When Adam White withheld rent from his landlord in 1996 for failing repeatedly to repair a serious leak in his ceiling, he was doing what he knew New York tenants have the right to do when landlords fail to make vital repairs. The landlord started eviction proceedings against him, but they settled the dispute quickly -- White agreed to pay the rent and the landlord agreed to make the repairs and give him a small rent abatement -- and the housing court case was officially dismissed. But the case was far from over. Because of it, White was blacklisted.
He did not realize this until six years later, when he was looking to move. A prospective landlord denied his application, because the nation’s largest tenant screening company, First American Registry (since renamed First Advantage Safe Rent), had provided a report on White that said only that he once had been sued for non-payment of rent – without indicating that the landlord had acknowledged White’s legitimate basis for withholding the rent.
White sued, on behalf of all tenants similarly wronged.
This month, the company reached a tentative settlement in the class action lawsuit, White et al versus First American Registry, Inc., by agreeing to pay almost two million dollars to as many as 35,000 tenants who had a case in housing court that appeared in tenant screening reports produced by the company. The settlement was filed on February 3 for review and approval by the federal court.
The settlement points to a significant problem for tenants who are sued by their landlords in housing court -- getting labeled as troublemakers and becoming blacklisted, which effectively prevents them renting apartments in the future.
“Blacklisting I think is the most important issue facing tenants today,” said James B. Fishman of Fishman & Neil, LLP, one of the attorneys who filed the suit on behalf of the class. “It has a substantial chilling effect on tenants being able to enforce their rights.”
Talk to New York City landlords, and many will tell you that they have to screen tenants.
“Owners need to be able to protect themselves,” said Mitch Posilkin, general counsel to the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlords’ trade group. “They need to know who they are letting into their buildings. It not only affects them, it affects other tenants in the building. Once a tenant comes into your building, it is extremely difficult to evict that tenant. Owners have to be extremely vigilant.”
As many as a dozen companies provide such tenant screening services to landlords.
One of the things these companies do is check the records of New York City Housing Court.
The problem, as tenant advocates see it, is that many of the 300,000 cases filed in housing court every year, most of them non-payment cases, are withdrawn or discontinued. Sometimes, the landlord discovers that the case was filed in error –- that the rent already had been paid. In other cases, tenants have valid reasons for not paying the rent, as in White’s case when landlords fail to repair their apartments or provide required services like heat and hot water. And in other cases, advocates allege, landlords bring baseless eviction cases as a means of harassing rent-regulated tenants into leaving.
The tenant screening companies buy the case records from housing court. The court defends the practice. The records, it says, are public information.
“We have no discretion about giving out the information,” said David Bookstaver of the Office of Court Administration. “Under the law they’re entitled to it. Under the law we’re entitled to sell it. So if we didn’t sell it, it wouldn’t stop the information from being obtained.”
But James Fishman said the court was going too far in the way it provides the information to the tenant screening agencies.
“The law only says the court has to make court records available at the clerk’s office one file at a time,” he said. “What the court is doing here is selling in an electronic form a mass quantity of information all at once.” Fishman believes “the court system should not be selling this data. You would put these tenant screening companies out of business if the source of information dried up.”
If the court approves the settlement, First American Registry will significantly change the contents of its reports -- they will include the outcomes of the cases. Perhaps more importantly, the company will expunge a case from a screening report if a judge determined that a landlord’s case had no merit or if a landlord agreed that a case was brought by mistake.
“Prior to this they were refusing to delete any case because it was part of the public record,” Fishman said. “Getting those cases expunged gives a large number of tenants the ability to clean their report in a way that did not exist before.”
While the settlement may directly affect how tenant screening companies work, Fishman and other housing advocates said that the blacklisting of tenants simply because they had been to housing court was a problem that had to be addressed at other levels.
“The court system needs to realize that they are turning the housing court into a place that actually does harm, unintended harm, to tenants who simply want to enforce their rights,” Fishman said. “People have been following the advice for years to withhold rent to get repairs. But that advice is harmful. That’s a very significant issue for the court system to deal with. The records are being used to hurt people.”
Even as the tenant screening company case is all but settled, Fishman said he had noted what may be a more troubling development for tenants: The “big three” credit reporting companies (Experian, Equifax and Trans Union) are including housing court money judgments on people’s credit reports.
A spokesman for TransUnion said in an email that including the information on credit reports was not a new practice, as far as he knew, and that under law the company could include money judgments from housing court. A spokeswoman for Experian did not return a call for comment.
“It’s ominous because of the reasons why judgments occur in housing court,” Fishman said. “Most judgments happen because a tenant who does not have an attorney gets browbeaten in the hallway by a landlord’s lawyer into agreeing to a settlement. What they’re not told is that that judgment is going to show up on their credit report and have a substantial impact on their credit score.”
Credit reports and tenant screening reports are different. A person’s credit report includes information on credit accounts and debts -- any money judgment against the person in any civil court proceeding could conceivably end up on her credit report. Tenant screening reports, like First American Registry’s, however, focus on eviction cases in housing court.
Changes in housing court have made this development troubling for tenants, advocates said. In the past, tenants in housing court were generally given time to pay back rent when they first appeared at housing court; no official judgment was entered against them unless they failed to pay the debt within some agreed upon time.
But now, almost every settlement that tenants negotiate with their landlord’s attorneys in the hallways of housing court include “final judgments” on a first appearance, with a warrant for the person’s eviction issued immediately. The execution of that warrant (that is, the actual eviction by a city marshal) is “stayed” generally for 30 days, which is how much time the person is given to pay up.
This technical change has resulted in more landlord-tenant disputes being reflected in credit ratings. But Niles Wellikson, an attorney whose firm, Horing Wellikson and Rosen, P.C., represents landlords at housing court, does not think this is necessarily unfair to tenants.
“There’s no right to not pay your landlord and not have that come up on your credit,” he said. “The tenant advocates are saying this shouldn’t affect your credit. That’s like saying it’s OK not to pay your landlord. And I don’t agree with that.”
The issue of court's selling court record data for commercial purpose is a new problem as the Internet and computer technology make access to this data cheap and instantaneous. The ramifications are huge, affecting many aspects of people’s lives, as their dealings with the court system, from divorces to evictions to traffic tickets, become accessible to all for a small fee.
Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations. Â
To understand why artist Andrea Zittel moved to New York City –- and also why she, like so many others, left -- it helps to look at her art projects. For one, she lived in a small basement room for a week without sunlight, a clock or a calendar; “I wanted to see if my day-to-day activities would completely fall apart.” She also lived for a month in one of her “Cellular Compartment Units” (which are not much bigger than a jail cell), and she has designed and constructed even smaller “Homestead Units” (the size of a kitchen) and “Living Units”(the size of a closet) and “Escape Vehicles” (the size of a car trunk) that she likes to call “intimate universes,” though others might see them as "cramped spaces."
So she did not mind that her first apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when she moved to New York in 1990, was just 200 square feet, bigger than most of the universes that the city would help inspire her to create.
"I prefer small spaces," she told me the other day at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, where her work is on display in an exhibition that opened this month entitled "Critical Space."
There is nowhere where space is more critical than in New York City, and arguably no New Yorkers who struggle more for enough of it than the city's artists.
“Space is the number one issue,” Robin Keegan testified last month in the third hearing by the New York City Council’s committee on cultural affairs into the problems facing the city’s cultural community. Keegan is one of the authors of Creative New York, a report (in pdf format) released in December by the Center for an Urban Future that examines the strengths and challenges of what it calls the "creative core" of New York. "In New York, complaints about high real-estate costs and too little space are hardly unique," the report concedes. But the space problems of artists and arts groups –- space for living, for working, and for presenting their art -- are "particularly acute.” For example, “the high cost and scarcity of studio time for musicians and visual artists, and rehearsal space for performing artists, regularly requires them to make heroic efforts to pursue their art in the city.”
Many have been giving up trying to be heroes. “Most artists are driven out of New York because they can’t afford space,” Andrea Zittel said.
She herself certainly still has a presence in the city -- besides her current exhibition at the New Museum and another one beginning February 9th at the Whitney, her art work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and in Central Park, where her “Deserted Islands,” about the size of bean bag chairs, were placed in the Central Park Pond. She also owns a three-story building in Williamsburg, which she bought once her art career had begun to take off, where she lived, worked, and presented her art in storefront exhibits on the ground floor.
But she left New York City five years ago for California, and visits only a few times a year; the ground floor of her building is now a cafĂ©. In a recent article about her in New York Magazine entitled “The Non-Manhattan Project: Andrea Zittel bolted New York for the California scrub…”, she is quoted as saying: “I wanted to show that there could be a viable arts community outside a cultural capital like New York or Los Angeles, somewhere more affordable.”
Artists quoted in the Creative New York report seem to be fleeing New York not because they want to prove anything, but because they feel they have no choice. Hope Forstenzer, a graphic designer and glass blower, moved to Seattle. “I love New York,” she told the authors. “But I couldn’t change my life in any way to make it more secure.” At the time he talked to the authors, sculptor and copy editor Doug Culhane had definitely had it with New York City: After living in the same building in Williamsburg for 12 years, he was being evicted by his landlord, along with 11 other artists who live in the building -- even though the presence of such artists helped revitalize the neighborhood in the first place. Culhane had decided to leave the city altogether, and was trying to choose among Hudson, New York, Providence, Rhode Island and several other destinations. “Cities everywhere want artists,” Culhane said, “and are making room for them.”
“Even cities like Paducah, Kentucky are developing tax incentives and affordable housing to retain and attract creative talent,” Robin Keegan testified. “And whose talent do they want most? Ours.”
Nearly every day there seems to be an arts story in the papers that is as much a story about real estate. Two hit Off-Broadway shows can't find a Broadway theater to move to. The Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue announced this month that it will be turned into a venue for the performing arts, which worries the art and antique dealers who have been holding their fairs there. The Department of Education sent a letter evicting the Boys Choir Of Harlem from the public school where it has operated rent-free since 1993.
The one mention of art or culture in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City address -- delivered at Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island -- was, in a way, all about space. After boasting of having "dramatically increased capital funding for arts organizations in every borough," he continued: “This year, the 30th Anniversary of our city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, we will help unveil a number of exciting projects, including a new performing arts center at Harlem’s Aaron Davis Hall, and a beautiful new wing at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. And -– I know this will be a favorite with many here today -– the Staten Island Zoo will open its long-awaited Reptile Wing!”
If many arts institutions are looking to expand -- most art museums, for example, have enough exhibition space to show only one or two percent of their collection -- less-established arts groups and individual artists feel increasingly desperate about getting enough space just to meet their basic needs.
Artists “are losing hope and growing bitter about not being able to live and work and stay here,” testified Ted Berger, retiring director of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin acknowledges the problem, and (during the second hearing of the city council committee in October) enumerated some of the ways the city government is trying to do something about it, such as creating a new cultural district in downtown Brooklyn "that will include rehearsal and performance spaces at affordable rates," and transfering ownership of a half-dozen city-owned properties on East Fourth Street "to the cultural tenants that have occupied them for years, including Ellen Stewart's La Mama Experimental Theater Company."
Several non-profit organizations also have stepped up to help.
NYC Performance Arts Spaces helps artists find rehearsal and performance space, with searchable online databases for musicians and for dancers, and one soon for theater performers and also authors looking for a place to give readings. (The average rate for a rehearsal space these days, according to program administrator David Johnston, is $20 an hour.)
Swing Space, a project of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, convinces owners of buildings below Canal Street to make available temporarily vacant space for free or at low cost. Currently, according to cultural council president Tom Healey, 140 artists have free use of some 80,000 square feet of “vacant storefronts, storage units, office floors and lofts.”
Workshop space is often available through artist residencies, such as those offered by the New York State Artist Workspace Consortium, a group of ten art institutions (five of them in the city, from Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City to the Lower East Side Printshop). Brooklyn installation artist Kim Mayhorn has been accepted to some half dozen artist residencies, most (but not all) offering workspace as part of the deal, including one at the Whitney Museum and a residency lasting two months in Utica, New York at Sculpture Space. “My brain tends to work on a very large canvas,” she said, “but I can’t afford to rent an art studio of the size that I would need for my work, unless I also moved to a cheaper apartment, which would have to be the size of a box.” The residencies, she said, “allowed me to have more space to think, and to create.”
There is even affordable housing specifically geared for artists. Some of it is famous, such as Westbeth, a century-old factory building in Greenwich Village which four decades ago was converted into what it claims is “the largest artists community in the world,” and the Manhattan Plaza on 42nd Street. Less well-known is the Aurora, developed by the Actors’ Fund, which also has been offering monthly seminars on finding affordable housing. The Fund is just about to construct new artist housing as well, Schermerhorn House in downtown Brooklyn, in a joint project with Common Ground. And they are not alone: Artspace, which bills itself as “America’s leading non-profit real estate developer for the arts,” is engaging in its first foray into New York City, a joint project with a local community group, El Barrio Operation Fight Back to create 65 affordable apartments for artists and their families in the building that once housed P.S. 109 on Third Avenue and 99th Street.
Nobody is pretending that any of this is enough.
“Many of these projects are becoming less and less replicable," Keegan said, "due to the continued escalation of real estate costs across the five boroughs."
At the city council hearing in December, Norma Munn, of the New York City Arts Coalition, suggested three ways that the city government could help solve the problem, ideas that have the backing of many arts advocates in the city. One, which she called an interim solution, would be for the city to provide a package of tax incentives that would encourage landlords to rent to non-profit arts groups and to individual artists; and that would encourage developers to set aside part of their new building for an art group or individual artists.
Longer term, Munn suggested the establishment of a “citywide community cultural land trust” – basically, a not-for-profit real estate development corporation that would buy, renovate and resell buildings but restrict their use in perpetuity to something art-related, such as artist workspaces.
Munn also recommended that the city use its planning and zoning in a way that is more attentive to the real cultural needs of the city. “Right now the City Planning commission’s idea of planning for culture is to block off an area in a master plan and say cultural center,” Munn testified. The planners, she said, give no thought to what that center will actually be -- “It’s just a blob” – and as a result, it rarely happens.
Indeed, planning sometimes does as much harm as good. Ironically, the recent rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint to create new affordable housing there has increased the price of real estate in these two arts-heavy neighborhoods to the point of threatening to drive out many arts groups.
"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction," Virginia Woolf famously wrote . She understood why there could be no great female artist in Shakespeare's time: "One has only to think of the Elizabethan tombstones with all those children kneeling with clasped hands; and their early deaths; and to see their houses with their dark, cramped rooms, to realize that no woman could have written poetry then."
T.J. Volonis has a room of his own -- or almost his own; it's a room in a brownstone, without enough space for a bathroom, which is out in the hall and which he shares with the other tenant on the floor. Volonis does "functional art," sculpture-like chairs and tables, one of which sold at an art auction for $1,300, but he's having trouble doing it where he lives. "I've been looking for a new space so I can do my work. I'm tripping over my sculptures. It makes it difficult to produce more pieces."
On the other hand, he admits he is not one of those frustrated New York artists. It is hard to be frustrated after only a few months. Volonis, who moved to the city after graduating from college in 1999, did not make his first piece until last August, the one that sold in November. "If I had moved anywhere else," he says, "I don't think I would be producing art." Space isn't everything.
Is New York The Cultural Capital Of the World?
Space Wars
BAM And Its Cultural District
The Plans For Downtown Brooklyn Ignore Both People And Public Spaces
Fighting Over Outdoor Space
Industries That Got Away (some for lack of space)
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Several weeks after Governor George Pataki, in his State of the State address, spoke with pride about how New York had "established and met an aggressive timetable" for the rebuilding of lower Manhattan, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his State of the City address last week, spoke of his impatience at the slow pace of rebuilding: "We need this now!"
This is not all they see differently. Pataki has stuck by the idea of shoring up the area's status as an international finance center by replacing all the office space lost on 9/11 at Ground Zero. Bloomberg believes that the market for so much office space no longer exists, and that there should be retail stores, residential buildings, and hotels added to the mix to make Lower Manhattan an around-the-clock neighborhood.
Pataki in his speech credited the success he sees in rebuilding to the spirit of "true New Yorkers" who "dared to transcend the challenges before us"; Bloomberg, however, in his speech seemed to blame what he describes as the failure of the process on a single person: Larry Silverstein.
"We need to push aside individual financial interests and focus on what's best for our city," he said, calling for Larry Silverstein to give up his right to develop the entire site so that it can be built up more quickly.
It is not the first time that egos have clashed over Ground Zero. Indeed, it is possible to view the entire rebuilding process as a shifting parade of personalities. Individuals were symbols from the moment of the terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001, when the public was shown "portraits of grief" of each victim, and the world saw the rescue workers as heroes. The people who are now at center stage are those charged with rebuilding the World Trade Center site, and to many New Yorkers, they, too, have become symbols -- symbols of the stagnation, confusion and conflict in the rebuilding process.
Pataki will leave office by the end of 2006. Bloomberg, who hasn't had a large role in rebuilding, now has declared a commitment to getting more involved. The balance of power downtown seems to be changing, and not just at the top. A slew of new board members have been appointed to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and some new architects have been brought aboard. As these newcomers arrive, some of the old hands are either fading away -– or storming off.
Those involved in Ground Zero have conflicting short-term priorities, differing long-term visions, and distinct avenues of power available to them to accomplish their goals. How they interact will make a major difference in what happens over the next year, and what Ground Zero looks like years from now.
![]() Governor George Pataki has been in charge of development at Ground Zero for four years. He has until the end of 2006 to leave his mark on the site. |
For the last four years, Governor George Pataki has held formal control over the rebuilding process, and has chosen to associate himself closely with what is happening at Ground Zero. As a result, many blame the governor for the lack of progress.
But Pataki wrapped up his State of the State speech by celebrating what gains have been made.
For good news, Pataki first looked beyond the site, noting that $10 billion worth of construction is underway nearby. By the governor's account, 75 large companies and thousands of smaller ones are moving downtown, or staying there. Perhaps most significant is Goldman Saks, which has committed to building its headquarters directly across from Ground Zero, after backing away from the idea last fall.
But Pataki's main focus has been on rebuilding the site of the World Trade Center itself.
VETERANS
Peter Walker and Michael Arad worked together to design the memorial, which still has major fundraising issues to overcome.
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Since the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, world famous architects have flocked to the site. But most of their projects have been bogged down. Almost two years after the ceremonial start of construction, it is hard to find evidence of much actual building. Of all the big plans, only 7 World Trade Center has made progress significant enough to be noticed by the untrained eye.
Daniel Libeskind was selected to become the master planner in a high profile international design competition, but lost his bid to design the Freedom Tower. Since then, his master plan has seemed to become ever less central to the site's actual development. Today, the guidelines that he was supposed to develop for architects building towers on the site have yet to be put in place, threatening to marginalize his concept for the site permanently.
David Childs has the distinction of being the one architect to design a building that has been built at Ground Zero -– 7 World Trade Center. But he too has run into problems. His design for Freedom Tower was declared unsafe by the New York Police Department, and the building was redesigned to sit on top of a windowless, concrete block ten stories high.
The only part of the rebuilding project that has gone smoothly is the transportation hub. Its architect, Santiago Calatrava, has been working with the Port Authority, and his plan is quietly moving ahead on schedule.
The memorial has caused considerable controversy, but so far has avoided a drastic redesign. It is not without problems, however, the most immediate being funding. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation is in charge of a $500 million fundraising campaign, and is scheduled to take over responsibility for the memorial from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation once it moves from the planning stages to construction.
That does not mean the memorial is a done deal, though. While it has yet to undergo a major rethinking, experiences with the Freedom Tower and, even more drastically, the planned cultural center, show how quickly things downtown can change.
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The original plan for Ground Zero placed a heavy emphasis on cultural development. Then Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal last June objecting to what she saw as the inappropriate political message being promoted on the site. The article inspired others who felt the same way to mount a campaign against the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, the arts institutions that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had invited to move to Ground Zero.
Responding to such pressure, Pataki effectively forced the two institutions from the site last fall. This brought into question whether culture will continue to be a part of the project. The planned cultural center has been redesigned. It is now to take up less than a third of its original size, and is being described as a visitors' orientation center.
This change has earned the governor some harsh criticism.
“The promise of culture at ground zero was in many ways the boldest part of the master plan for the site," wrote Eleanor Randolph and Verlyn Klinkenborg of the New York Times editorial board. "It took courage to propose it, and it would have taken courage to sustain it. Instead we have watched that courage drain away over the past year."
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Governor Pataki's is planning to run for president in 2008, and lack of visible progress would be an enormous political liability. There is the widespread expectation that he will put a high priority on getting tangible progress started on both the Freedom Tower and the memorial. But some fear that the governor, feeling the need to get something – anything – built by the time he leaves office, will make damaging sacrifices in the name of speed.
But some are already looking ahead to Ground Zero post-Pataki. The New York Post has already fired the first shot across the bow of the man many see as the frontrunner to become governor next year, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Steve Cuozzo criticizes Spitzer for his public spat with Lower Manhattan Development Corporation chairman John Whitehead. "The harm he's done to replacing the World Trade Center" by picking a fight with Whitehead, writes Cuozzo, "is incalculable."
For his part, Spitzer has said little about his ideas for lower Manhattan. But as the end of Pataki's term nears, it is something more and more people seem interested in.
"Certainly you hear more and more people saying 'what does Eliot want from Ground Zero?'" said David Kallick of the Fiscal Policy Institute.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants a bigger role in the rebuilding at Ground Zero, and his ideas differ from those of the governor.. |
While Pataki has been held accountable for the lackluster development at Ground Zero to date, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been criticized for not getting more involved. But Bloomberg's approach is changing, and as it does it is becoming clear that the mayor sees Ground Zero differently than the governor. While Pataki has focused his attention on the large-scale and the iconic, Bloomberg seems more interested in what happens at the street level and what the smaller towers planned for the site are used for.
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In the last year, several members of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation have left, leaving Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki with open spaces to fill.
Bloomberg did so immediately after his reelection. The mayor appointed four members of his administration and two business leaders, while the governor appointed two high level state officials.
THE GOVERNOR'S APPOINTEES:
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Bloomberg's appointments were "a political change of the highest order," said Ric Bell, head of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects,
At the same time, however, Mayor Bloomberg questioned whether the corporation really makes a difference. This is a view that has been expressed at times from everyone from the governor to the civic groups involved in the redevelopment of lower Manhattan. The board has not been able to gain much independence from Governor Pataki, and has been shot down on the few occasions it has tried. Further, the corporation's power seems likely to decrease as time goes on.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was established soon after 9/11 to preside over the planning process at Ground Zero, and was also given $2.7 billion in federal funding to distribute to encourage post 9/11 economic development. It was intended to be temporary. Most of that money has been given away; there is only $300 million left. Of that, only about $45 million generally dedicated to economic development in lower Manhattan has not been earmarked for specific projects.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation also has limited funding left for operating costs, and it is likely nearing the end of its life. It will be a major player until that time, however, believes Petra Todorovich of the Regional Plan Association.
"When an organization has an end date, it has lessened relevance," she said. "But the [corporation] has some important work ahead of it."
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Mayor Bloomberg does not have the formal power over Ground Zero that the governor does. But there are other ways, both formal and informal, for the city to assert itself in lower Manhattan.
First off is the mayor's ability to draw attention. Presumably, any sustained public effort by Bloomberg could change the course of development at Ground Zero.
Another public office that comes with a powerful bully pulpit is that of police commissioner. Raymond Kelly, who currently holds the position, stopped development of the Freedom Tower in its tracks when he decided last year that the building's design was unsafe. Immediately, plans were redrawn to address his security concerns.
Finally, the city holds formal power over its streets. The planning department also has to sign off on street closings. Currently, the Port Authority wants to change the plan to extend Cordlandt Street through the site, building an enclosed mall in its place. To do so, the authority will have to get commissioner (and LMDC board member) Amanda Burden's approval. City planning has opposed the idea.
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Larry Silverstein has been a fixture at Ground Zero since he acquired the development rights to the World Trade Center soon before it was destroyed. Because his contract obligates him to rebuild the office space lost in the attack – and because he has billions of dollars from insurance to do so – Silverstein thinks he should be allowed to rebuild the entire site.
Others disagree, including both Mayor Bloomberg and the Port Authority. In December 2005, Bloomberg decided against granting Silverstein the remaining $3.5 billion pot of Liberty Bonds, tax-free bonds allocated for downtown development.
Pataki stepped in and granted Silverstein half of the bonds, but said Silverstein and the Port Authority – which owns the site – would have to work out their problems in 90 days (which would put the deadline in March). The Port Authority and Silverstein differ on how much he will receive in development fees, who will pay for infrastructure at the trade center site, and what will happen on the sites of three planned towers.
Bloomberg says that Silverstein is holding up progress by insisting he can develop the entire site. The developer should cede control over two of the five towers that are included in the official plan for the site. By doing so, Silverstein would be able to focus on building the other three towers quickly –- and the Port Authority would reduce his rent. Other developers could then immediately build a mixture of retail, commercial, residential and hotel use that Silverstein is uninterested in building himself.
The Port Authority has already floated this idea to Silverstein, who rejected it several months ago. He argues that infrastructure is not in place to build up the site today. Some agree, and criticize Bloomberg for placing too much of the blame for the lack of progress on the developer. Some have flinched at the city essentially calling for Silverstein to be stripped of his legal rights because he doesn't agree with the mayor. Others fear that Bloomberg is going to slow down the process by bringing in the last thing the site needs –- more people.
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