By Adrian Culea
On Sept. 11, 2001, six weeks after he signed a 99-year lease worth $3.25 billion for the World Trade Center, Larry Silverstein had a dilemma. The 70-year-old real estate investor was unsure if he should visit the site for a breakfast briefing at the top of the tower, or if he should visit the dermatologist. Close to cancelling the appointment, his wife, Clara, chimed in, forcing him to skip the briefing and visit the doctor. Little did they know, the move would save his life.
Following a long-fought battle with insurance companies, Silverstein finally won a settlement treating the terrorist attacks as two separate incidents. Now, he’s in the middle of tackling his next project-building the future of lower Manhattan.
Silverstein, who gave a lecture in the Student Center Theater on Wednesday morning, hopes to have the site finished by 2012 and claims “people don’t have a clue the impact this will have.” His plans to revitalize lower Manhattan includes four new towers, the focal point being the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower.
Construction of the Freedom Tower, which broke ground in April 2006, is “moving forward and it’s exciting as hell,” Silverstein said. The tower will include 3.1 million square feet of office space and provide direct access to local transit. Silverstein is simply the fee developer, the owner being the Port Authority, he said.
Silverstein said the project to build the new World Trade Center complex will cost $20 billion. $7 billion will be paid out of his own pocket while the rest is covered by the Port Authority, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and other investors. The construction is expected to employ 10,000 workers over the next five years.
Upon completion, the complex will create 100,000 jobs and earn $15 billion annual revenue, Silverstein said. Silverstein expects 10 million visitors a year because “they will be spectacular buildings, nothing quite like it.”
Silverstein calls the site “the new downtown.” With shops, restaurants, schools, parks and world-class office space, he is sure it will attract residents of Manhattan as well as tourists. Silverstein notes the 14 subway lines, 32 bus lines, PATH trains from New Jersey, water ferries, the Holland Tunnel, and West Side parking lots as proof the area will be accessible to people all around the Metropolitan area.
The master plan for the World Trade Center complex includes an 8.5 acre memorial park preserving the footprints of the North and South towers and a $2 billion, federally funded, PATH Station designed by Santiago Calatrava, which will be one-and-a-half times the size of Grand Central Station.
Strides have already been made at the site, with the new 7 World Trade Center building opening last year. The building is the first “green” office space in New York City. Efforts to conserve energy by using recycled materials in the construction of the building and using the latest glass technology won Silverstein the 2004 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Quality Award.
Asked what measures will be taken to ensure this new World Trade Center complex is safer than the one destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Silverstein told the crowd of hundreds the best engineering minds in the world were involved in planning the new complex to ensure a “explosion-proof building.” Instead of the plaster walls present in buildings on 9/11, these will be equipped with a dense concrete shield wall, totaling 12,000 lbs. The stairways in the new buildings will also be twenty percent wider than the ones in the Twin Towers.
Silverstein realizes the tremendous financial burden these improvements will incur, but “life is more important than cost-to hell with cost-do what’s right.” he says.
“There’s nothing like the finished product and in 2012, it will be there,” Silverstein added.