One year after the September 11 attacks, the effort to rebuild lower Manhattan has been hobbled by behind-the-scenes political infighting.
By Justin Dini
September 2002
Institutional Investor Magazine
In the days after terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center, killing thousands and destroying an icon of New York City and America, the uniform refrain among New Yorkers was single-minded and defiant: We shall rebuild.
“We are united in our commitment to rebuild our great city and to rekindle the spirit of our people,” New York Governor George Pataki declared in a somber but hopeful speech to the state legislature two days after the attacks.
One year later New Yorkers are no less determined or committed. But the nagging questions remain: Exactly what should be built, and who should make that decision? Indeed, say some observers, the redevelopment of lower Manhattan is in danger of deteriorating from a high-minded civic enterprise into a sharp-elbowed political squabble, one freighted with emotions the likes of which the city has never before experienced. The debate pits urban planners, neighborhood groups and the distraught families of victims against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the site’s owner, and real estate magnate Larry Silverstein, who had leased the Twin Towers shortly before the attack and wants to recover 11 million square feet of lost office space. Caught in the middle are New York’s leading political figures, foremost among them Pataki, who (along with the governor of New Jersey) controls the Port Authority: Up for reelection in November, he is eager to avoid controversy.
In July the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a quasipublic agency created by Pataki last fall to oversee the redevelopment of not just the World Trade Center site but all of lower Manhattan as well, unveiled six different visions for the area. Although some elements of all six plans were applauded, the general response was blistering. Critics blasted the plans as unimaginative, boring and conventional and directed particular venom at the emphasis in all six on building millions of square feet of office space. “Essentially, they were all driven by the same economic program, and that resulted in a very bland design,” says Beverly Willis, director of the Architecture Research Institute and a co-founder of Rebuild Downtown Our Town, a group of lower Manhattan residents. “They were all very competent, but this is not the time for mere competence.”
Families of the victims were quick to condemn the plans as poorly designed, with inadequate memorials. “The consensus was that we should go back to the drawing board,” says Monica Iken, who lost her husband, Michael, a Euro Brokers bond broker, on September 11 and founded the September’s Mission foundation to represent victims’ families.
That’s just what happened. When the LMDC asked designers to submit their ideas earlier this year, it required that their plans include 11 million square feet of office space, 600,000 square feet of retail space and a 600,000-square-foot hotel. That’s because Silverstein, who signed a 99-year, $3.2 billion lease for the World Trade Center, has, along with retail developer Westfield America Trust, legal say on what gets built on the site. As LMDC chairman John Whitehead, a former Goldman, Sachs & Co. co-chairman, explained in late July, “The Port Authority has every right to count on $120 million of rent, and they only get that if Larry can build the buildings and rent them and raise $120 million from the tenants.”
But the LMDC last month completely scrapped that plan, announcing that it would invite architects and urban planners from around the world to offer their suggestions for a redesigned lower Manhattan. The LMDC and the Port Authority are now encouraging planners to deemphasize office space in favor of more residential and cultural development; the initial requirement of 11 million square feet of office space is no longer a given in the planning process. Originally, the LMDC had planned to winnow the six plans to three by the end of this month and to select a finalist by year-end. The LMDC will now hire as many as five design firms to submit new ideas for redeveloping the site; elements of those designs -- and of the original six plans -- will be used to create three new proposals by the end of the year. The LMDC plans to pick a final design sometime in the first half of next year.
“We are looking for excitement and creativity. A lot of the work looked mundane, boring and pedestrian and lacked spunk,” says LMDC board member Roland Betts, who is the lead owner of Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers entertainment complex.
Another reason not to rebuild all of the original office space, says John Zuccotti, co-chairman of Brookfield Properties Corp., is a lack of demand. Brookfield, a Toronto-based real estate giant that owns One Liberty Plaza and the World Financial Center -- both of which abut Ground Zero -- submitted one of the six initial design proposals to the LMDC. “Is there a demand for that much space over the next 20 years?” Zuccotti asks. “Maybe. There certainly isn’t a demand for that much space in the next ten years.”
Brookfield, of course, has an incentive to limit the amount of office space built in lower Manhattan -- it leases millions of square feet to corporations in the area -- but Zuccotti’s point is valid. The World Trade Center became a success only in recent years. But Silverstein won’t begin constructing buildings on the site until he lands anchor tenants for them. “The first building wouldn’t come onstream and be available for occupancy until 2007,” Whitehead says. “And they wouldn’t all come on at the same time; they’ll come on as demand exists. They don’t have to be built right away.”
Today the push from most quarters, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, is for redevelopment that balances the needs for commercial space, apartment buildings and civic institutions in and around Ground Zero. Such an approach, supporters assert, would transform lower Manhattan from a neighborhood that goes quiet after the stock market closes to one that is abuzz with activity day and night.
“A mixed-use neighborhood with a lively streetscape lined with restaurants and cafés is essential to developing the community,” says Rebuild Downtown’s Willis. Whitehead strongly believes that redevelopment on the site should include museums and permanent homes for cultural groups.
The Port Authority, stung by all the criticism, says it will consider renegotiating its lease with Silverstein and Westfield. Silverstein, who is embroiled in a legal battle with his insurers over how much he is owed for the destruction of the towers, says through a spokesman that he is committed to cooperating with the governor, the mayor, the Port Authority and the LMDC to “help create a consensus in rebuilding what is best for New York City in the short term and the long term,” but he doesn’t offer anything more specific.
Pataki, given his influence over both the Port Authority and the LMDC (he appointed the Port Authority’s executive director, Joseph Seymour, and four of the eight LMDC board members), is regarded as the central player in the redevelopment. In late July, responding to the backlash against the plans, the governor said the Port Authority should look to other places in downtown Manhattan to rebuild lost commercial space.
That marked the second time Pataki weighed in: In June he declared that no construction should take place where the Twin Towers once stood. That was a bow to the wishes of the victims’ families, who are adamant that the footprints be left alone. (Three of the six proposals envisioned building on at least one of them.) Last month the LMDC said that future design proposals should try to preserve the footprints.
Each of the six initial plans provided space for a memorial, though none offered a design for the memorial itself. (That process will begin later this year when the LMDC starts an international competition for a design.)
Despite the derision heaped upon the LMDC’s initial proposals, certain elements of them seem likely to become realities. There is no doubt that a sizable memorial will occupy a big chunk of the space. Further, a majority of the plans would have turned West Street, which ran between the World Trade Center and the World Financial Center, into a tunnel to expand the available acreage. Many of the plans also envisioned the creation of a transportation center for downtown New York.
Although there are numerous subway stops scattered throughout lower Manhattan, and, until the attacks, trains connecting it to New Jersey, the area has long lacked a central transportation hub. That has made it much less attractive than midtown Manhattan. “Lower Manhattan is the third-largest business district in the U.S., yet it doesn’t have its own Grand Central Station,” says Ric Clark, president and CEO of Brookfield. “It will, and that’s important.” The U.S. government has agreed to allow federal emergency aid to be used to help construct a rail and subway transportation hub in the area -- something that urban planners have been advocating for years.
Whether lower Manhattan will retain its status as the global capital of finance remains an open question. For years before 9/11 financial services firms were fleeing the area for the more convenient or economical confines of Midtown, New Jersey and Fairfield County, Connecticut. After the attacks that trend continued: Last October Lehman Brothers, which owned half of the building it occupied in the World Financial Center, leaped at the chance to acquire a building in Midtown from Morgan Stanley. Merrill Lynch & Co. sublet 400,000 square feet of space it had occupied in the World Financial Center. Financial firms that abandon Wall Street are foolhardy, Whitehead says flatly. “Wall Street is Wall Street,” he says. “I believe that any firm that moves its entire business somewhere else is going to lose something psychologically and in the eyes of its customers. If a firm moves away from its customers, it’s in trouble. I’m optimistic that the Wall Street area will for a long time continue to be the financial headquarters of the world.” That said, Whitehead is committed to creating a downtown Manhattan that is more economically diverse. One likely target: the biotechnology industry.
Regardless of what kinds of companies occupy lower Manhattan, the repair job in the wake of the massive destruction wreaked on the area by the terrorist attacks promises to be a long, controversial and expensive one. It will be years before new buildings, a memorial and a transit hub are built. Says Brookfield’s Zuccotti, “To have the area completed within ten years would be a rousing success.”
