16 Acres

I think in some ways the skyline of a city

can be compared to a human face

that you can read into those features,

an enormous amountof the city' personality.

- New York is a city of tall buildings,

that's its essential identity.

- The Twin Towerswere limited in many ways,

but they were maximum skyline.

And for a lot of people,

they were partof orienting yourself in New York,

'cause you could see themfrom almost everywhere.

And with it gone, you feel that loss

and I think in the end,

it's a struggle for New Yorkto get its city back.

16 ACRES

- New York City's responseto 9/11 and the immediate aftermath,

was exemplary. It was just--I think wonderful, in terms of people

genuinely opening their heartsand literally, in many cases,

embracing each other. People who had nothing in common except geography,

suddenly realizing they had everythingin common and they were a family.

One community.And I think that's fantastic.

And I think it felt great at the time.

It would be nice, you know,to have that Kumbayamoment,

just go on and on and on and on,ain't gonna happen,

ain't ever gonna happen,and it ain't ever gonna happen here.

Here you have perhaps the most valuable16 acres on the face of the earth.

And suddenly, it's gone.

And these 16 acres at the center of the Cosmos, are empty.

And fair game, what fills that vacuum,depends on who you are.

And the tug of war began immediately.

- "Less than two months ago,Larry Silverstein's real estate company

spent more than 3 billion dollars to lease

the World Trade Center Towersfor 99 years.

Last Tuesday, he not only suffered a professional loss

when the landmark buildings came crashing down,

but a personal one as well.

Several of his employees are among the missing.

- I've had the most gut wrenching experience of my life.

And to lose, for my people, their families,the devastation that's been wrought

to that part of Manhattan.

- Many people see that site now

really as hollowed ground

because there are thousands of bodies that are entombed there.

I mean, should we build a structure on that site?

Well, I believe we should.

Hello. Oh hey, David. How are you?

- Larry Silverstein was vilified immediately

as the greedy developer,because people in New York

don't know any other kind of developer.

- It wouldn't surprise me,

if the replacement of theTwin 110-storey towers

ultimately results in the creation of four towers.

Perhaps, 50, 55--maybe 60 storeys in height.

- The first thing he did was he came out with a plan for the site.

A kind of a sketch plan for the site that rebuilt all of the square footage

to the inch and then threw in a little park.

And that was a week after the attack.You know, too early.

Then, he told the Wall Street Journal

that it would be a tragedy for him not to rebuild.

- It came down,I think a day or two later.

And it was-- God,it was awful. It was awful.

I mean, you couldn't describe it.And there were firemen all over the site,

trying to find comrades,policemen trying to find--

I mean, it was excruciating.

- One of the things people forget about the event and the re-development

is this little special period of time,between the Tuesday of the attack

and the Friday when George Bush came to town.

There is a sense, I think, among,you know, I don't think was alone

in feeling of that it wasan open narrative.

- I want you all o know--you can't go any louder.

- Then Bush came to town on Fridaythe 14th and he was touring site

and someone, he was speaking to the hard hats

who are cleaning the place up,standing on this pile of God knows what,

and someone said, "I can't hear you."

And he said, fairly famously,- "I can hear you."

"I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you and the people--

and the people who knocked these buildings down, will hear all of us soon.

- As this was an attack onour freedom narrative, came into being,

pressure on the site, in addition to all the other things

that go into a construction site,the pressure on the site became,

"This is our responseand it ha to be defined."

In a context, where it's alreadyvery difficult to do anything,

the site was being askedto do the impossible.

No commercial office building that I know of,

in the history of officesand commerce, has ever been asked

to also be a symbol of defiant renewal or a symbol of vengeance,

or a symbol of healing, you know.That's just not what skyscrapers do.

All of a sudden, there's this ideathat this building is somehow going to

do something architectural, the illmagically make everyone fee better.

- I really believe weshouldn't think about this site out there,

right behind us, right here, as a site for economic development.

and we should think abouta soaring monumental, beautiful memorial.

This could be a place that gets remembered

a hundred and a thousand years from now.

Like the great battlefields of Europe and of the United States.

We have to be able to create somethinghere that enshrines this forever.

- When Mayor Guiliani gavehis farewell address, he suggested

that nothing should be rebuilt here,that it'd simply become a memorial.

A large, serene memorialto the people who died on 9/11.

There was never any chance of that happening. I think the Mayor knew it.

I think the proof that he knew it was to create the LMDC,

the Lower Manhattan DevelopmentCorporation, in order to pass that

along to George Pataki, for fear that a mayor, who was not a Republican,

was going to succeed Guiliani.

ALBANY

- The LMDC was right after September 11th.

Mayor Guiliani and I sat down and said,"We're gonna need massive assistance.

We're gonna have help from Washington.We're gonna have insurance proceeds.

And we need a vehicle, whose sole purpose,so they won't get distracted, will be

to make sure that the funds are appropriately targeted.

- The Governor of New York is central to what eventually happens

in Lower Manhattan. Here's why.Two agencies, the Lower Manhattan

Development Corporation and the Port Authority control the process

and New York's Governor controls half of each.

- There's no single person involved with the re-development

who had his much sway on it as George Pataki.

He achieved that positionby creating the LMDC

and initially packing it with is cronies and using it as almost like, control rods

at some point, he would speed it up,

purely to suit his needs at any given point,

which were profound,because he was running

for re-election during the process.

- Here in our area, jury will begin deliberating

over how much money will be available

to rebuild the World Trade Center Complex.

Developer Larry Silverstein is suingseveral insurance companies claiming,

the attack on Twin Towerswas two separate events.

The insurers say it was one.

Billions of dollars are at stakeon the outcome.

- First issue. One event,two events. We needed, as it turns out,

we needed two events, because to rebuild the Trade Center,

the cost to rebuild the Trade Center

would require, not just $3.5 billion,it would require closer to $7 billion.

Right? We needed more money.

- I thinkhe was preoccupied with this

bizarre legal theorythat there were two buildings,

so therefore it was two separate incidentsand therefore,he had to double his return.

Most of us in the LMDC thought just logically, that would be a silly result.

You know, you have insurance policy on two buildings for a set number.

I don't see mathematically, how you're gonna end up with more than a set number.

- People argued about ita little bit, like it was common sense,

but believe me, anyone who has readan insurance policy knows

it's not a common sense industry,it's all about the specific language

and what it means. And in fairness, that was essential to protect the possibility

of rebuilding, that somebody talked about,

"How are we gonna get the money to do this?"

The result was that Larry was a typecast, I think, early on in the process,

as somebody who was fighting about money,while people were worrying about

human loss and then about whether we were gonna build something great.

And Larry was off fighting about money.

- They did everything they possibly could to excoriate,

to criticize, to denigrate. It was just a constant flow.

Talk about, needing a thick skin for that, let me tell you,

I just had to get thick fast.

Born in Brooklyn, it was nota very pretty part of Brooklyn.

So, probably not one of the best,probably one of the worst

I remember we lived at the top of a--either a six or a seven story walk-up.

It had the best view, but you had to walk up.

It was not a very luxurious existence.

My parents, obviously, were struggling. And then after that, I went to NYU.

And by this time, my father gravitated into the real estate business.

He became a real estate broker. He read someplace that real estate

was a foundation of wealth,so he decided to become a broker.

I said, "The guys who make the money are the guys who own the buildings."

I said, "We could become an owner."

I remember finding a buildingdown on East 23rd street,

so I remember finding how much it was.

Six-hundred thousand it was for the building.

Six-hundred thousand, where do you get $600,000?

So what we did, we went to the peoplemy father had successful leased

stores and lofts to. And then,I had made the pitch.

They only joined us for a small investment in the building.

And one after one another,finally said, "yes."

And we bought buildings, bought langer buildings and we renovate buildings,

we altered them, we modernized them.And then, ultimately, it led to finally

being the foundation. Pour in the slab and building the building.

- 7 World Trade Centerwas developed in the early 1980s,

because the Port Authorityhad piece of land,

just north of the World Trade Center siteand they decided to develop it.

And Silverstein won the bid.

And so, all of a sudden, Silverstein was at a new level.

- I rememberat the topping out ceremony of 7,

looking up at the Twin Towers,and saying to myself,

"God, look at this."

But my building's big. It's a 2 million foot building.

It's a big building. But, look at that stuff, huge.

And there are two of them, right? Massive.

I said, "Wouldn't it be fantasticif someday I'll own those?"

Got it done. Hence, therein started the odyssey, six weeks before 9/11.

- I think the Towershould be built back.

I think it should be built tall,as tall, if not taller.

I like to comment earlier about a library. I always said I wanted a school.