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Trade Center's Silverstein wants smaller buildings

"We owe it to the victims, our colleagues, our children and our grandchildren to rebuild. We have to show that we can not be defeated by terrorist acts." Larry Silverstein, lease holder of WTC PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

Larry Silverstein, who held the lease on New York's World Trade Center for less than three months before it was destroyed in a terrorist attack, wants to develop a smaller version of the complex on the same site.

Silverstein, 71, said he would like to build 4 towers, each 50 to 60 stories high, on the site where twin, 110-story towers had loomed over four smaller buildings in the destroyed trade center complex.

"That would be consistent with the height of many of the buildings in the financial district and I think that would be more acceptable and fair to the people who have been impacted by this terrible event," Silverstein said.

Whether Silverstein can realize that goal for the site, which is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, depends on decisions yet to be made by government officials.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Governor George Pataki are creating a commission to decide, after consulting with victims' families and rescue workers, how to use the land where the towers stood.

The attack left an estimated 5,000 people missing. Giuliani said yesterday he wants there to be a monument and some economic development at the site in Lower Manhattan.

Silverstein in July completed a deal to acquire the lease on the World Trade Center for US$3.2 billion, including an initial payment of US$616 million and rents over the next 99 years to the Port Authority, which retained ownership of the properties.

Silverstein's partners included Westfield America Inc, the US subsidiary of Sydney, Australia-based Westfield Holdings Inc, which paid US$420 million of the price and was running the complex's underground retail concourse.

The purchase doubled Silverstein's holdings, making him New York's largest office landlord. While nursing a broken hip, he beat out two larger groups, one led by Vornado Realty Trust, then the city's largest landlord, and the other a joint venture between Boston Properties Inc and Brookfield Properties Inc.

The attack destroyed the twin towers as well as the smaller, surrounding buildings of the complex and 7 World Trade Center, a property Silverstein already owned. The developer lost four of his employees in the attack.

"We owe it to the victims, our colleagues, our children and our grandchildren to rebuild," he said. "We have to show that we can not be defeated by terrorist acts."

The cleanup of 7 World Trade Center would take nine months, after which construction would start and be completed in about three years, the developer said.
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