Word: silverstein
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Last week Silverstein added Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki to the roster of architects designing the office towers. "Enough words. Enough talk," Silverstein said after coming to terms with the Port Authority by giving up some control of the site. "Rebuild." The results of that rebuilding could determine whether the downtown core will ever regain importance as a business center...
...with one essential issue: Who will be in control? As the agency that helped create the World Trade Center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bistate-funded agency, owns the land on the WTC site, but it sold the "leaseholder" rights to the towers to Silverstein in 2001--six weeks before Sept. 11--for $3.2 billion...
That made Silverstein the landlord for the buildings (he would profit if he could increase the buildings' income). After 9/11 he became the custodian for a site of national mourning, a role that New York's politicians felt deeply uncomfortable with. "At the outset, the problem was the absence of a real leader," says Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner...
Complicating matters, both New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had staked political capital on carrying out their visions of ground zero. Pataki muscled Silverstein out of the initial planning, organizing a worldwide architecture competition, eventually won by Daniel Libeskind, who designed a complex, including a museum, a memorial, a performing-arts center, a transportation hub and five office towers, with what is now known as the Freedom Tower as the tallest. Bloomberg tried a bureaucratic end run, offering to swap with the Port Authority control of the city's airports for ground zero...
...April truce between Silverstein and the Port Authority resolves most of those turf issues. Silverstein gets to unload the Freedom Tower, widely seen as a white elephant and a money loser. Pataki can claim that construction is moving forward, in time for his expected presidential bid. Bloomberg, who has long pushed for adding residential space, will probably get that with Tower 5. There are yet some issues on the table, but the agreement was enough to clear the way for construction on the Freedom Tower to begin April...