March 27, 2008
WORLD Trade Center-area reconstruction suddenly seems on the brink of un raveling again. The ascension of woefully inexperienced David Paterson to the governor's job threatens to unleash anarchy Downtown.
Yes, work is underway on the Freedom Tower and the memorial - but large questions linger about how they'll actually look when finished, compared with what the public's been led to expect.
Eliot Spitzer at least had a handle on the Ground Zero agenda and commanded some respect from the principal players. Under the green new governor, agendas and plans once set in stone now look to be as flexible as they were in the George Pataki years.
Don't bet a dime on the timetables recently announced with great fanfare by developer Larry Silverstein, the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Three ominous developments over the past few days call into question even the most concrete-sounding plans:
* As The Post first reported on March 18 in the wake of JP Morgan Chase's plan to take over Bear Stearns, Morgan will move its investment banking unit into Bear's tower on Madison Avenue - meaning it has no need to build a new headquarters at 130 Liberty St., as it once planned.
Sure, Morgan - feeling heat from Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents Downtown - says it's still interested in using the site for some kind of building. But the Port Authority is already thinking about using the site for something completely different, like a hotel or a mixed-use project.
Even if Morgan decides to make a deal with the PA, it will likely be for a smaller tower than the 1.1 million square-foot jumbo it had wanted. So it would surely seek softer terms than the $300 million land lease for which it has a handshake with the PA.
That in turn would delay things further - or give either side an excuse to back out. (The Morgan-PA deal has always been non-binding, and will remain so until they draw up a contract and sign it - a process that hasn't even started.)
And nobody can build even a woodshed at the site until the LMDC takes down the old Deutsche Bank ruin - a job for which the LMDC refuses to give a time estimate, although decontamination has resumed.
* LMDC Chairman Avi Schick - the same fellow who has presided over the failure to take down 130 Liberty St. - is now throwing a monkey wrench into the MTA's tormented Fulton Street Transit Center project.
The Fulton boondoggle (first budgeted at $750 million and now pushing $1.2 billion) was already spinning its wheels as the MTA tries to milk more dough out of the state (i.e., the taxpayers).
