The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 57

Mayor Blooomberg is ratcheting up the pressure to wrestle control of Ground Zero away from Larry Silverstein. He wants to swap the land under the NYC airports for Ground Zero's 16 acres.

Can anyone answer why, when Silverstein is the only person so far to actually build anything permanent on sites whose buildings were destroyed on 9/11? He's gotten 7WTC rebuilt within the time he said that he would, and it should be open to tenants within weeks. That's more than can be said of anything else at the site. Only a temporary PATH station has been built on the site.

Yet, Bloomberg thinks that Silverstein is the problem, not Gov. Pataki, the Port Authority, the LMDC, or the state legislature. And, he's late to this particular pissing contest because the decisions on where and how to rebuild were made long ago. Back when he was busy with trying to get the West Side Stadium built, bring the Olympics to New York City, and manage a host of other projects and initiatives around the city.

That's not actually meant as a slam to the Mayor. Those other projects and initiatives were laudable and have altered the way we look at air rights and how best to rejuvenate areas that should be developed. However, for the mayor to want to take charge at this time seems ill-conceived because the plans to build the office buildings took months, if not years of negotiation and revisions to the master plan. Gumming up the works is all that Bloomberg hopes to accomplish at this point.

And a new office building at 7 WTC, set to open in March, has only a handful of tenants. Bloomberg said changes at the World Trade Center site should reflect the city's hot residential real-estate marketplace, including lower Manhattan.

"I think the marketplace clearly shows this is one of the hottest real-estate markets in the city," Bloomberg said. "People love the views, they love the excitement."

Asked what he could do to push Silverstein out, Bloomberg reminded reporters that he appoints members of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., and he said he would work with the Port Authority.

When the WTC originally opened, it wasn't met with 100% occupancy right away. In fact, it only reached total occupancy in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. You don't build a building with the current market in mind, but with the future market in mind.

Building residential space on the WTC site would essentially force a total rewrite of the master plan, such as it currently stand. In fact, Silverstein wouldn't necessarily be opposed to residential real estate since he'd likely be able to lease the properties far more quickly than office space. So, it's not a question of economics.

It's a question of power and control. And, since this is an election year for the mayor, this move just weeks before the election means that this sudden interest is politically motivated, and isn't necessarily on the merits.

NY Newsday and the NY Daily News is also covering the story.

Silverstein said through a spokesman yesterday that Bloomberg's comments were "perplexing," and that another round of redrawing plans would only stall redevelopment even more.

PA spokesman Steve Coleman questioned whether apartments would work at Ground Zero.

"Larry's never asked about building residential," he said. "To my knowledge, we have not heard from the business community or from people down there about a need for residential there."

Democratic mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer said the mayor should share blame for the lack of progress.

"Perhaps he should have made himself heard when those proposals were being made four years ago," Ferrer said. "The mayor owns this problem, so the mayor just can't say, 'Well, let's fire the developer.' I'm saying let's fire the mayor."

As I said, it's all about politics and scoring some cheap points in a blowout election. Ferrer, for a change, is right. He's right to complain that the mayor should have been more involved from the outset to see his ideas incorporated, not wait until construction is supposed to start on major components of the site - the transit hub and the Freedom Tower.

Oh, and there's the tiny little problem that the Port Authority is prohibited by law from building residential space. The Mayor should know better. Heck, even CNN has picked up on this story.

Meanwhile, the WTC Memorial Fund will begin direct mailings to raise funds for the $500 million project.

Elsewhere, the WTC Memorial in Shanksville, PA seems to continue on the same path as before. They're still going with the Crescent of Embrace, even though it is clearly designed to mimic the Islamic crescent. The designers and planners there haven't changed the plan one bit. Zombie was one of the first to break the original story, and has updates.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center.