From left: 4 WTC and the Transportation Hub
The first retail stores at the World Trade Center site could open for business by March 2015, Australian mall operator Westfield announced yesterday. Westfield, which has a 50 percent stake in the WTC site’s retail space, said the first retailers will be announced in the first half of next year. The openings would come more than 13 years after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. [more]
Swiss lender UBS AG has called off negotiations to lease space at the World Trade Center as a result of disappointing second-quarter income, Bloomberg News reported. The bank had apparently been considering a move to Lower Manhattan from its current U.S. headquarters in Stamford, Conn.
“UBS has been conducting a review of its real estate requirements in the tri-state area,” UBS said in a statement. “Part of this review involved discussions with World Trade Center management in downtown Manhattan. These discussions have been productive, but we are focused on Midtown alternatives at the present time.”
The Zurich-based bank had been rumored to be a leading candidate to anchor Larry Silverstein’s 3 World Trade Center. [more]
Switzerland’s largest lender, UBS AG, is in talks to move its Stamford, Conn.-based U.S. investment bank to Larry Silverstein’s planned 3 World Trade Center tower by 2015. A source told Bloomberg News that the bank, which currently has New York City offices at 299 Park Avenue and 1285 Sixth Avenue, would take around 800,000 square feet at the 71-story, 2.1 million-square-foot skyscraper, which will have an alternate address of 175 Greenwich Street and is one of four that Silverstein is planning for the site. UBS completed the move to its Stamford facility, which houses the world’s largest trading floor, in 2002. Comments
Larry Silverstein’s 3 World Trade Center is getting $285 million in leftover tax-exempt federal stimulus bonds from various local governments around New York State that have been unsuccessful in spending them before they expire at the end of the year, DNAinfo reported. The 71-story Tower 3, which is slated for completion in 2015, is expected to cost upwards of $2 billion. Gov. Paterson signed an executive order at the end of last week to allow the state to take back the rest of its Recovery Zone Facility Bonds from city and county governments and redirect them towards Tower 3. [more]
The New York Police Department has issued a secret request for proposals to environmental consulting firms to look at the effects of proposed security measures at the rebuilt World Trade Center. According to the Post, those involved with the project are worried that prospective tenants will be scared away, rather than comforted, by the move. Meanwhile, Larry Silverstein has reportedly tapped a CB Richard Ellis team led by Mary Ann Tighe and Stephen Siegel to market the already-rising 4 World Trade Center and the planned 3 World Trade Center and will announce the start of their leasing efforts next year. [more]
Larry Silverstein’s 3 World Trade Center may get public financing as part of the new, tentative deal with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, but an end to the bitter dispute over the rebuilding of Ground Zero won’t prevent even more project delays. The 2.5 million-square-foot office tower may not break ground atop a planned “retail podium” until 2020, according to the Post’s Steve Cuozzo. That’s because the public financing aid won’t be available before Silverstein meets certain equity and pre-leasing milestones — namely, raising $300 million in private equity for the tower and garnering 400,000 square feet worth of leasing commitments. He’ll have six years after the completion of the Port Authority’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub at the site to meet those standards — and the Hub isn’t slated for completion until at least 2014. [Post]
[more]
