The city’s construction unions plan to hold a lunchtime rally at ground zero on Tuesday in an effort to break the deadlock between the Port Authority and the developer Larry A. Silverstein over building speculative office space on the 16-acre site. þþUnion officials say they are gathering several thousand carpenters, iron workers and laborers, as well as unemployed union members, to stress that they are ready to build two more office towers at the former World Trade Center, as Mr. Silverstein wants to do. þþ“We’re not taking sides or assigning blame,” said Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, a labor umbrella group. “We’re making a public statement on behalf of the building trades that we’re ready to build them.” þþBut in the deeply politicized world of ground zero, things are not always what they seem. One trade union official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the council, said Mr. Silverstein urged them to hold the rally to put pressure on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. þþThe rally is one more point of contention in the slugging match between the authority and Mr. Silverstein, who is backed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Both sides are working against a looming deadline while they debate how much government should invest in private development, especially at a time when the real estate market is weak. þþThe Port Authority is building 1 World Trade Center, formerly called the Freedom Tower; a transit center; a memorial; and streets and utilities. Mr. Silverstein, who held the lease on the twin towers when they were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, has the right to build three other office towers at ground zero. Unable to secure financing or corporate tenants, Mr. Silverstein wants the Port Authority to finance the construction of at least two of the three towers, totaling 4.8 million square feet, the equivalent of two Empire State Buildings. And the some of the construction union officials support him. þþ“We have a good relationship with Larry, who’s a union builder,” the union official said. But, “when you have 25 to 30 percent unemployment you don’t need much prodding” to have a rally. þþStill, Mr. Silverstein denied doing any of the “prodding.” þþ“It’s hardly news that we support accelerating the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, which would create thousands of union construction jobs,” said Bud Perrone, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein. “While we’re cooperating with the sponsor of this rally, the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, the event was called for, belongs to and will be attended by the men and women of the construction unions.” þþLast week, the General Contractors Association, whose members work on the Port Authority’s airport, road and bridge projects, sided with the authority, warning that the city had to rebuild the trade center “in a way that does not bankrupt the Port Authority and curtail critically needed investment in the port’s transportation infrastructure.” The authority, it noted, had already cut $5 billion from its 10-year capital program. þþIn a proposal last week, the authority offered to help Mr. Silverstein with one of the three tower buildings. If he is able to secure commercial tenants for one-fifth of the second tower over the next two years, then the authority would help with the second, as long as the city and the state also contributed to the effort and Mr. Silverstein put $300 million of his own money into the project. If he cannot get an anchor tenant, the authority proposed that Mr. Silverstein be allowed to build a retail complex, over which the second tower could be built later on. But Mr. Silverstein and the city have shown no enthusiasm for the proposal. þþAn arbitration panel in January refused to take Mr. Silverstein’s side in the dispute and gave both sides until Friday to come up with a solution or risk the panel imposing its own. þþAt this point, all sides agree that the third tower would be delayed, possibly for a decade. Some authority executives say that this opens the possibility that the third site could be used for a park, a cultural institution, or even a smaller building that combines office space and apartments or a hotel, instead of a giant office tower that may no longer be suitable for downtown. þþThe authority, which is now building the first skyscraper at ground zero at a cost of $3 billion, is not eager to support towers without tenants, especially when the vacancy rate is expected to grow over the coming years. The Regional Plan Association, a private planning group, said that it favored efforts to restore commercial space on the site, but that it also believed “that it should be the responsibility of the private sector to absorb the risks of new office space construction.” þþToday, the commercial vacancy rate downtown is about 11 percent, but rents are continuing to fall on the expectation that more vacant space will come on the market as Goldman Sachs relocates and A.I.G. and Merrill Lynch shrink. In a recent report, Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate broker, called the situation “the calm before the storm.” þþ
Source: NY Times
