The Freedom Tower

The Daily Intelligencer, edited by Jesse Oxfeld and Michael Idov, reports that something is up with the development of the World Trade Center.
They say the Port Authority is going to put the Freedom Tower up, then do what countless numbers of real estate speculators do – flip it. They quote the Metro as saying By its completion in 2011, the skyscraper may be up for sale, say New York and New Jersey governors Spitzer and Corzine.
There is no doubt there are deals being cut everyday on this property. There is widespread speculation about who will rent the millions of square footage in the upper floors of the Freedom Tower. Claims by the promoters of Lower Manhattan real estate who say vacancies are down. It may be true; it may be hype.
Stay tuned.

The whole question of first responders and residents afflicted by life threatening diseases since the 9/11 World Trade Center attack will be looked at more closely by six philanthropies.
The New York Times reports the six charities have joined the Times’ “Neediest Cases Fund to create a “9/11 Neediest Medical campaign. The fund already has $4 million and will be used to provide treatment for uninsured workers and residents of lower Manhattan who feel they suffer from ailments related to poor air quality in the neighborhood.
Part of the endowment will come from a medical group headed by Mt. Sinai Medical Center to treat uninsured first responders who were on rescue, recovery and clean up duties at the World Trade Center. The New York Community Trust will contribute $1 million for medical screening for uninsured clean up workers. The Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Institute have each contributed $1 million to support the Sept. 11 work at the two hospitals.
“We know that this campaign can meet only a fraction of the need,” said Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundationn told the Times. “Mayor Bloomberg estimates the cost at nearly $400 million a year for years – something that will require concerted city, state and federal action. But in the interim, we hope this campaign can, starting immediately, help save lives and allay suffering. We invite the public and other philanthropies to join with us.”

The news about the growth and vitality of lower Manhattan is good. The news men and woman at 1010WINS say rents downtown in the World Trade Center neighborhood are up, vacancies are down to “pre-Sept. 11 levels in the commercial real estate market.
“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 left a gaping hole in the Manhattan commercial real estate market, doubts are slowly fading about the return of downtown’s financial district.

Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress features the collections that the Library has amassed and is still receiving about the tragic events of one year ago.
It is an exhibition that reveals much about the Library of Congress as an institution, its astounding collections, and its equally remarkable staff. At its core, this exhibition is the story of how the 9/11 materials in this national institution arrived here and today reflect what America has experienced while providing assurance that the record will be here in the future for America’s citizens and others to recall and scholars to study.
Within hours of the attacks in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, offices within the Library mobilized to record and gather for posterity first-hand accounts and images. Other offices of the Library here and abroad collected the written and recorded reports of 9/11, acquiring in the process a wide-range of responses.
Over the past year and in almost every section of the Library of Congress, staff have sought and received an abundance of original material including prints, photographs, drawings, poems, eye-witness accounts and personal reactions, headlines, books, magazines, songs, maps, videotapes, and films.
Go to www.loc.gov and search for 911. It’s worth the trip.

Its no surprise that New York Mayor Bloomberg had some nose to nose talks with newly installed governor Eliot Spitzer about the redevelopment of the World Trace Center. Bloomberg told the Gothamist recently that he did indeed have a long talk with the new governor. The Times weighs in on this summit meeting and says Mayor B provided “greater clarity about the issue” of the WTC Memorial Foundation plans.”
Bloomberg is quoted as saying “this is not a memorial just for the families. This is a memorial for America,’ the good mayor is rumored to have told Spitzer. “We’ve found a way to display the names in a way that I think will show the enormity of the tragedy and at the same time show that everybody was equal.”
As odd as this all may sound, it is not nonsense. The mayor is actually adding some clarity to a rather complicated, intricate battle over how and where the names of 9/11 victims will be displayed at the “WTC” work site when ever all is said and done on this issue. We say “here, here” Mr. Mayor. Thank God you’re talking to the governor because not everybody he talks to is making sense.

It’s official. Funds to finance construction of the Freedom Tower have been authorized by the Port Authority today.
The board of the PA voted today to pay $1 billion to fund construction of the World Trade Center redevelopment.. To move things along, the board will let $500 million in construction contracts and the remainder will be paid out later this 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.”

Talk about selling off development rights to the plots of land at the World Trade Center has touched off a great deal of speculation about who might best do the job.
Today, the New York Sun speculates that filling up the six million square feet of office building space might best be done by JP Morgan Chase.
“That could pit Mr. (Larry) Silverstein, who is developing three of the buildings at ground zero, against the Port Authority, which owns the trade center site, in a race to sign leases for office space with big-ticket firms such as Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and others,” the Sun says.
But Silverstein says he doesn’t see a problem with any such deal … others quoted by the Sun believe there are more than enough anchor deals and Big Dog tenants to make any developer of these properties, including JP Morgan and Silverstein, players in one of the highest stake real estate markets in the world.

“Watching the World Change” is a blog worth reading. It is the work of David Friend and the subhead tells it all: The stories Behind the Images of 9/11.
“There is still time to rethink the design of the Freedom Tower. Or so says yet another expert as he weighs in on the long-delayed construction project that is set to replace the unconscionable, beguiling, perpetual emptiness that inhabits the site where the World Trade Center once stood.”
Go to davidfriend.net/2007/02/memorial_daze.php
Its worth the trip.

Well, Eliot has gone and done it now. What the new governor of New York State Eliot Spitzer has gone and done is speak up, saying he supports construction of the Freedom Tower. What this means, according to the New York Times, is that Spitzer had been the last ray of hope that there could still be some “broad vision” linked to the project and hopefully some level of sanity.
One of the biggest problems with the project is the fact that employees for the government agencies, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who own the building, balked when their bosses said they’d happily move into the building. The Times said the whole project has taken on an “almost perversely Strangelove-ian” feel.
“the problem is not simply whether enough bureaucrats can be coerced into working there one day,” the Times said. “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.”

This isn’t exactly a new idea but turning the Freedom Tower over to private enterprise might solve some problems bureaucracies like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will certainly fumble. This notion has been put forth before and its being offered again, this time by Joe Mysak, a columnist for the Bloomberg News Service.
“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,” Mysak says.
“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.”