A proposal for the performing arts center at 1 World Trade Center by student Pooya Bakhsheshi, who said he emphasized dance’s “celebration of life” by wrapping his building in a perforated metal skin, protecting it “like a pearl in a shell”

Twenty-seven architecture students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and at the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning created designs for the Frank Gehry-commissioned Ground Zero performing arts center as part of their fall semester studio courses, the New York Times reported. They only had to worry about the design. While Gehry, who told the Times he didn’t know the students were working on the renderings, already presented his design, the students weren’t aware of that. Their main constraint, which Gehry himself contended with, was to situate the center on roughly 30,000 square feet near the One World Trade Center office tower and to accommodate the dance needs of tenant Joyce Theater. Gehry said the project, which is projected to cost as much as $300 million, is “on hold.” [more]

Plans for the 1,000-seat Joyce Theater and performing arts space at the World Trade Center site have stalled as the Bloomberg administration waits for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to name representatives to the Frank Gehry-designed arts center’s board of directors, the institution of which is necessary for $100 million in funding, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has consistently supported the center, has picked his appointees for the board, which must be formed by Dec. 31 for the project to remain eligible for Lower Manhattan Development Corporation funding. Cuomo has not named anyone so far, leading some to speculate that he is purposefully dragging his heels, trying to win the funds for other projects. [more]

Soho Properties CEO Sharif El-Gamal and a rendering of Park51 community center

A Manhattan judge has granted 51 Park Place and developer Sharif El-Gamal a so-called Yellowstone injunction blocking Consolidated Edison from evicting the developer from the prospective Muslim community center building for allegedly violating a default notice issued Sept. 14, the New York Law Journal reported, giving El-Gamal 20 days to pay up or challenge Con Ed.

As previously reported, Con Ed, which owns a substation on the western half of the property where the developers want to build a community center, ordered the Soho Properties CEO and Park51 developers to pay $1.7 million owed in back rent in October and threatened to evict the team behind the controversial mosque, near Ground Zero. [more]

World Trade Center siteFrom the September issue: Construction crews have been working feverishly at the World Trade Center site in anticipation of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks later this month.

But when families and friends of the victims gather there for the commemorative ceremony and the opening of the National September 11 Memorial, they will also see major progress at many of the buildings around them.

Indeed, lately — after years of delays and political infighting — steel has been rising rapidly at the 16-acre site.

Just to the north of the memorial, attendees will see the new $3.2 billion 1 World Trade Center, the most expensive office building ever constructed in the city, built to about the 80th floor. To the east, they will see the construction at three additional tower sites.

While much has been written about the progress at ground zero in a piecemeal fashion, this month, The Real Deal takes a closer at look how all of the pieces fit together — and how the finances pencil out for the developers. [more]

The first installment of Steven Spielberg’s “Rebuilding Ground Zero,” a documentary charting the emotions, people, and challenges behind constructing Larry Silverstein’s 104-story tower at One World Trade Center, aired last night on the Discovery Channel (see video above).

The program, made with Dreamworks Television, Discovery Channel and the Science Channel, is a commercial-free, six-hour special and will conclude Thursday, Sept. 1 at 8 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.

In the lead up to the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the documentary crew spent two years documenting the multi-billion dollar project, looking at the process of building the 1,776-foot-tall tower and memorial with a construction deadline to meet, while at the same time honoring those who lost their lives and their families. [Hollywood Reporter] [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

Park51 developer Sharif El-Gamal says he’s “hungrier than the other guys,” and when it comes to available capital for his $100 million Lower Manhattan project, that may be true. According to the Post, an IRS application recently filed by his Park51 group seeking tax-exempt status noted that the developers expect to raise $7.5 million this year. Next year, the projected contributions double to $15 million, but are still a far cry from what El-Gamal will need to get his planned Islamic cultural center, slated to go up two blocks from Ground Zero on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory store, off the ground. [more]

Larry Silverstein and a 4 World Trade Center rendering

Silverstein Properties will sell $900 million of fixed-rate municipal bonds next week to refinance the debt issued for its planned 63-story World Trade Center Tower 4, according to Bloomberg News. Silverstein had been delaying the scheduled sale since December because of an erratic bond market, but yields on top-rated 30-year municipal bonds have declined since the start of the year, hitting 5.11 percent April 4, down from 5.28 percent Jan. 14, Municipal Market Advisors reported. The tax-exempt Liberty Bonds, originally part of a U.S. program to aid New York City’s recovery from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will be sold through a subsidiary of the state’s Empire State Development Corp. and marketed by a group of investment banks led by Goldman Sachs. [more]

Two co-founders of the controversial plan to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero are mulling a new, rival proposal in the wake of a split with developer Sharif El-Gamal. According to the New York Times, Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, said at a luncheon yesterday that she and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, are considering an interfaith cultural center project either at 51 Park Place, the current site of Gamal’s planned Islamic center, or elsewhere in Lower Manhattan. Comments

New York City is taking 582,000 square feet, or 14 floors, at Larry Silverstein’s 4 World Trade Center for an annual $56.50 per square foot, bringing the office tower to two-thirds leased, well in advance of its scheduled late 2013 completion date but setting the city up for a pricey 15 years. According to the Post, the city had offered to take the space in 2006, as part of a plan that was supposed to help move construction along, but Silverstein only made the 15-year deal official last month. The rental rate is below the $61 per square foot Silverstein is asking at his 7 World Trade Center tower nearby, but well above the $35.07 per square foot the city is paying at 250 Broadway, for example, where the City Council is housed. Comments