The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 213

A special viewing space for relatives of those who were murdered on 9/11 is being moved to a different portion of the Ground Zero site. It's being moved because of construction in the area.

Meanwhile, one of Pataki's biggest critics for the slow pace of reconstruction, Steve Cuozzo is now thinking that Gov. Spitzer should get construction moving on the other towers at Ground Zero and hold back on the building of the Freedom Tower. I don't agree with his argument, though the idea that government agencies will pay below market rents and adversely affect the rental of the remaining space in the tower makes sense.

THE starting rent for GSA and OGS, which wouldn't take effect until the tower opens at least five years out, is $58.50 per square foot - more than government should pay, but ridiculously low compared with what new, first-class Downtown office space is certain to command by 2012. (Many real-estate insiders believe the rent is really $50 a foot because, they say, the PA undercounted the floor space.) By comparison, Silverstein is asking more than $60 a foot today for the remaining floors at his new 7 WTC.

Why should the most important new building ever to rise in New York be peddled as if it's damaged goods?

Well, because the Freedom Tower now on the table is damaged goods to the corporate world and the real-estate community. Its tortured history enables the negativism of brokers and prospective tenants who claim, without any rational basis, that the tower's great height - maybe even its Orwellian name - will encourage terrorists to strike again.

But naysayers just a few years back told us all that no one would want to live anywhere Downtown, and that the new 7 WTC would never draw tenants. All it took to refute the cynics was for the first new residents and office tenants to break the ice. Today, every apartment nearby is taken, and 7 WTC is more than 60 percent leased.

So it will be with the Freedom Tower, once the first companies sign leases for towers 3 and 4 - projects with giant floor plates specifically tailored to Wall Street firms.

PAUSING the Freedom Tower entails risk: If any thing goes wrong with the other office buildings, we could be left right where we were before. But in a booming market, and with dire financial penalties if he stalls, Silverstein has every reason to build in a timely fashion.

With a little good will all around and some luck, the PA ought to be able to name its price for the Freedom Tower by 2010. It will find corporate tenants who can pay what an iconic location is worth. It's not too devilish to suggest that the PA might even want to put it up for bid to private developers - who, if recent history tells us anything, would go to war over the rights.

Who knows? A pause might even prompt Spitzer to finally drop "Freedom Tower" and call the project by its rightful name: 1 World Trade Center.

We've been 'treated' to delays and repeated failures to get shovels in the ground, but we've now got steel going into the site for the Tower. Further delays will only result in even higher construction costs than are now anticipated.