The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 69

Work continues around Ground Zero, and here's a video showing a major concrete pour of the plaza adjacent to 1WTC (aka Freedom Tower). To orient yourself with what you're seeing. Vesey Street is to the top (north), West Street is to the left, and the Freedom Tower is adjacent to the right. The circular area is going to be a fountain, and the rectangular areas in the middle of the concrete area are set to become planters containing trees. This is how the area should look when it's completed.

Construction has been delayed because of bad weather in the NY metro area, and the North Core of 1WTC appears to have finally made some headway. I figure that the tower crane on that section will be jumped in the next few weeks and then construction can finally pick up the pace above street level.

Much of the construction is still below ground level, which makes tangible evidence of progress much harder to spot.

Meanwhile, mega-mall operator Westfield Properties is looking to break the impasse on its portion of the Ground Zero rebuilding, by offering to foot the bill itself. That would give Westfield a bigger say in the development, but it would run into opposition from Silverstein Properties, which wants to get the office towers built.

Australian shopping-mall company Westfield Group is offering to foot the $1.3 billion bill to build a retail complex at the World Trade Center site in a bid to break an impasse and seize a bigger role in the site's redevelopment.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the World Trade Center site, warmly greeted the proposal, which closely resembles the plan the agency has been advocating. The Port Authority is at loggerheads with private developer Larry Silverstein, who has rights to develop three office towers on the site. Their long-running dispute, coupled with the recession, is threatening to further delay efforts to rebuild the complex, which was destroyed close to eight years ago in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Silverstein declined to comment. But he is expected to oppose Westfield's proposal, which would shift the focus of the site's commercial development away from offices and toward retail. It also would require him to delay building two of his three office towers until the market recovers.

It's curious that Westfield thinks that the retail market will improve sooner than the office real estate market will when both are suffering as a result of the recession. At least Westfield is optimistic about the future; the Port Authority and opponents to Silverstein are not as they're trying to force Silverstein to abandon construction of two of the office towers planned for Greenwich St. Silverstein has been battling with the Port Authority and politicians over obtaining additional financing to make that happen.

UPDATE:
While BMI is moving most of its music rights business out of New York, it's moving nearly all who remain in New York to 7WTC.

The organization, Broadcast Music Inc., which collects license fees on behalf of songwriters, composers and music publishers, including Mr. Jackson, who died last Thursday at age 50, has gradually shifted the bulk of its jobs to Music Row in Nashville from West 57th Street in Manhattan, said Robbin Ahrold, a spokesman for B.M.I. It now has about 140 jobs in the city, down from a peak of about 500, and plans to move about 110 of them into two floors of 7 World Trade Center in the spring.

Most of the remaining jobs in New York will be executive positions and those of employees who deal with the TV and radio broadcasters based in the city or overseas, Mr. Ahrold said. Most of the employees who are busy these days tracking all of the performances of Mr. Jackson’s music and collecting royalties on them are in Nashville.

While that's good for Silverstein Properties and 7WTC continues to add tenants, it's bad news for the state of NY, which will continue to lose revenues as businesses seek more favorable business climates elsewhere.