What are they going to do with the WTC land?

[troysvihl]

I was just wondering what is going to become of the now unoccupied land where the WTC stood. Has anyone heard any plans? Still to early?

[glc]

They are going to build a new WTC on the same site. They figure 6 or 7 years to do it.

[mbossman2]

They were talking about that on Imus in the morning show and one of Imus' guest mentioned that if they rebuilt it, would anyone feel safe being in it?

[mairving]

They will definitely rebuild it. The question is how. NY has always been a bit peeved that they don't have the worlds tallest building. On the other had, if they build it as the worlds tallest building, they might as well paint a target on it. I would expect a lot of businesses to not reopen their offices in a new WTC after two attacks on it. The biggest problem now in Manhattan is lack of office space. It should be interesting.

Interesting sidenote, I was reading in the WSJ today that many insurers plan on paying claims on the WTC in spite of having an out. Acts of War void the insurance policy. Some are already paying claims.

[troysvihl]

if they rebuilt it, would anyone feel safe being in it?

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I would think they would have a hard time finding tenants for another version of the WTC. (in fact, I predict that famous skyscrappers are going to have a bit of a problem retaining tenants once current leases come due)

Think about it. If you were the head of an accounting firm, law firm, or brokerage, would you choose to lease the top floors of a new WTC? If you were a big company looking for such a firm to handle all of your accounting, legal, or brokerage needs, would you choose the firm at the top of a terrorist target or one out in the suburbs? This last attack wiped out entire firms. There are going to be years of lawsuits involving lost information and expertise. Would you want your businesses' most important info and people that know it intiminately to dissapear in one fell swoop? As a client, you'd have to make trips to that firm on a fairly regular basis, would you want to do that? I doubt it.

[Charliey]

I heard somewhere (cant remember where) that when they rebuild it they arent going to go for the highest building, but just really good design and architecture.

About firms on the top floors, who lost all their data, all their old data was on paper, which is all gone now. When they rebuild, all their dats is going to be on computers, so that makes it very easy to make an offsite backup, even nightly.

Regardless, there is going to be less of a demand for super tall buildings, and therefore the new WTC probably wont be a super high sky scraper.

[HAL9000]

There isn't a whole lot of choice but to have it big if you need the space since land is at a premium there, there is only one direction to go.... up.

[troysvihl]

that's true Hal, but in the last few years there has been a pretty significant exodus of companies from the city to the suburbs in order to take advantage of shorter commutes and much cheaper rent. I think this might cause more companies to take the suburb route as well. Conneticut and Jersey aren't that far away.

[bob]

They should rebuild. That means we will have won the war against the terror.

[troysvihl]

This week my land finance class had a discusion on what they were planning on doing with the land. NYC's port authority had just sold both towers to a private company. The deal had only closed in this last July. My prof had worked on a few of the leases in the WTC, and he said they were acctually quite a public works disaster from a real-estate point of view.


There was also an article in Forbes about this. I don't agree with everything that's said in it. (particularily the call for government guaranteed bonds for the rebuilding)

It's here:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/1015/068.html?_requestid=165860

You have to register. It's free, but for those that don't want to here's a reprint:



They Will Rise Again
Stephane Fitch, Christopher Helman and Lea Goldman, Forbes Magazine, 10.15.01

But this time, let's build them better and smarter.

In the aftermath of the attack, the World Trade Center has taken on a symbolic importance far outstripping its 110 stories. Once widely mocked for its sterility and ugliness, it has now become, in the collective memory of America, a hallowed gravesite for the thousands of people who died there--and a potent emblem of commerce, bowed but unbeaten.

Rebuild we should, as soon as the grim recovery efforts have ended. But what should take its place--something larger, grander than before? Absolutely, says Donald Trump. "What I don't want to see is an open-space park," he insists. "A tower is much more important to memorialize the lost."

It's tempting to construct the tallest building in the world, a stick-in-your-eye message to America's enemies. But that's probably folly. The difficulty of luring tenants into such a skyscraper is only one argument against it. Vertical thrust alone may not be the most appropriate memorial or the most fitting gauge of capitalism's resilience. These days, power is by definition diffuse--whether it's information or capital moving at the speed of light, or even terrorist cells striking without a central command. Something monumental can be built without bumping up against the clouds.

"Rather than focus on some grandiose symbolism, start on the ground--where the 6-foot human interacts with the space around him," suggests John (Jack) Portman III, chief executive of John Portman Associates, an Atlanta architecture and development firm. He points to San Francisco's highly successful Embarcadero Center, designed and codeveloped by his father, as a possible model for a new World Trade Center. It's a complex comprising offices, hotels, apartments and inviting public plazas. In such a scheme, employees wouldn't have to spend 20 minutes getting out of the office to find a restaurant or a movie theater. "The idea," says Peter Slatin, editor of Manhattan-based commercial real estate development and design magazine Grid, "is not to build a tower of Babel." Larry A. Silverstein, who holds the long-term lease on the World Trade Center, has proposed four 50-story office buildings and a memorial to the victims. A more horizontally oriented complex is ideally suited to huge, open trading floors attractive to anchor tenants like the NYSE and large financial firms, to say nothing of retailers. Reproducing two square high-rises makes no sense from an energy standpoint. New York City architect Richard Meier, who designed the Getty Center museum in Los Angeles, says the old design (with identical facing on each side) ignored the impact of sunlight on heating and cooling the enormous buildings.

No matter what complex emerges, the project should be left in private hands from the start. Opened in 1970 at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion, the Trade Center spent years scrounging for tenants--aside from the state and municipal government agencies that were paying below-market rents. Only in the last decade have things been looking up for its government owner, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, when rents, which had been going for $5 to $10 per square foot less than other space downtown, climbed into the $35-to-$45 range. Even so, the privately held Embarcadero Center is worth twice as much as the World Trade Center was, on a per-square-foot basis.

Perhaps the Port Authority should take its cue from New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Two years ago the MTA sold the site of the New York Coliseum on Columbus Circle to developers of the new AOL Time Warner center. Just months ago the Port Authority awarded a 99-year lease on the towers to Silverstein in a deal valued at $3.2 billion. The lease reportedly contained a provision letting Silverstein off the hook for rent in the event of a terrorist attack, with control reverting to the Port Authority.

Time to start looking for a private buyer. Once cleared, the land should be worth at least $2,000 a square foot, or $1.5 billion for the 16-acre site, estimates Charles Urstadt, vice chairman of nearby Battery Park City.

To foot the bill, a developer will have to charge rents that start in 2006 at upwards of $60 a square foot annually, reckons Arthur Mirante, chief executive of Manhattan's Cushman & Wakefield, a top real estate services firm. That would be 30% higher than expected market rates.

To make it more affordable, the government could issue and guarantee bonds for a project that may well run to $7 billion--and 15 million square feet--by the time it's completed within four or five years.

The new center could be constructed better. While no building can withstand the impact of a Boeing 767, architects have learned a few tricks in the last 30 years. They're now building towers, like 7 South Dearborn in Chicago, with notches built into the sides every 20 stories or so, reducing wind pressure by 10% to 15%--especially important in hurricane-vulnerable New York. And even though steel and concrete are still the most cost-effective materials, new combinations of these substances provide greater strength and fire retardance, says W. Gene Corley, senior vice president at Construction Technology Laboratories in Skokie, Ill., and leader of the structural analysis of the twin towers' collapse. Such composites of steel and concrete have been used in the world's tallest building--the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia--and its most experimental, Frank Gehry's Jimi Hendrix Museum in Seattle.

Like the giant ancient Buddhas destroyed a few months ago by Afghanistan's despotic Taliban, the World Trade Center can never really be rebuilt. But it can and should be built anew--on a different scale and with a different spirit.

[Gintaras]

Originally posted by glc
They...They.... figure 6 or 7 years to do it. [/B]


Originaly postede by mbossman2
They were talking about that on Imus in the morning show and one of Imus' guest mentioned that if they rebuilt it, would anyone feel safe being in it?

Originaly posted by mairving
They..... will definitely rebuild it. The question is how. NY has always been a bit peeved that they don't have the worlds tallest building....

Wow, "patriots"- "UNITED WE STAND"?

Who's They?
Maybe this time:WE?

[tedthebear]

I don't think they should rebuild now. 5,000 plus people died there and most weren't recovered...it's sacred ground now. They should create a memorial park to remember the victims and heroes.
Let the world's tallest be in Malaysia! We don't need to be targeted again!

[troysvihl]

i doubt that's going to happen tedthebear. land in the middle of NYC is going to be much to valuable to just turn it into a park.