The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 207

What is going to happen to the WTC staircase. One of the last remnants of the original WTC, the staircase provided an escape for many leaving the complex before it collapsed.

The stairway, which led many down to safety on Vesey St., would be dismantled under a proposal being considered by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

The plan would incorporate some of the steps in the exterior stairs of the 78-story office tower that developer Larry Silverstein will build by 2012.

Alice Greenwald, director of the WTC Memorial Museum, also suggested that some of the original stairs could be incorporated into the design of the museum, due to open in 2010.

But neither suggestion was welcomed by preservationists who want to keep the staircase intact.

The Daily News also has a touching story about a police officer in need of a lung transplant after coming down with pulmonary fibrosis that may be related to his service at Ground Zero for weeks on end.

Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase is looking to use the Deutshce Bank building site for an office tower of its own. That's not going to make Mayor Bloomberg happy since he was hoping to get the site (Tower 5) developed as a mixed use (residential/commercial) tower.

Tower 5 - a block south of Ground Zero at 130 Liberty St. and on the site of the heavily damaged and contaminated Deutsche Bank building - had been designated in April as a residential high-rise under a renegotiated plan for developing the World Trade Center's towers.

But several sources familiar with JPMorgan's talks with state and Port Authority officials said the firm's bid to develop the proposed 57-story tower for major corporate tenants is being taken seriously by the bistate agency.

In fact, sources said, JPMorgan is not the only corporate bidder for the site.

To make the commercial deal work, a source said, the Port Authority would have to agree to expand the size of Tower 5's base in order to accommodate the large, lower-level floors needed for trading rooms - a requirement for most financial-services firms.

Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, declined to comment on any talks with the Port Authority.

The financial-services firm's current headquarters are at 270 Park Ave. in the former Union Carbide Building. While the firm has no plans to relocate its headquarters, a series of acquisitions and a city work force of over 35,000 employees create a constant need for office space.

Last year, Bloomberg claimed there wasn't enough demand for office space to fill the five towers included in the World Trade Center's master plan and called for a major revision of the plan to include housing and hotels.

But the demand for Manhattan office space, including downtown, has boomed in the past year.

This development continues to show that Bloomberg and other naysayers were wrong about the strength of the real estate market and commercial real estate interest in Lower Manhattan. The strength is definitely there, and businesses are looking to downtown for modern amenities.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein, mount sinai, respiratory ailment, wtc cough, bloomberg.