Future of 130 Liberty Street up in the air

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. “Now is the time to do the strategic planning and thinking” for the site, he said. LMDC board member Julie Menin said the PA should be preparing a request for expressions of interest to build a mixed-use tower at 130 Liberty that includes a performing arts center, for which the LMDC is providing $160 million. The PA, however, plans to build the arts center on the World Trade Center site. The LMDC was designed to be temporary, and not all LMDC board members believe the group should operate into the next fiscal year. Menin said she does not plan to vote in favor of the budget when it comes up for approval this spring. [Crain’s]