The Battle for Ground Zero, Part 215

Jammie Wearing Fool pointed out this article in the NY Post that I missed over the weekend.

THE Glover Park Group, the consulting firm run by longtime Clinton campaign gurus Howard Wolfson and Gigi Georges, has been hired by Allianz, the German insurance giant that owes more than $500 million to the World Trade Center rebuilding effort. Allianz is among the last holdouts to pay up 9/11 claims. "Their endless delays are causing developer Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority much consternation," said a source. "Glover Park is trying to use its Clinton connections to smooth the way for the much-maligned Allianz, but downtown real estate insiders say the arrangement could cut off a vital stream of fund-raising for Hillary's '08 presidential bid." Wolfson told Page Six, "Allianz has only one goal - ending all the arguments and completing the rebuilding as soon as possible. New Yorkers know that it's been Mr. Silverstein's endless delays and demands that have prevented this progress."

Wolfson doesn't know the first thing about what has been causing delays at Ground Zero if he thinks that Larry Silverstein has been the one holding up construction at Ground Zero - especially considering that the only building to go up since 9/11 is Silverstein's own 7WTC, which was paid for out of his own money plus insurance proceeds. Silverstein built 7WTC when he had no tenants for the building, yet knew that the market would be there when completed. It's now the crown jewel of Lower Manhattan and is quickly filling up space.

The major impediments to building at Ground Zero has been the politicization of the site by former NYS Governor George Pataki, who pushed an inferior master plan, oversaw delays and foot dragging on the part of the Port Authority to prepare the site for construction, and then once it was decided to get the Freedom Tower underway, was informed by the NYPD that the Freedom Tower needed to be relocated for security purposes. None of this had anything to do with Silverstein, and everything to do with the Port Authority and Pataki.

If there's one person responsible for the mess, it must fall on Pataki.

And then there's news that the Port Authority is trying to sell all or part of the Freedom Tower to private equity firms.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is in talks to sell part or all of the Freedom Tower, the $3 billion central building in the new complex on the World Trade Center site, to private-equity and hedge funds, The Wall Street Journal Online reported, citing people familiar with the situation. The project has so far relied for development on government funding and insurance proceeds. Investors and analysts told the paper that a number of investment firms would want equity in the Freedom Tower, which is to rise a symbolic 1,776 feet and is set for completion in 2012. Separately, the people familar with the situation told the WSJ that the Port Authority is in talks to sell development rights to one of the five towers planned for the WTC site to J.P. Morgan.

So, after spending months trying to wrest control of the Freedom Tower building rights from Silverstein, the Port Authority now wants to turn around and sell rights to private equity firms. More here. Curious. Very curious.

Meanwhile, Gov. Spitzer is looking into whether the sacred staircase may be salvageable. It is current scheduled to be removed from the site and portions put into the lobby of Tower Two where it overlaps with the existing structure where possible.

Until last week, it appeared that the badly battered staircase to the plaza around the twin towers — still rising 21 feet over Vesey Street as it did on Sept. 11, 2001, when survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center stumbled down its granite steps to safety — would almost certainly be dismantled, with only its treads and landings saved as commemorative artifacts.

On Friday, however, the Spitzer administration said its days were not necessarily numbered.

“We certainly recognize the emotional significance of the staircase to so many New Yorkers,” said Avi Schick, the downstate chief operating officer and president of the Empire State Development Corporation, a state agency.

The developer Larry A. Silverstein has said the staircase cannot stay in its current location, where he is planning a 78-story office building known as Tower 2.

And the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has said that moving the entire 64-foot-long, 175-ton staircase to the memorial plaza or the underground memorial museum would confuse visitors and compromise the design.

Human remains continue to be discovered in the vicinity of Ground Zero. As areas begin to be cleared in preparation for new construction, the excavations reveal more debris from the collapsed towers, along with the possibility of remains.