“Welcome to the first tower that will open for business here at the World Trade Center site,” Janno Lieber, right-hand man to Larry Silverstein at ground zero, boomed into a microphone from the podium. It was the only note of competition throughout the festivities, even though everyone knew the smaller tower, while started three years later, had beaten its sibling to the top by at least a few days.

To 1 World Trade Center’s credit, Barack Obama showed up two weeks ago, as did the mayor and governors Christie and Cuomo, all signing the ceremonial last column, still waiting somewhere to be hoisted into place. Four World Trade Center got state asssembly speaker and World Trade champion Shelly Silver, though he spoke from the heart.

“Despite the weather, today the sun is shining on Downtown Manhattan,” he intoned. “Having grown up in Lower Manhattan, living here all my life, having witnessed the September 11 attacks from my home, and having been here for the past decade, rebuilding, it is hard to adequately put into words just how wonderful it is to see this magnificent building coming to completion. To think, such a beautiful structure now stands where once such shocking ugliness and terrible pain is breathtaking and incredibly inspiring.”

As he spoke, iron workers were clambering over 3 World Trade Center in the background, hoisting a structural steel column into place, not unlike the one that would soon make the long journey to the top of this tower. Even on the most celebratory of days, work never stops on the site, at least as long as Larry Silverstein still holds out hope of finding a tenant for the building. “Many years from now,” Speaker Silver continued, “when the work is completed, and historians begin writing the story of Lower Manhattan’s rebirth, the greatest comeback story ever to be told, the name Larry Silverstein will figure prominently among its pages.”

When he took the stage, following the long applause that filled the 50-foot-high lobby, Mr. Silverstein’s voice was halting at first, caught up in the emotion of the moment. “With all we’ve been through these many years, it’s impossible to make progress without friends, supporters, people who really believe in what you’re doing as much as you do,” he said, opening his arms to the crowd.

This building was for them, it was for downtown, but also the city and the world.

“In a little over a year, 4 World Trade Center will be the newest addition to our neighborhood,” Mr. Silverstein said. “When we open the doors, it will not just be for our tenants, but for all New Yorkers”

And it already is. One World Trade Center had the president’s column, signed by some of the most powerful men in the western world, but 4 World Trade Center had the people’s column, signed by everyone in attendance (the press included). It is a ritual, as one attendee pointed out, that dates back to the time of the Vikings: “There’s a whole Wikipedia page about it,” under “topping out.” There you will find that it comes from an “ancient Scandinavian religious practice of placing a tree on the top of a new building to appease the tree-dwelling spirits of their ancestors that had been displaced.”

Silverstein Properties had arranged for a barbecue for workers on the site that day, and already the grill was going when everyone shuffled outside and the final beam was hoisted into place. R&B impresario BeBe Winans sang a rendition of “God Bless America” that soared as high as the tower and as slow as the beam crawling up its side.

With that charcoal smoke wafting through the air, it could have been ten years ago, or a thousand. Hopefully the spirits and the ancestors were appeased.

Larry Silverstein and a coterie of elected officials sign the final column. (Joe Woolhead/Silverstein Properties)

Two weeks ago, The Observer got a tour of 4 World Trade Center and called it the nicest building at ground zero, including videographic proof. The 72-story tower topped out today in a biggish ceremony (no presidents, governors or mayors were in attendance, though plenty of other local pols) led by the building's developer, Larry Silverstein. Here is a video of the final column rising, with a full report to come later today. (Apologies about the poor audio quality. Our camera died, so we had to use our cell phone.)

Meanwhile, on the other end of the site, 4 World Trade Center was quietly rising. Today, Silverstein Properties announced that the tower will have its topping out ceremony this Monday, when the building reaches its final height of 974 feet.

What about 1 World Trade Center? The Port Authority did not respond to requests for comment as to when its topping out ceremony might be, but a World Trade Center source said it could come as early as Tuesday.

When building buildings, especially symbolic ones, every little milestone tends to be freighted with attention. The building reaches street level. The building is halfway. It has its first glass. It has reached a hundred stories. It is taller than any other.

This is ignoring dozens of other benchmarks, no doubt. Whether we want to or not, no one can help but care deeply about these projects.

But in the construction industry, only three really count: groundbreaking, topping out, opening. We are about to get two of those at the most watched construction project since the Tower of Babel. Does it matter who gets there first? With their varying heights, timelines, designs, delays, developers, interests and complexities, it would be a mistake to compare these two just because they are a few hundred yards apart and are the remnants of the same terrorist attack.

If anything, this is a happy coincidence, another moment of celebration at a site where once there was only mourning, another step closer to the World Trade Center just being another piece of New York again.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

There's a terrace available on the 56th floor of 4 World Trade Center (Silverstein Properties/NYO)

The building, with setback, sans garden. (Silverstein Properties)

The terraces at 7 Bryant Park. (PKF&P)

Maybe we were wrong, maybe 4 World Trade Center, rather than going unnoticed, is one of the hottest properties in the city. After all, it caught fire yesterday.

Terrible jokes aside, there are some serious amenities, beyond the views and nifty notched corners, that could attract some of those tentative tenants to the building. One in particular is a roof garden at the 56th-story roof garden.

We were reminded of this while browsing a slideshow on Curbed of 7 Bryant Park (the Hines-developed beauty formerly known as 1065 A of A that just got financed) that also happens to have a nice little terrace at the tower's setback.

Still, that is nothing compared to what is on offer at 4 World Trade, which you can see around the 2:30 market in our video. "The right tenant can basically do whatever they want up here," Jeremy Moss, director of leasing for Silverstein Properties, told us during our tour. "It's a rare amenity."

Indeed, and surprisingly comfortable for being many hundreds of feet up in the air. For illustrative purposes, The Observer has mocked up the terrace in the above image.

If it were possible for a skyscraper to quietly rise nearly a thousand feet into the sky with little notice, 4 World Trade Center would be the building to do it. It is not simply that its big brother across ground zero is stealing all the attention, though it is. When 1 World Trade Center tops out at the end of the week, following a Flag Day ceremony led by President Barack Obama, it will be another milestone for the site, one of the last. When 4 World Trade Center achieves the same fate sometime next month, will anyone notice? If not, that would be a shame, because this may well be the nicer of the two.

That a 977-foot tower has gone unnoticed is partly the point. Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, 4 World Trade Center has a quiet splendor hidden within its still skin. Across the way, 1 World Trade Center is stolid, impenetrable, a symbol of recovery but also defensiveness. Seeing it now, from JFK or the Jersey Turnpike, a hole in the skyline filled, is thrilling, but like the original Twin Tower, 1 World Trade Center still imposes itself on the skyline. By contrast, 4 World Trade Center becomes a part of it.

Part of this comes from simple gestures, like the iridescent glass that makes the building disappear into the clouds, or the almost platonic geometries of the structure. And while the building may not have captured the notice of New Yorkers, tenants are keen on the building, with a number of them close to deals ranging from one floor to six or more, according to Silverstein Partners.

In a decade or more, when the entire site is finished, it will be a triumph, especially if each of the four towers can stand out as their own. One World Trade Center will certainly be the head of the family, while 4 World Trade will be the beautiful daughter everyone secretly adores.

If it were possible for a skyscraper to quietly rise nearly a thousand feet into the sky with little notice, 4 World Trade Center would be the building to do it. It is not simply that its big brother across ground zero is stealing all the attention, though it is. When 1 World Trade Center tops out at the end of the week, following a Flag Day ceremony led by President Barack Obama, it will be another milestone for the site, one of the last. When 4 World Trade Center achieves the same fate sometime next month, will anyone notice? If not, that would be a shame, because this may well be the nicer of the two.

That a 977-foot tower has gone unnoticed is partly the point. Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, 4 World Trade Center has a quiet splendor hidden within its still skin. Across the way, 1 World Trade Center is stolid, impenetrable, a symbol of recovery but also defensiveness. Seeing it now, from JFK or the Jersey Turnpike, a hole in the skyline filled, is thrilling, but like the original Twin Tower, 1 World Trade Center still imposes itself on the skyline. By contrast, 4 World Trade Center becomes a part of it.

Part of this comes from simple gestures, like the iridescent glass that makes the building disappear into the clouds, or the almost platonic geometries of the structure. And while the building may not have captured the notice of New Yorkers, tenants are keen on the building, with a number of them close to deals ranging from one floor to six or more, according to Silverstein Partners.

In a decade or more, when the entire site is finished, it will be a triumph, especially if each of the four towers can stand out as their own. One World Trade Center will certainly be the head of the family, while 4 World Trade will be the beautiful daughter everyone secretly adores.

New developments like 1 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, and Edward Minskoff's 51 Astor Place, are all slated to hit the market in 2013. The last time NYC had this much new space becoming available was in 1989, said Cassidy Turley's Robert Sammons.

But this isn't giving developers like Mr. Minskoff a roaring case of agita and insomnia.

"I sleep well at night," Mr. Minskoff told The WSJ . 

Mr. Minskoff not pictured.

As WSJ (and Commercial Observer alumni Laura Kusisto) points out:

"... the bulge in the delivery pipeline comes at a time when demand in the New York office market is showing signs of flagging because of the contraction in the financial-services industry. Tenants with more than 5,000 square feet leased 5.9 million square feet in the fourth quarter, compared with 6 million square feet in the third quarter and 6.2 million square feet in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Colliers International.

Also, financial-services firms are likely to pull back from more than 2 million square feet of space requirements in the next couple of years. That's going to put pressure on owners to possibly cut rents to fill space in their towers."

In short, there's going to be a whole lotta inventory, but not too many takers, some fear. Unveiling new space at a painful time in the market, much like the struggling 11 Times Square building (which was built during the downturn and is now roughly 60 percent vacant), can spell restless nights for owners, Ms. Kusisto reports.

"Manhattan development tends to run in cycles. There was an enormous surge of new construction in the late 1980s as developers scrambled to take advantage of expiring tax breaks.

The result: Many speculative buildings hit the market just as the national economy went into the recession of the early 1990s. Many of the developers wound up losing their buildings to banks and some of the projects sat empty for years."

Other possible concerns are tenants who are becoming more hip to smaller and more efficient office spaces. When the leases for these tenants come up, they are taking less, not more, space.

And if firms flock for the newer buildings, it will come at the expense of older ones.

"'What you end up with is a segmented marketplace, where certain buildings are going to lease and other buildings might just languish with empty space,'" says Paul Glickman, of Jones Lang LaSalle, who is on the team leasing 51 Astor."

But such concerns are not keeping Mr. Minskoff and World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein up at night... at least, not in 2012.

drosen@observer.com 

Prosecutors painted James Lomma, the head of New York Crane & Equipment Corp., as a man who passed on a crucial repair job on the faulty crane in favor of the bottom line.

Wreckage from Upper East Side Crane Collapse.

"They were killed because of one man's greed," said Manhattan District Attorney Eli Cherkasky in his opening statements inside a packed Manhattan Supreme Courtroom Tuesday, according to an Associated Press report.

Mr. Lomma is currently standing criminal trial for the 2008 crane collapse that took place on East 91st Street. The 200-foot crane was working on the 14th floor of a high rise residential development when the top part of the crane broke off. The debris then fell into the building and down below, crushing a sewer company worker, Ramadan Kurtaj, 27. The collapse also nearly beheaded Donald Leo, 30, who was in the crane's cab during the time of the accident. Both men died. A third construction worker, Simeon Alexis, was seriously injured.

In its 2010 indictment, prosecutors said Mr. Lomma, 66, and mechanic Tibor Varganyl used Chinese firm RTR Bearing to replace a cracked turntable on the crane, which allows the upper parts of the rig to swivel.

Mssrs. Lomma and Varganyl were told by two other companies that work on replacing the turntable would take at least seven months and $34,000. RTR Bearing pledged to come up with the part for nearly $20,000 in three months, prosecutors said at the time.

But even RTR Bearing had its doubts about the repair, sending an email that warned "we don't have confidence on this welding," prosecutors said.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. accused Lomma of wanting to speed up repairs to the 25-year-old crane to prevent losing roughly $50,000 in rental fees for leasing out the rig to other companies.

Mr. Varganyi, 65, plead guilty to criminally negligent homicide and is expected to be sentenced in April. He could possibly avoid jail time if he testifies against Mr. Lomma, The Associated Press reported.

"This five week trial will show that James Lomma had acted entirely responsibly, and the prosecution's opening statement was more fiction than fact," Paul Schechtman, one of Mr. Lomma's defense attorneys, told The Commercial Observer yesterday.

This crane accident happened two months after a separate crane collapse in Manhattan killed seven people.

Since 2008, the city Department of Buildings has implemented more than 25 new construction safety laws, created new inspectorial units, and increased training of its employees, said Tony Sclafani, a spokesman for the city agency.

"The Building Department has really clamped down on who is operating, who is responsible, who's got licenses, whether they're trained, I think there has been a vast tightening of the protocols for insuring greater compliance and the penalties for non-compliance, if there are any future incidences," said Barry LePatner, an authority on construction and founder of law firm LePatner & Associates who authored the books "Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets" and "Too Big to Fall."

The new mandates pushed forth by the Department of Buildings, which includes increasing the number of crane parts privy to inspection from 35 to 200, has lead to a 18 percent drop in construction accidents in 2011, added Mr. Sclafani.

"Stricter enforcement and increased industry outreach has created a greater result of safety throughout the industry," said Mr. Sclafani.

That's not to say crane accidents no longer occur in New York City.

Last week, a crane situated atop the 4 World Trade Center development was lifting a load of steel beams when its crane cable popped, sending the steel to fall 40 stories below and on top of a flatbed truck. A construction worker was slightly injured on the scene.

That accident is still under investigation, said Mr. Sclafani.

Drosen@observer.com

A rendering of 4 World Trade Center (terror crane not pictured)

The accident happened at 4 World Trade Center just before 10 a.m. this morning. The crane was lifting a load of steel off a flatbed truck when the cable snapped, sending the steel right back down to the truck, a source close to the matter told The Commercial Observer.

A man, believed to be one of the workers, was treated for minor injuries at the scene and was released.

One witness told DNAInfo that he thought it was another plane that hit the site:

"All of a sudden I heard a woosh, the cable snapped and the entire load came falling," said Matt Bergen, an engineer working at the site. "I originally thought it was another plane, because it sounded just like a plane. I'm amazed it didn't hit the building or anyone on the ground."

Located at 150 Greenwich Street, the 72-story 4 World Trade Center tower will be the fourth-tallest skyscraper on the World Trade Center site.

Tishman Construction, one of the construction managers on the site, is expected to release a statement about the accident shortly.

UPDATE (12:17 P.M)

A Tishman spokesman released this statement:

“This morning around 10 am, the cable of a crane broke, causing the steel it was lifting to fall approximately 40 stories back onto the flatbed truck that had transported the steel into the World Trade Center site.  The incident occurred within an enclosed section of the site, which is not accessible to the public.  No one was injured as a result of the fall.  We are investigating the matter in full cooperation with the Port Authority, FDNY and NYC Department of Buildings.   The job is partially shut down pending the investigation.”

 

drosen@observer.com

The city will occupy 14 floors, or 582,000 square feet, in the second tower going up at the World Trade Center site, at an annual rate of $56.60 a square foot, the New York Post reported on its Web site Friday.

The city is acquiring a huge swath of prime downtown office space, even as the mayor preaches fiscal prudence and city agencies are trying to get rid of 400,000 square feet of unused office space. At 250 Broadway, where the City Council is housed, the rent is just $35.07 a square foot through 2014, according to the Post.

Two-thirds of the space at 4 WTC is now spoken for, with the Port Authority already slated to move in as well. The tower is expected to be completed in 2013, and the city's promise to lease space was instrumental in allowing construction to move forward.

One city official told the Post that the package negotiated was made primarily to facilitate the development of the troubled World Center site: "The city could have committed additional cash or capital resources, but the promise to take space was the more desireable [sic] approach for us," said the official.

lkusisto@observer.com