MIKE Bloomberg’s ugly attack yesterday on Ground Zero developer/leaseholder Larry Silverstein was a disgrace coming from a mayor whose own administration has so badly served Lower Manhattan since 9/11.
It’s all Silverstein’s fault, Bloomberg said, that the World Trade Center site remains an empty pit and that fully rebuilding it will take many years more.
In fact, of course, the blame lies as much, if not more, with the city, the Port Authority and, especially, the state.
The strafing of Silverstein from the high altar of the mayoral pulpit was a sorry spectacle, even if it was meant less for the developer’s ears than for those of the next governor who might underestimate Mayor Mike’s Ground Zero stake.
On the mayor’s watch, Downtown’s streets have been allowed to rot. City Hall stood by for four years without a peep as macabre relics of the terrorist attack, especially the old Deutsche Bank building and CUNY’s Fiterman Hall, remained standing.
Bloomberg, who now talks about commercial revitalization, spent years undermining Downtown’s commercial prospects by scheming to shift office development to the far West Side and to Brooklyn.
But sometimes even disgrace can have a saving grace. And if Bloomberg’s hypocritical and cruel remarks can advance the cause of redevelopment by even an inch or a day, citizens should hold their noses and be thankful.
Because if talks with the Port Authority lead to Silverstein turning rights to towers 3 and 4 over to other developers while holding on to the Freedom Tower and towers 2 and 5, it might indeed help “pick up the pace” – not today, but a few years from now, when all the sites are actually ready to support new structures.
Bloomberg said Silverstein should be “willing to do the right thing” and give up rights to towers 3 and 4 in exchange for a cut in the rent he pays the Port Authority, which owns the land. The PA would build its own headquarters on one site and sell rights to the other tower to another developer.
Which is fine with the Port Authority? Here’s PA spokesman John McCarthy: “We agree with the mayor. At Gov. Pataki’s insistence, we have been negotiating with Larry Silverstein since mid-December to resolve lease terms by March so we can accelerate the rebuilding.”
In other words, Silverstein is now publicly surrounded and outnumbered in his quest to rebuild all 10 million square feet of lost office space on his own. Pataki, Bloomberg and the PA think they have him cornered, and they’re using every bit of muscle they can leverage to break his monopoly.
There are plausible reasons to worry about Silverstein’s ability to see through the whole project on his own, and no one – despite endlessly publicized construction schedules – should take the Freedom Tower for granted until structural steel begins to rise by early 2008.
The developer can sound so cranky, difficult and bottom-line obsessed that it obscures his underlying decency and charitableness. Sympathy he widely enjoyed after 9/11 has given way to resentment and outright hostility; many of his fellow real-estate players now snarl when his name comes up.
But, whatever Silverstein’s faults, it was hard not to wince at Bloomberg’s characterization of his role at Ground Zero.
* “We need to put aside individual financial interests . . . it’s time to pick up the pace of commercial construction” – as if Silverstein alone were to blame for the fact that Ground Zero remains an empty pit.
But above-ground construction can’t start until a new eastern slurry wall gets built – and that’s the PA’s responsibility, not Silverstein’s. The job’s barely begun, will take up to two years to finish.
Moreover, it was the state, city and Port Authority – not Silverstein in any way – who were responsible for the security snafu (or whatever the true agenda was) that sent the entire Freedom Tower design back to the drawing board last spring, 18 months after all parties had signed off on it.
* “We cannot let the Trade Center be a construction site for the next 15 years, which the plan all but assures that it will be.”
That, too, implies it’s Silverstein’s idea to take 15 more years. But the most pessimistic timeline now calls for completion by 2015, or 9 years from now. In any case, it was Pataki’s master planners at LMDC who drew up the timetables.
* “If we immediately start building retail stores along with a commercial, residential and hotel mix, Lower Manhattan will become one of the most energetic and exciting neighborhoods in New York.”
It says something about Bloomberg’s view of Downtown that he refers to it in the vapid language real-estate people use to hype obscure, outer-lying districts. Gee, Downtown – the nation’s third-largest business district with a booming residential population – will one day be “energetic and exciting?”
* “We need this now to advance our economy and pay tribute to those who died there, not a decade and a half in the future when it fits a developer’s financial plan.”
That’s the lowest blow – the suggestion that Silverstein, who lost friends and colleagues on 9/11 and who would likely have been killed himself had he not cancelled a meeting in the Twin Towers, is dishonoring the dead.
At least Bloomberg has quietly backed off his ambition to see the WTC site used mainly for housing – even if Silverstein were ousted from two of the towers, at least four of the five would still be commercial.
That might seem a long overdue concession, but at Ground Zero, we’ll take victories when we can.