The Freedom Tower

The mounting anxiety over who will rent office space once the Freedom Tower is completed was relieved today when federal government tenant signed up to occupy almost 25 percent of the office space in the downtown building.

The first tenant to sign a letter of intent to move into the 1,776 foot Freedom Tower was the U.S. General Services Administration. The GSA manages government office space. The giant agency signed a letter of intent with the owners to occupy nearly 600,000 square feet of office space in the building. The agency that will move in will be the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a former tenant of the World Trade Center before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Tower will be owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and that agency has said it will occupy up to one million square feet of space in the 2.1 million square foot building. Four other towers are slated to go up on the site that will be jointly managed by the PA and developer Larry Silverstein.

In an unrelated development, a court order was sought and granted to halt the sale of commemorative Sept. 11 coins. New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer says the coins printed with the World Trade Center towers on one side and the Freedom Tower on the other may be bogus coins. The coins are being touted as minted from silver recovered at ground zero. Spitzer won a court order to halt sales because he says the coins may be a “a shameless attempt to profit from a national tragedy. This product has been promoted with claims that are false, misleading or unsubstantiated.” The one dollar coins are valued at $39 each but are being sold for $19.95