From left: 130 Liberty Street and 140-144 Washington Street (credit: PropertyShark.com)

The owner of two mid-sized Downtown hotels overlooking the World Trade Center reconstruction site claims the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank office tower and the placement of a large construction crane nearby have cost it at least $1 million in lost business, a new lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court says. The hotel owner, a company called Cedar & Washington Associates, filed suit against the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a joint city-state corporation, Dec. 27, court records show. The suit says the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank property at 130 Liberty Street across the street from the hotels, Club Quarters at 140 Washington Street and World Center Hotel at 144 Washington Street, as well as the placement of a crane on Washington Street for about two weeks starting in late September 2010, harmed business in part by noise and dust and “stigmatized the hotels as unsafe.” [more]

Governor Cuomo and the St. Nicholas ChurchBehind closed doors, Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing to rebuild the St. Nicholas Church at the former site of the Deutsche Bank Building, sources told the New York Post, even though it could severely delay construction of the World Trade Center site.

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey wanted the church to be rebuilt at 155 Cedar Street, where it stood before being destroyed during the Sept. 11 attacks. Church leaders initially thought the new structure would be built one block away at 130 Liberty Street, but the Port Authority wanted to negotiate a land swap so that it could be built at the Cedar Street site. [more]

Another construction supervisor and a demolition contractor were each cleared of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges today by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Rena Uviller, who said they were not responsible for the deaths of two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan in 2007. According to the Daily News, Mitchel Alvo was acquitted of all charges, while the John Galt Corp. was convicted of misdemeanor reckless endangerment, which carries a likely $5,000 fine, but cleared of the two more serious charges. Last week, a Manhattan jury acquitted a senior site safety manager for Bovis Lend Lease and an asbestos abatement supervisor at the site of charges in connection with the case. [more]

A Manhattan jury today acquitted a senior construction supervisor of wrongdoing in the deaths of two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan in 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported. The supervisor, Jeffrey Melofchik, had been on trial for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, among several other charges, and was one of three supervisors charged in connection with the case. An asbestos abatement supervisor at the building was found not guilty of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment by the same jury yesterday. Melofchik had been working as a site safety manager for Bovis Lend Lease at the time of the fire, and was accused of failing to fix a faulty standpipe that would have otherwise allowed the two men who died to get water while fighting the blaze. [more]

To look out the windows from the 10th floor of Larry Silverstein’s shiny new 7 World Trade Center is to take visual stock of how far Lower Manhattan has come since Sept. 11, 2001. There’s the already-skyscraping 1 World Trade Center to the right, Towers 3 and 4 rising to the left, the soon-to-open memorial plaza below, and the new W Downtown staring back from across the construction site. A few blocks to both the east and west, Lower Manhattan now houses more residents than it has ever before seen, and still more are moving in — in droves. And soon, of course, Condé Nast will arrive, and with it, as is presumed to be the case, so will the neighborhood.

So this morning, when some of the most important architects of this turnaround convened to celebrate “The New Downtown,” alongside the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate and Silverstein Properties, there was a natural, and deserved, optimism in their voices (see photos above). But there was also an unmistakable air of exasperation, as if to say, what else can we possibly do to get major retailers and restaurateurs to take notice? [more]

Litigation relating to the recently demolished Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, between Washington and Greenwich streets, could endanger the budget for downtown projects such as the East River Waterfront, state officials have revealed.

According to DNAinfo, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is the defendant in an $80 million lawsuit filed by criminally-charged Deutsche Bank contractors Boris Lend Lease after the agency failed to make sufficient profit on the troubled demolition.

A fire at the site killed two firefighters in 2007 and Bovis is fighting accusations that they caused the conditions that led to the fatalities. LMDC is also suing Bovis for $100 million as a result of extra costs caused by contractor negligence. [more]

An ex-employee of the construction firm blamed for the deaths of two firefighters in 2007′s Deutsche Bank Building blaze is getting out of prison soon after serving his minimum two-and-a-half-year sentence, according to the Post. The former John Galt Corp. purchasing agent, Robert Chiarappa, wasn’t charged with manslaughter, but instead was revealed to have stolen $1.2 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and Arch Insurance Group during the building’s deconstruction project after authorities launched an investigation into the cause of the fire. [more]

Though the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. acquired the Deutsche Bank building damaged on Sept. 11 and is slated to give it to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey next month, LMDC may have other plans. “There’s supposed to be a land swap,” Avi Schick, LMDC chairman, told Crain’s. Schick is referring to a formal agreement that was part of the World Trade Center master plan in 2003 which calls for the PA to get 130 Liberty Street when the bank is torn down and to give the WTC Memorial Foundation the approximately eight-acre site where the memorial and museum are being built. Schick may want to use the property as leverage to advance the LMDC’s agenda for the site’s development. Comments

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The former Deutsche Bank office at 130 Liberty Street is almost completely demolished, after nearly 10 years of legal entanglements and devastating accidents, according to the Brooklyn Eagle. The building, which sustained significant damage during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, was supposed to be deconstructed in 2005 — a piece of debris from the World Trade Center collapse had torn through 15-stories of the building. But the demolition was put on hold after a legal battle erupted over who would pay for the $300 million project. [more]

The Greek Archdiocese of New York’s plans to build a new church at 130 Liberty Street in the Financial District may be dashed to the wind, according to the New York Post. The church, which was intended to replace the archdiocese’s original structure destroyed during the Sept. 11 attacks at 155 Cedar Street, would have been built above the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey’s Vehicle Screening Center. But after months of contentious negotiations between the Port Authority and the archdiocese over the 130 Liberty Street site, sources say that design plans for the screening center will make building the church there impossible. [more]