April 25, 2006
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Developer Accepts World Trade Center Deal
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Larry Silverstein made the announcement today at 7 World Trade Center.
April 25, 2006
Developer Accepts World Trade Center Deal
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Larry A. Silverstein said today that he was accepting the economic terms of a new deal at ground zero, which reduces his overall role but still allows him to build three skyscrapers on the most valuable parcels on the 16-acre site, ending nearly five months of struggle over the future of the trade center site.
“This is a fair deal,” Mr. Silverstein said at a news conference this afternoon. “I trust that Governor Pataki, Governor Corzine, Mayor Bloomberg and the Port Authority will move quickly to finalize this agreement and move forward with the rebuilding.”
He added: “Make no mistake, we have made real concessions. This is about moving the rebuilding forward as quickly as possible.”
The deal, if it is ultimately approved by all sides, would also end the uncertainty that downtown executives say has hampered the resurgence of Lower Manhattan, while clearing the way for construction to start on the Freedom Tower.
But the turmoil at ground zero will not disappear. Rebuilding officials expect that the focus will now shift from commercial development at ground zero to the troubled memorial project. Consultants are expected to deliver a report in the next week showing that the cost of the memorial and a museum has swelled to as much as $800 million from $500 million. Fund-raising has been sluggish at best.
Under the new agreement, Mr. Silverstein, who leased the World Trade Center site from the Port Authority six weeks before it was destroyed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, would cede responsibility for building the Freedom Tower, the largest, most symbolic and troubled skyscraper planned for the site, to the authority.
Despite its symbolic role, the Freedom Tower was widely regarded as too big, located in the wrong spot, and unlikely to be attractive to corporate tenants, who view the building as a target.
The deal is an attempt to put the project on a viable financial footing. The state has pledged to contribute $250 million and round up 1 million square feet of leases, most likely to federal agencies. The tower would also get about $970 million in insurance proceeds toward an estimated cost of $2 billion.
For the 74-year-old developer, the deal is a capitulation. Mr. Silverstein has long insisted that he has both the right and the ability to develop the entire ground zero site. The new arrangement recognizes that he does not have enough money to do the $7 billion job and, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg argued, that he could have defaulted on his lease, walking away with millions and an unfinished project.
Officials from the Pataki, Corzine and Bloomberg administrations have said the plan amounts to a blueprint for rebuilding the entire 16-acre World Trade Center site by 2012, with the Port Authority providing $100 million for the Sept. 11 memorial.
The unified plan was put together and proposed last week by Gov. George E. Pataki, Gov. Jon S. Corzine and Mayor Bloomberg after nearly three weeks of wary negotiations.
The latest impasse arose with the groundbreaking for the Freedom Tower, which had been planned for this month. There was also a growing realization that there was not enough money to rebuild the entire site, although Mr. Silverstein insisted that he could do the job.
Mr. Pataki had championed the Freedom Tower, the largest of five proposed towers, as a way of restoring New York’s skyline with a symbol of resilience.
Mr. Bloomberg raised the possibility that Mr. Silverstein would build only two towers before running out of money in 2009, defaulting on his lease and walking away from the project with hundreds of millions of dollars. Better to deal with the problem now, he said.
Under the unified government plan proposed last week, the Port Authority would take control of the Freedom Tower project, using $1.7 billion in tax-free Liberty Bonds and about $970 million in insurance money. Mr. Silverstein would be paid to build it. The Pataki administration would provide $250 million and has pledged to secure leases for about one million square feet from federal agencies, which would enable the authority to obtain additional financing. Mr. Schumer said last night that federal customs officials were interested in a large block of the space.
The authority would also take control of a site on Greenwich Street, which it would probably sell to a residential developer.
Mr. Silverstein, in turn, would develop three office towers along Church Street, between Vesey and Liberty Streets. To ensure that he builds quickly, the city and the Port Authority are offering to lease 1.2 million square feet at market rates, according to Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority, and Kenneth J. Ringler, the authority’s executive director, and the city would provide Liberty Bonds for financing. But his development fee would be restricted to 2.5 percent, not the 5 percent he originally demanded.
In the coming months, the authority would design plans with Mr. Silverstein for a shopping mall that would be part of two of his towers, then sell it to him and a retail developer. In addition, Mr. Silverstein would be required to adhere to strict construction schedules and contribute at least $140 million toward the cost of common infrastructure.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Today’s Papers
Death in Dahab
By Eric Umansky
Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006, at 3:07 AM ET
The Wall Street Journal‘s world-wide newsbox and New York Times lead withand everybody frontsthe approximately 30 people killed at the triple bombing in the Egyptian resort of Dahab. It was third bombing in the Sinai in 18 months. The Washington Post leads with a lawyer for fired CIA staffer Mary McCarthy saying his client did not leak classified info and didn’t tell the Post about secret CIA jails in Eastern Europe. A “senior intelligence official confirmed” that the CIA doesn’t think she played a “central role” in the Post‘s story. “Intelligence sources” told the WP that McCarthy knew generally about the prisonsas did any interested citizenbut didn’t know the prisons’ locations, which is what was new in the WP‘s scoop. USA Today leads with the airline industry, health experts, and the ACLU all miffed about a government plan to battle an avian flu epidemic by quarantining apparently sick passengers (as judged by the flight crew). The plan would also require airlines to log passengers’ travel plans and give them to the government if requested. “What they’re proposing is nonsensical,” said one researcher. “People are going to be contagious without being symptomatic.”
The Los Angeles Times leads with an official at Guantanamo Bay saying the Pentagon is planning to “release” 141 prisoners from there and bring charges against only about a dozen more. That would leave about 300 prisoners who “face neither imminent freedom nor a day in court.” Reuters has a slightly different take, saying the military has suggested most of those being “released” will be transferred to prisons back in their home countryan issue this TPer raised in the Wash Post last month. Meanwhile, the LAT could have benefited from flagging a few recent studies and reports that strongly suggest, as Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick put it, that “most of the prisoners are guilty only of bad luck.”
Yesterday was a holiday in Egypt, so Dahab was packed with Egyptians rather than foreigners. The Post says the local hospital in Dahab had only two ambulances. The NYT notes that ambulances “rushed in a procession from Cairo, more than six hours away.”
There were no claims of responsibility and lots of denunciations, including, as the LAT notes, “from the Hamas-led Palestinian government“that would be the same one that chose to celebrate last week’s attack on a restaurant in Tel Aviv. A bit of background not in the papers: After the first big bombing in the Sinai, Egypt rounded up about 1,000 locals and reportedly tortured many of the prisoners, who were never charged.
Everybody goes inside with seven car bombs yesterday in Baghdad, though only 10 people were killed. The police also discovered the bodies of 32 security-forces recruits.
A piece inside the Post suggests that the tinderbox that is the oil-rich and ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk has just gotten a touch hotter. Hundreds of militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have moved into town. A Sadr rep spoke to a U.S. official who recounted the chat: “His message was essentially that any idea of Kirkuk going to the Kurds will mean a fight. He said that their policy here was different from in other places, that they are not going to attack coalition forces because their only enemy here is the Kurds.”
The NYT‘s off-lead looks at a key oil pipeline in Iraq that was supposed to be rebuilt as part of a Halliburton no-bid contract. The method planned was just a touch short of insane. “No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead,” said one Army geologist who inspected the site. Halliburton didn’t give the government a clear heads-up about the concerns, and the Army didn’t seem to care much anyway. So, project went ahead … and failed.
As the NYT alone fronts, there was celebrating in the streets of Nepal as the king agreed to reconvene parliament, which was abolished four years ago. But the partying might be short-lived. The king didn’t mention another demand of many protesters: that he abdicate the throne.
The WP outs a congressman who’s been quietly holding up a bill to buy land for a memorial to Flight 93. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., is “a large landowner in the mountains of western Carolina” and doesn’t think the feds should be buying any more land … for anything. Not that he cared to detail his belief: “Neither Taylor nor his press secretary returned phone calls and e-mails yesterday. His chief of staff, Sean Dalton, would not comment.”
Eric Umansky (www.ericumansky.com) writes “Today’s Papers” for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.
Mild Mild Horses
ESPN2 now features polo
Mild Mild Horses
ESPN2′s soothing presentation of polo.
By Troy Patterson
Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006, at 6:01 PM ET
David McLane is the mastermind of GLOW: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (which you may fondly remember from the 1980s), something called Pro Beach Hockey (which I cannot fathom), and sundry other entertainments involving glistening female wrestlers and innovative bastardizations of hockey (but, curiously, never both at once). McLane intends his latest venture, the Triple Crown of Polo, as something grander and more momentous, telling Reuters he has aimed to found a league “similar to NASCAR.” ESPN2which aired a match from Sarasota, Fla., over the weekend and will follow with broadcasts from Dallas (July 15) and Santa Barbara, Calif., (Sept. 17)sought to accommodate him for obvious reasons. “Polo traditionally attracts affluent sports fans,” a PR person told New York, “and that would be of interest to the ad-sales department.” Who competed for the eyes of the rich during commercial breaks? Home Depot, Ruby Tuesday, and Art Instruction Schools.
This is one of several ways in which the Triple Crown oozed forth its soothing mediocrity. The hour was largely pleasant. The sprinting horses were almost as beautiful as the luxuriant hair on the Argentine studs riding them, and there were occasional thrills to be had in appreciating the dangers of the game. While the announcers did a capable and noncondescending job of elucidating the sport’s nicetieslet’s call it four-on-four soccer on horseback, with mallets, without goalies, and played in a space the size of nine football fieldsthe producers shot the action such that it was much easier to follow than an ice hockey match. It was better than bass fishing, just not by much.
The press release had promised that the show would lavish attention on the “envious lifestyles” of the players, fans, and horses. Set aside the matter of the word “envious” being employed where “enviable” is desired, and also the question of how many viewers might, in fact, be covetous of the way these horses roll. If we start in with the Triple Crown’s crimes against language, we’ll be here all night. The point is that I had steeled myself for some high-grade nouveau riche nonsense. Reliable sources say that the fanciest polo transpires in Greenwich, Conn., and the more obnoxious precincts of Long Island; therefore, I had hoped not merely for a bonfire of pretentious vulgarity from those assembled in Sarasota but for a second-rate bonfire of pretentious vulgarity, something that would make Paris Hilton look like a Hepburn. Imagine my disappointment at discovering, on the sidelines, only suburban families wearing pleasant smiles and comfortable pants.
To be fair, there were a few glimmers of hope on this front. When the “priceless” custom-designed Tiffany trophy made its entrance, it did so in a Brinks truck that we spied from the sky, as if this were an L.A. car chase. (Unveiled, it looked like a shiny little merry-go-round.) There was a tribute to LeRoy Neiman, who ranks as the greatest bad painter in America if you don’t count Julian Schnabel. At one point, a gentleman discoursed on the attractions of the planned community that housed the polo field and showed us around some gaudy foyers, fostering the impression that the program’s closest analog is one of those promotional tapes for real-estate developments. A reporter on the sidelines squeaked the day’s most amazing line. Pointing her mike at the mouth of a trainer, she asked, “How important are the horses?”
Troy Patterson is Slate’s television critic
