Unbalanced book
Omissions mar Doctoroff’s WTC tome
DANIEL L. Doctoroff, former Mayor Mike
Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for economic development, can justly claim credit for many land-use initiatives that helped lift the city out of its post-9/11 malaise.
But a crucial chapter in his new book, “Greater Than Ever: New York’s Big Comeback,” is more a maliciously skewed attack on
Larry Silverstein than it is a credible account of World Trade Center rebuilding.
In the chapter “Ground Zero Unstuck,” Doctoroff depicts himself as the hero who kick-started redevelopment after years of inertia — and Silverstein as the main obstacle to it.
Doctoroff absolutely helped the rebuilding cause by pushing a 2006 agreement whereby overburdened Silverstein turned rights to developing One World Trade Center over to the Port Authority.
But in Doctoroff ’s telling, Silverstein was a greedy obstructionist concerned only with milking every cent he could out of his insurers. But while Silverstein may have some things to answer
for during the drawn-out drama, so does every other player and party to it — including especially Doctoroff and Bloomberg.
“Ground Zero Unstuck” does not even mention:
That Silverstein was paying the Port Authority $80 million a year in ground rent on buildings that no longer existed. Maybe he had cause to be hard-nosed?
That the PA failed to start excavating the 16-acre site to make it constructionready for four long years after 2002, then dragged its heels on the job for three years more. Silverstein could not build so much as a birdhouse until the work was finished.
The PA paid Silverstein a total $64 million in fines for failing to turn over the land to him under a contractually specified timetable. How could Doctoroff
leave out so essential a fact?
That before the 2006 site-splitting deal, Silverstein had already completed Seven World Trade Center — a magnificent project that disproved the notion that he was a wheel-spinner who wouldn’t risk a dime.
He put the 47-story skyscraper up without a single tenant signed.
Although insurance proceeds and tax-exempt Liberty Bond financing helped pay for construction, the tower was still a huge risk for Silverstein. Failure would have doomed his future at the main WTC site and cost him a fortune in the long run.
How did City Hall greet 7 WTC, a powerful symbol of downtown regeneration? Bloomberg griped that Silverstein, who wanted $50 a square foot, should “reduce his rents to the going rate” of $35 a square foot in obsoles- cent buildings nearby. Silverstein swiftly found higherpaying tenants to fill the whole tower.
Throughout the chapter, Doctoroff would have us believe that only he could keep Silverstein honest about how much money he had to rebuild and what it would cost.
Doctoroff relates that in 2005, he got Lehman Bros. to analyze how much it would cost to replace all 10 million square feet of offices destroyed on 9/11 — and Lehman’s “jaw-dropping” $7.5 billion estimate was far higher than anyone knew.
But Doctoroff apparently missed a story in The New York Post by William Neuman on Jan. 30, 2004, which reported the exact same $7.5 billion figure.
The estimate was prepared by Tishman Construction — for none other than Silverstein himself.