The Battle For Ground Zero, Part XXII

The New York Sun comes out against the tax breaks being offered 7WTC tenants who sign up in the early going as American Express Financial Advisors has done. There is some merit to the argument that these tax breaks are not warranted - that the market should decide and set the price. However, the salient issue isn't the tax breaks, but the appropriateness of the tax in the first place.

Businesses already face a crushing tax burden to do business in New York City. The CRT is one more tax that these businesses face, and eliminating the tax would actually spur additional development, and hence additional revenues for the state through the sales and use tax, personal income tax, and franchise tax. If anything, the CRT should be eliminated to improve the business climate in all of NYC, not just for certain businesses operating out of preferred locales.

However, failing the elimination of the CRT, providing incentives for Silverstein's 7WTC is a good way to bring business back to Lower Manhattan. If it takes incentives to restore Lower Manhattan, the New York Post argues it should be done, despite their reservations about these kinds of tax breaks.

UPDATE:
New York Metro has an update on The Drawing Center:

The Drawing Center, under fire from Governor Pataki and others for displaying what the Daily News called “kooky and anti-American art,” threatened to abandon its Lower Manhattan Development Corporation– approved perch at ground zero last week in protest. Meanwhile, it’s forging ahead at its Soho location with programming that may stoke the flames. Its big fall exhibition is “Persistent Vestiges: Drawing From the American-Vietnam War,” marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The show will include Martha Rosler’s photo-collage series “Bringing the War Home,” which drops wounded Vietnamese into scenes from interior-design magazines. (A similar series was exhibited at the Gorney Bravin + Lee gallery last year with an Iraq-war update.) Collages by veteran antiwar activist Nancy Spero and embroidered drawings by the Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê will also be featured. The curator, Drawing Center director Catherine de Zegher—who recently declared, “The LMDC knows that we would never be able to accept censorship”—was traveling in Asia and could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE II:
The New York Times is reporting that Chicago may be on the verge of getting a new superscraper, which would be the tallest in the US - surpassing even the proposed Freedom Tower.

Mr. Calatrava, a Spaniard who lives in Zurich, has designed what would be the country's tallest building for Chicago. The developer, Christopher T. Carley, plans to announce the $500 million project on Tuesday.

The structure would be called the Fordham Spire and is proposed to be built at North Water Street and Lake Shore Drive, near where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan. It would be 115 stories, topping out at 1,458 feet to its roof. A spire on top would reach about 2,000 feet, making the building the country's tallest.

The Sears Tower, at 1,729 feet, is now the tallest when antennas are included. The Burj Tower in Dubai, under construction, is said to be planned at 2,300 feet, which would make it the world's tallest.

Calatrava is the designer behind the heralded transportation center at Ground Zero and a residential tower to be built on the East side of lower Manhattan.

Then there's this exchange:

Mr. Carley said he was preparing for a tough fight in Chicago to get his tower approved but did not expect its height to be a chief concern - even though he currently has approval only to build two structures of 300 feet and 500 feet. Donald J. Trump had plans for a 150-story building in Chicago but cut it back to 90 stories shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Carley dismissed Mr. Trump's decision as a reaction to the soft commercial market, but Mr. Trump said the reason was security. "Nobody in his right mind would build a building of that height in today's horrible world," he said in a telephone interview on Monday.

"I don't think this is a real project," Mr. Trump said of the Fordham Spire. "It's a total charade."

Trump recently got behind a plan to rebuild the Twin Towers that was put forth by Kenneth Gardner and Herbert Belton. Something doesn't quite add up here. I know that Trump is a glory-whore, but his statements would appear to undercut his stance on rebuilding the Twin Towers at Ground Zero. I think this needs further investigation.

UPDATE III:
A 2003 story in the Chicago Tribune has more on Trump's Chicago Tower project:

Trump said that construction on the 2.4 million-square-foot Trump International Hotel & Tower would begin next summer with the demolition of the Sun-Times building and that the tower would be ready for occupancy in 2007.

The 90-story structure will include condominiums, office space, a "condominium hotel," retail stores and restaurants. At 1,125 feet, it would be the city's fourth-tallest skyscraper, two feet shorter than the John Hancock Center.

The plan has been scaled back since 2001, when Trump announced he would build a 150-story building. That plan was loudly criticized for overwhelming the space along the Chicago River at 401 N. Wabash Ave.

Acknowledging the criticism, Trump said Tuesday that the design changed because the original size became less desirable after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"Prior to Sept. 11, we had plans for 150 stories, the tallest building in the world," he said. "What we end up with is a better building, a more practical building."

He also ends up in a questionable real estate climate in Chicago, where both the office and condo markets have entered a slump.

So Trump has downsized from his original plan, but there are more than enough reasons to go around - market conditions, security concerns, and economies of scale.

UPDATE IV - UPDATE'S REVENGE:
Some 9/11 Families Boycotting Memorial Fund, although a letter drafted by Take Back The Memorial has not been signed off by all the groups listed, causing a kerfuffle between some of the groups. Monica Iken's group was among those listed, but she said her group did not sign off on the letter calling for people to withhold contributions to the memorial.