awaited demolition of the heavily damaged Deutsche Bank is finally under way. The site had been intended for a residential building.

Average annual rents in Lower Manhattan have been climbing steadily but are still cheaper than in 2000 — $41.36 a square foot compared with $43.24, Mr. Coutts said. At 7 World Trade Center, Larry A. Silverstein, the developer, is asking $70 a square foot for the top floors.

Mr. Silverstein had leased those floors to Beijing Vantone, a Chinese real estate company, but the agreement collapsed after the tenant could not produce a letter of credit.

Last month, Beijing Vantone agreed to lease the top three floors of 195 Broadway, a 28-story landmark in Lower Manhattan that once served as the headquarters of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. But again, the deal fell apart over a missing letter of credit.

“Although we’re disappointed, we’re not concerned because the market is very robust, as robust as I’ve seen in 25 years,” said David W. Levinson, the chief executive of L&L Holding Company, the owner of 195 Broadway.

Several factors have combined to enhance downtown’s appeal. Office rents are a bargain compared with the red-hot Midtown market, where the average annual rent is about $57 a square foot. The political wrangling over the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site is over, and work on the site is under way. The World Trade Center transit hub and the new Fulton Street Transit Center are closer to completion. The residential population has grown by 16,000 since the terrorist attacks, to 39,000, according to the Downtown Alliance, a business group, making the neighborhood more inviting after dark.

“A lot of critical factors have fallen into place,” said Sheldon L. Cohen, a senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis. “The political will has coalesced.” Though some companies like Lehman Brothers and Bank of America that lost or gave up space downtown because of the attacks have found permanent homes in Midtown, many tenants have returned. Aon, for example, was able to sublease the space it took at 55 East 52nd Street at a profit, and it signed a new lease for more than 221,000 square feet at 199 Water St.

But most of the downtown space is being leased to companies like Moody’s that never left the neighborhood, with only about 15 percent going to tenants that are moving from Midtown, Mr. Coutts said.

Among those is ABN Amro, a Dutch financial services company, which was able to find another tenant for its costly offices at Park Avenue Plaza on East 52nd Street. The company took nearly 139,000 square feet at 7 World Trade Center for about $59 a square foot.

At the World Financial Center, where occupancy fell to 65 percent after the attacks, the four buildings are almost fully leased, said Richard B. Clark, chief executive of Brookfield Properties, which owns the eight-million-square-foot complex.

That could change if Merrill Lynch relocates when its lease expires in 2013. The company has been looking at other sites, including the complex Brookfield is building on Ninth Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets and the buildings being developed by Mr. Silverstein on the World Trade Center site. The company wants to create trading floors and is angling for subsidies. A rival, Goldman Sachs, got $1.65 billion in tax-free bonds and more than $115 million in other incentives for the new tower it is building on West Street.

“Merrill will take into account all economic factors in making a decision,” said the company’s broker, Peter Riguardi, president of the New York region for Jones Lang LaSalle. “If benefits are available, that would be part of their decision-making process.” He said a decision was likely this summer.

Lower Manhattan has a more diverse roster of tenants than it used to, including architects, engineering firms and law firms, said Eric Deutsch, president of the Downtown Alliance. Still, “whatever the city and state can do to keep anchor tenants downtown would be enormously helpful,” he said. “Companies like Merrill Lynch represent a huge part of the fabric of downtown.”

But city and state officials say that the Goldman Sachs deal would not serve as a model for other corporate tenants. “This is not the time to ask for huge subsidies,” said Avi Schick, the president of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state’s development arm.

Then, too, there is the question of what will happen to the market when Mr. Silverstein’s new buildings are completed in 2011 and 2012, adding 6.2 million square feet.

“If we continue at the pace we’re going, the market will absolutely need it,” said Mr. Clark of Brookfield.

At the same time, many real estate specialists say the 2.6-million-square-foot Freedom Tower, also on the World Trade Center site is a mistake, though most are not willing to say so publicly. Among the few willing to speak out are the developers Douglas Durst and Anthony E. Malkin. They recently ran ads in New York newspapers calling the tower “the legacy of poor planning and decision-making by the Pataki administration” with a design that is “too expensive to build and cumbersome for tenants.”

“We respectfully propose rethinking these plans,” they said.