The massive One World Trade Center may be closer to being marketed for sale, setting up more political intrigue and power plays.
The super-tall, 3-million-square-foot building is owned by the Port Authority. But it is leased and managed by the Durst Organization, which has a $100 million stake that can be converted to an ownership position as well as rights that could block a sale to other groups.
Douglas Durst could, of course, team up with pension funds and other passive investors to continue his role — but that’s if he wants to do so.
The building remains one-third empty and is still competing with space in Silverstein Properties’ 3 WTC and 4 WTC as well as possible floors in the future 2 WTC. Although PA Chairman John Degnan told Crain’s, “This asset will be monetized and the proceeds used for its core mission” of area transportation projects, the devil is in the details — and none are in place.
Additionally, the design announcement for the long-awaited performing arts center, now known as the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, is to come on Thursday. The Performing Arts Center has been a missing piece from the 16-acre puzzle and, with funding from its benefactor on track, it appears time for it to slip into its northern spot at Vesey Street between 1 WTC and the future 2 WTC — and opposite Silverstein’s privately owned No. 7 and petite park.
But it’s that time of year when many of us can especially sympathize with those who have PTSD related to 9/11. We remember the full moon the week before. We remember that Tuesday morning and the crystal-blue sky. And then it all changed. Our universe was rocked.
Through the years, I’ve mostly been able to push it to a hidden part of my brain and attend press conferences as grand plans were revealed or tour the site as construction jelled and bits and pieces of the buildings and sites opened and fences came down.
But it’s still the little things that stop my heart: a white rose for a victim’s birthday at a 9/11 Memorial pool or the feeling of the cold, still water in the hidden crevasse under all those names. Or a serendipitous glimpse of One World Trade through the Oculus window or of that big, old inspirational American flag lighting up the dark night on the front of the Borough of Manhattan Community College building. Or I’ll spot a photo of the Twin Towers and then see photos I took right after, when that shattered pile was so big and so gray and those firefighters were so small.
Lynne Sagalyn, a Columbia University Business School real estate professor, wrote a book about the 15-year saga of the rebuilding process as it lurched forward with every decision second-guessed.
“Power at Ground Zero, Politics, Money and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan,” just released by the Oxford University Press, is no easy-reading glossy coffee-table book, but rather a finely detailed history that will be a resource for the ages.
Coming in at 928 pages, it features 150 diagrams and photos and offers a guide to the dramatis personae.
Distanced from the very private and very public meetings, contentious decisions and power grabs, the hundreds of players interviewed by Sagalyn have now confessed every detail to ensure her saga would become the rebuilding’s reference bible. Ponder it and rejoice that most of the site is now alive and filled with people going about their daily lives, perhaps taking a moment every now and then to reflect on that horrible day.
