HEADLINE: IDA Approves $450M for 7WTC

BODY:
NEW YORK CITY-Larry Silverstein yesterday nailed down up to $400 million in tax-exempt Liberty Bond financing for the construction of the $1.2-billion 7 World Trade Center project. And while it was certainly a red-letter day for the developer, city advocacy groups also are cheering new reporting guidelines that they say bring unprecedented opportunity for public input to the process of rebuilding Lower Manhattan.

Andrew Alper, president of the New York City Economic Development Corp., revealed the funding as well as the new hearing procedures at Tuesday's meeting of the NYC Industrial Development Agency, which is charged with managing the commercial portion of the Liberty Bond program. "The New York Liberty Bond Program is a major tool for securing Lower Manhattan's position as the financial capital of the world," said Alper. "The former 7 World Trade Center was an integral part of Lower Manhattan's makeup and its reconstruction will provide a tremendous boost to the revitalization of the downtown business community."

Tishman Construction Corp. is the general contractor for 7 WTC, which is currently under construction on a 58,400-sf site owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and bounded by Greenwich, Barclay, Washington and Vesey streets. The project will consist of a 52-story building with approximately 1.7 million sf, including a 76,500-sf Con Edison substation at its base. In order to accommodate the reconfiguration of Greenwich Street, the new building will be 240,000 sf smaller than the original.

"This is a great day for Lower Manhattan and New York," said Silverstein, president and CEO of Silverstein Properties Inc. Silverstein applied for the federal funding fill the financing gap between the $796 million in insurance proceeds available for the project and its estimated $1.2-billion price tag.

With regard to changes in public hearing procedure, Alper said that going forward, IDA financing applications and related materials will be available for public review a week prior to the agency's monthly meetings.

"This change in the public hearing process is another example of the greater transparency we're bringing to IDA and EDC operations," said Alper. "It signals an important shift in how we communicate economic development opportunities to the people of New York City. EDC will continue to identify and implement ways to establish a more accessible, open process."

Bettina Damiani, project director for Good Jobs New York, tells GlobeSt.com that while her organization "has been critical" of the EDC in the past, "we are pleased to say that the EDC has been responsive to the need for more public input and access to information. It's still not perfect, but these are genuine first steps toward disclosure in the allocation of economic development recourses," she says.

Housing advocates long have complained of a lack of advance notice of public meetings and a dearth of distributable printed materials that has forced attendees to copy written information by hand. Now, with meeting notices posted on the EDC web page and more access to advance printed documents, Damiani says the public will finally have a say when it comes to handing out city and state money. "For the first time in recorded memory, the people of this city will be able to provide genuine informed testimony regarding the allocation of economic development resources," she says.

LOAD-DATE: January 30, 2003