http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/2010/april/576_planned-wtc-tower-is-still-up-in-the-air.html
Planned World Trade Center Tower Is Still Up In the Air
Larry Silverstein's planned Tower 2, at the corner at Church and Vesey Streets, may not be build for several years,
and there are significant questions about what to do with the site in the meantime.
Janno Lieber, Silverstein Properties' President of World Trade Center Construction (left),
and Port Authority Executive Director Christopher Ward both appeared before Community Board 1 on April 12.
By Matt Dunning
UPDATED Apr. 14
Quote:
The recent announcement of a new construction agreement between the Port Authority and developer Larry Silverstein brings new hope for construction progress at the World Trade Center site. But one key project in the redevelopment of the site—Silverstein’s shimmering, diamond-crowned Tower 2—remains in construction purgatory.
The 78-story tower has been put off indefinitely, the victim of a lending market slow to recover from its collapse in 2008. And both the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties say it could be months before a decision is made on what to do with the site, now a barren dirt lot at Church and Vesey Streets.
“There have been discussions on what that site might become if there’s a longer-term [wait] for that tower, but it would be premature at this point to say what that would be,” the Port Authority’s executive director, Christopher Ward told a Community Board 1 committee on Monday. Ward appeared together with Janno Lieber, Silverstein’s top executive for World Trade Center projects, for the first time since announcing their long-awaited agreement last month.
During the committee meeting, Ward said the Port Authority would move forward with construction of the tower’s foundation up to street level, largely to facilitate construction and, eventually, access to the underground transportation center and retail complex. Above ground, Ward said the structure would support whatever building goes on top, whether it is British architect Lord Norman Foster’s Tower 2, or a more modest project, depending on the demands of the market.
“We’re working through the complexities of that,” Ward said. “It’s fairly complicated engineering when you want to maximize construction, while maintaining flexibility for the site going forward.”
Lieber said Silverstein Properties has not wavered from its intent to some day build the 1,254-foot tower as it was originally designed. However, he acknowledged that financing for it will not be available any time soon.
But, he added, “We’re not starting from scratch.”
”The site’s primary purpose will be to accommodate access to the transit hub,” Lieber said. “We all want to make sure that the entrance there is adequately designed for the circulation that it’s got to serve. How we finish it above [street level] is a topic that we’re still exploring together.”
Since the Port Authority and Silverstein announced the framework of their new agreement on March 25, members of Community Board 1 have been advocating for the Tower 2 site to be outfitted with some form of public use, such as a park, amphitheater or green market.
“At a bare minimum, we need to get our street grid back, and that corner’s really important to that sense of continuity,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, chairs CB1’s World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee. “None of us want to see an empty hole, or more painted blue plywood. It’s really critical that [the site] is returned to the people that live and work down here.”
Along Church Street, two of Silverstein’s three planned office towers will rise on the strength of publicly-backed loans under the terms of the agreement with the Port Authority, provided the developer can meet certain leasing and financing benchmarks. At the very least, one tower will be finished and the other will get a head start on construction as demand for office space in Lower Manhattan continues to recover.
Either way, the work will allow for the Port Authority, which owns the 16-acre site, to continue unabated in building its sprawling transportation center, underground retail corridors and restored city streets in the eastern half of the site.
As part of the deal between the Port Authority and Silverstein, both groups agreed to finalize their new construction plans within 120 days, giving them roughly until July 25 to come to a conclusion on the near-term fate of the Tower 2 site.
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no seriously, i think there will be a lot of office demand in the next years (based on financial newspaper etc.). so i'm pretty sure that many projects which are currently on hold will resume. about the proposed towers (or even the approved ones like tower verre) i'm not so sure. their destiny depends on mostly (of course there are other factors which have to be considered) how the city's economy will develop.
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