But today, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey doesn’t brag about the records it sets. One World Trade Center, born the Freedom Tower and taken over by the Port in 2006, will be the most expensive office building in the world. The “Vehicle Security Center,” an underground tour bus garage and road network serving the World Trade Center complex, may very well be the most expensive parking garage in history.

And then there’s the PATH station to New Jersey, the most troubled project at one of the world’s most troubled construction sites. At $3.74 billion, plus another $200 million in contingencies, the “Transportation Hub” at the World Trade Center—not even the busiest station in the Financial District—will be far and away the most expensive train station built in modern history.

The Hub, as it’s known in Port Authority speak, will be the crowning artistic statement of the World Trade Center complex, perhaps the last grand gesture at a site that was supposed to be full of them. “Let me draw for you what I cannot say,” its architect, Santiago Calatrava, said at the unveiling in 2004. Then, wrote Newsweek, “he fluently sketched a child releasing a bird—a spellbinding image that had inspired his design.”

When the grandiose ambitions and the emotions of 9/11 met with the famously flush Port Authority, disaster struck. Mission creep, an inattentive governor and extreme politicization sent costs skyward, eventually outstripping even the record-setting resources devoted to it. Its wings had to be stilled and its supports thickened, the bird in flight devolving into an immobilized stegosaurus. The world’s most expensive train station, it seems, was not expensive enough to contain all of New York’s dreams.

For nearly $4 billion, most cities could build entire subway lines. Even the MTA, which frequently breaks cost records of its own, managed to build its Fulton Center hub, a renovation of five densely tangled lines, for $1.4 billion. Nobody’s subway tunnels cost more than the MTA’s, but even they could fund most of the second phase of the Second Avenue subway, from 96th Street to 125th, with that kind of cash.

The World Trade Center PATH station is actually not a particularly busy one. “No one intelligently could say that the level of design and architecture associated with it was commensurate with the level of usage,” said one former commissioner. (Like nearly everyone we interviewed for this story, he would only speak on the condition of anonymity.)

The Port Authority likes to play up the significance of the station by calling it Manhattan’s third-largest transit hub. That’s a tenuous claim at best. Were the PATH system to be integrated into the New York City subway (no, nearly $4 billion does not buy a free transfer to the subway), the World Trade Center stop would barely crack the top 10 busiest stations.

Once a bird in flight, the Hub has devolved into an immobile, skeletal stegosaurus.

With its contribution to the project, which was supposed to cost it virtually nothing, ballooning to nearly $1 billion, the Port Authority now finds itself unable to fund the sorts of regional transportation projects that have traditionally justified its existence.

In 2009, to pay for ballooning World Trade Center costs, the Port cut $5 billion from its 10-year capital plan. That pleased the bond markets temporarily as Moody’s upgraded the Port Authority’s bond rating the next year, only to knock it down again in 2012 due to still-increasing World Trade Center costs and the fear that the Port’s seemingly limitless ability to raise bridge and tunnel tolls may in fact be limited.

From the proposed ARC rail tunnel beneath the Hudson into Midtown (canceled by Chris Christie in 2010) and an extension of the PATH train to Newark Liberty International Airport (at a cost of around $500 million) to a thorough renovation of La Guardia Airport ($1 billion in capital funding was cut in 2009), the region has needs, and the Port Authority is struggling to fund them.

Santiago Calatrava.

Any discussion of the cost of the Hub must start with Santiago Calatrava. He was given the job just two years after the attacks, when emotions were running high and George Pataki was eyeing a presidential bid. A starchitect of the highest order, Mr. Calatrava was known for his complex feats of engineering in fashioning soaring, animalistic structures, with a specialty in public works projects.

The architecture critics were smitten. The design, The New York Times’s architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote, “should satisfy those who believe that buildings planned for ground zero must aspire to a spiritual dimension,” and he hoped that New Yorkers would detect the “metaphysical element” in Mr. Calatrava’s work. His design was supposed to spur development throughout the neighborhood and lead lower Manhattan, still reeling from the attacks, out of its malaise. To the extent that the critics were worried, it was about how it would fit in with the architectural context of the site, not its cost.

Mr. Calatrava would eventually become to be remembered with regret among those in his hometown of Valencia, where his City of Arts and Sciences ended up costing more than three times its initial $400 million budget. But at the time, Mr. Calatrava could do no wrong.

In New York, his starting point was far higher than it had been in Valencia. The Federal Transit Administration pledged $1.9 billion for the project early on, and the Port Authority would throw in another few hundred million—a number that would climb much higher. (The feds, acting as enablers to the Port’s profligacy, ended up quietly throwing in another billion dollars to cover some of the cost overruns.)

But at this point, years before construction was to start, the project was, as one former Port Authority commissioner put it, “proposed to get an expansive federal grant at a point in time when nobody really knew what it would cost in its entirety.”

The feds were supposed to pay for nearly the whole thing, and the number was more of a placeholder. The fate of the site was still in jeopardy—Silverstein Properties (which had signed a lease for the site just months before the 2001 attacks) and the Port Authority were still fighting over who would build what, the tower designs hadn’t been finalized and security issues hadn’t been thought through. The Port Authority didn’t have a good grip on what the project would entail—a spokesman told The Observer that the initial estimates for the Hub were “unrealistic.”

Of the nearly $4 billion eventually budgeted for the Hub, a fair amount—the Port Authority has never clearly broken down the costs for the public, but the number likely has 10 digits—went toward common infrastructure that, in any other project without the emotions and political backing of the World Trade Center site, might not have passed the FTA’s muster.

There was $75 million, for example, that was spent to build a deck over the Hub to support the memorial. Another few hundred million are going to infrastructure costs on Greenwich Street with only a tenuous connection to the Hub.

The site, shared among various public and private entities and budgets, includes a lot of common infrastructure that appears to have been disproportionately billed to the Port Authority. The Hub is shouldering significant costs in rebuilding the site’s foundation, and it is also building a web of pedestrian passageways leading from the Hub to the private office towers on the site and across West Street to Brookfield Properties’ World Financial Center.

To win these concessions, Larry Silverstein took advantage of the Port Authority’s eagerness to show some progress on the site. He played hardball with the government from 2004 to 2006, a period of acrimonious negotiations between Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority over who would be responsible for what aspects of the site.

His lobbyists were the best of the best. He hired Global Strategy Group, whose clients have included Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, to lobby for him, along with David Samson, who would go on to become the chairman of the Port Authority.

Given the choice between making Larry Silverstein pay his way and trying to get the site finished as quickly as possible, the Port chose the more expensive option. (Whether it worked is debatable—3 World Trade Center is a stump, and 2 World Trade Center is nonexistent; both are awaiting tenants to restart construction, with delivery now slated for 2015 and 2016.) The feds were throwing even more money at the Port Authority—nearly $2.9 billion—and it was the path of least resistance.

After responsibility for the site was ironed out, there was one last chance to bring the Transportation Hub’s cost back down to earth. George Pataki had promised the moon during his years in office, but Eliot Spitzer and his Port Authority chief, Anthony Shorris, wanted to keep the project within its budget.

Mr. Spitzer took a more business-minded approach to the Transportation Hub than Mr. Pataki. “The best way to explain the cost of downtown was the opportunity cost—what was not done because you had to do that?” said Mr. Spitzer in a telephone interview with The Observer. “Do you do Calatrava, or do you do the rebuild of Penn Station? That’s the way I forced us to think about it.”

His pick for executive director of the Port Authority was Anthony Shorris, who spent most of the ’80s as Ed Koch’s deputy budget director and finance commissioner and the early ’90s as the Port Authority’s first deputy executive director.

The public hadn’t yet been clued in, but costs were spiraling out of control. Working with Steven Plate, the director for World Trade Center construction at the Port, Mr. Shorris set to work on a plan that, he thought, would keep the project within its budget, which at the time topped out at around $2.5 billion, without the Port Authority having to contribute $1 billion of its own money. “I was determined not to severely diminish the Port Authority’s capacity because of the World Trade Center,” Mr. Shorris told The Observer.

Mr. Shorris wanted to strip the concourse and platforms of the most expensive Calatrava-designed elements and make use of more of the existing PATH infrastructure that had been serving commuters for a decade.

He told The New York Times in April of 2008 that he would put the full-fat project out to bid, but that “we want to make sure we have that alternative in place that does price out at $2.5 billion, so we know that we have an option to go to.”

But that was the last the public heard of Mr. Shorris’s ideas to keep the Transportation Hub within its budget. Eliot Spitzer resigned less than a month later, and Mr. Shorris resigned several days after that.

When David Paterson took office, he hired Christopher Ward to head the Port Authority. Where Mr. Shorris planned and consulted, Mr. Ward built. The Daily News, at the end of his tenure, called him a guy who “got things done,” but rapid progress came at a price.

Decisions under Mr. Paterson’s watch, said one former commissioner, “were really very heavily driven by the optics.” It was seven years after the attacks, and nothing on the site had even started to rise from the ground—an embarrassment to New York City. Mr. Paterson, who would not comment for this article, wanted tangible signs of success, said several sources close to the project, and he was less concerned than Mr. Spitzer about the financial hit to the Port Authority.

“Candidly,” said one former commissioner, Mr. Ward “was building it for you guys”—i.e., the press. New York’s media lambasted both the skyrocketing costs and cascading delays at the project, but it cheered Chris Ward for fast-tracking construction.

With the World Trade Center memorial sitting partly on top of the Transportation Hub, the logical order of construction was to finish the Hub first, and then worry about the at-grade memorial elements. Mr. Paterson’s command to Chris Ward to “get this fucking memorial open by 9/11”—the 10th anniversary of the attacks—meant the order of construction had to be reversed, with a deck built over the unfinished Hub to support the weight of the memorial.

Aside from his order to finish the memorial by the September 11, 2011, David Paterson was by most accounts not terribly concerned with how much it would all cost, or indeed with the World Trade Center site much at all. “We got lots of visits from Spitzer’s guys and Pataki’s guys,” said one former commissioner, “but I don’t believe we ever got any visit from Paterson’s.”

The hard costs of rushing the memorial were not significant in the context of a project measured in the billions of dollars—only $75 million, according to Port Authority documents—but the shift in focus from cutting costs to hurrying construction meant that Mr. Shorris’s value engineering of the below-grade elements, from which the majority of project costs would come, largely went out the window.

With the Port’s permission, Mr. Calatrava went all out in his design for the train station.

The Port Authority under David Paterson and Chris Ward did make some cuts to the design, including, notably, the now-infamous devolution of the light bird into a heavy stegosaurus. But the majority of Mr. Calatrava’s elaborate underground designs, throughout the web of passageways and retail space, were retained. The cost is now closing in on $4 billion, and Mr. Shorris’s more ambitious plan to keep it within its budget died a quiet death.

In the private sector, these things often turn out differently. Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn is one example. Despite Bruce Ratner’s “man crush” on Frank Gehry, in the words of one of his employees, and the nearly $100 million in fees that he paid for the design of the undulating apartment towers and stadium, Mr. Ratner didn’t hesitate to drop the starchitect from Atlantic Yards when the costs got too high—costs that were partly the result of Mr. Gehry’s insistence on designing the interior elements down to minute details like the stadium seats, something that should sound familiar to the Port Authority.

As an independent authority without access to the treasures of New York and New Jersey, the Port Authority is somewhat insulated from criticism and oversight. Its money comes from the cars that stream through its bridges and tunnels—the George Washington Bridge, with its $13 cash toll, is its biggest moneymaker, bringing in around half a billion a year. Its costs are hidden not only from the users of the World Trade Center buildings and Transportation Hub, but also from legislators in New York and New Jersey.

In its early years, the Port exerted its freedom from political pressure and acted independently of the governors. But decades later, it’s turned into something else entirely. Too juicy a target to remain autonomous, the Port Authority has devolved into a sort of slush fund for the governors of New York and New Jersey, its revenues out of reach of the states’ legislatures.

And then there’s the question of whether the Hub will have the intended uplifting effect on development in the Financial District. Office leasing is weak across the whole city, and there are huge vacancies in the towers that are going up (while half of them are not). Already chock full of architectural landmarks, the Financial District isn’t Valencia or Bilbao; it doesn’t need a monument to put it on the map.

Despite the staggering cost increases, some at the Port Authority—even those highly critical of the project’s cost—see it ultimately as a success. “At the end of the day,” said one former commissioner, “we didn’t fail—it got built.” (“It’s getting built” would be more accurate; the Hub is just now starting to rise above ground level and isn’t scheduled to open for at least another two years.)

These low expectations are a testament to the tremendous failings of the project—that the world’s most expensive train station, at nearly twice its initial budget despite design cutbacks, can be viewed in any light as a success.

Maybe, some years into the future (the Port Authority says two and a half), with tens of thousands of commuters from New Jersey pouring out from beneath the wings of Mr. Calatrava’s would-be concrete and glass bird, nobody will remember the cost.

But every time they can’t get a seat on a PATH train at 2 a.m., or get held up by delays in the 100-year-old North River Tunnels to Midtown, or emerge from a decrepit La Guardia Airport, they’ll have the Transportation Hub and other World Trade Center projects to thank.

From the story:

"We'd be pleased in this market to start off with a $60 square foot rent, but if someone wanted to talk about a million square foot deal, we're open for business," said Ward.

"If someone wants daily access to that view from the top on the 88th floor, we'd hope to talk rents of $100 and upwards for that really valuable space," he said.

That's significantly lower than the $80 per square foot deal the agency struck with Beijing Vantone last year. Then again, perhaps Vantone had to pay a premium for its lack of a strong New York track record. The company had been involved with two prior New York leasing deals that had fallen through.

The calculus for pricing rents in the building is a bit different than the typical new office tower. At $3.2 billion for 2.6 million square feet of space, it is perhaps the world's most expensive major office tower and is not expected to make money in the short- or mid-term for the agency. (History repeats itself: the original World Trade Center towers, which were also built by the Port Authority and propped up by government tenants, were a huge drain on the agency's balance sheet for years).

While the Port Authority surely wants to be mindful about its losses, one would imagine that whoever is running the agency over the next few years will face political pressure to get it leased up, presumably leading to lower rents than comparable buildings in private hands. After all, an empty, money-losing, government-built tower is far more of a political liability than a full, money-losing, government-built tower.

The agency is also planning to bring on one of two private developers--Stephen Ross or Douglas Durst--to be the new public face of the tower. While the agency has said each is planning to invest about $100 million for a stake of the tower, it has not disclosed the details of how the winning developer would get a return on his money, making it impossible to evaluate how the deal will impact the agency financially.

ebrown@observer.com

There is a Times editorial defending the Port Authority and saying it should not be using its money to back financing on a speculative office tower, as the city and developer Larry Silverstein have demanded.

On the opposite page: an op-ed from Mayor Bloomberg and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, jointly calling on the Port Authority to put up more money.

The two pieces come at a critical time, when the parties are in intense talks to try to bridge a gap and get a financing plan that would allow for two towers to rise—with the financial backing of the public sector—in addition to the one fully publicly-financed and built tower rising on the other end of the site (One World Trade Center). An arbitration panel set a deadline of Friday for the parties to reach a deal, although one would think the panel would extend that date if requested, given that it has shown no willingness to dictate a solution at the site.

Port Authority executive director Chris Ward, speaking Thursday morning at a New York Building Congress breakfast, suggested talks were making some headway. "I think we've made progress," Mr. Ward told reporters." "There is a sense of a common goal."

The arguments of the mayor and Mr. Silver are familiar: It's not in the Port Authority's long-term interest to leave part of the site a hole, and it should further prioritize the project. They attacked the agency's "continued intransigence" in the op-ed:

Delays at the site have already cost the Port Authority tens of millions of public dollars. Not only would further delays cost much more, but rent proceeds from a thriving World Trade Center would provide money for the Port Authority's other transportation projects around the city, including Moynihan Station and a new passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

The editorial was more forgiving, arguing that the "last thing a battered downtown needs is a nest of empty office buildings" given the rising vacancy rates, particularly ones that are subsidized:

The ring of skyscrapers was a dynamic part of the architect Daniel Libeskind's original master plan for the site. Given the right market conditions, they may someday appear. But the Port Authority should not be obliged to provide what the market and Mr. Silverstein cannot. It must keep its finances safe for the region's transportation facilities and concentrate on making sure that the memorial is available to visitors by Sept. 11, 2011.

ebrown@observer.com

Heretofore, there has been no accord, and construction has been stopped below-ground on part of the site. Given the project’s extraordinary physical interdependence, stalled construction of the office towers threatens completion of major elements in the rest of the site.

And at least as of Wednesday afternoon, none of the parties seemed in a position to come out of the Gracie summit holding hands and declaring victory, and there had been few behind-the-scenes talks to come to any conceptual agreement. The root of the problem is both financial and structural, as each of the players has little desire or ability to put in substantially more money, and all approach this from different standpoints.

Here’s a look at each of the stakeholders expected at the summit and generally where they’re coming from:

Larry Silverstein, developer of Towers 2, 3 and 4

Be it a personal longing, his many years (he’s 78) or a capitalistic desire, Mr. Silverstein and his deputy Janno Lieber have insisted that they will settle for no less than two towers built right now. His offer to the Port Authority has him using all his insurance money, but nothing beyond that, a position that will surely be tested in the summit. Given the delays and public and political commitment to the site’s rebuilding, the crux of Mr. Silverstein’s position is that the public sector has a responsibility to see those towers built, and in this economy, that means the Port Authority must help finance them.

He seems ready and willing to test that position in court should the stalemate continue.  And unlike everyone else at the table, he is mostly impervious to scathing editorials, poll numbers and the public backlash that would accompany long-term delays at the site. It is for this reason that he very much has the upper hand in these negotiations, as without his assent, delays will continue and major portions of the site—including the PATH hub, bus parking, the vehicle security center—will go unfinished.

Mayor Bloomberg

The host of the meeting, the mayor has taken a more conciliatory role than in the past and tried to play mediator this time around. His Economic Development Corporation president, Seth Pinsky, has undertaken a financial analysis at the site. Along with Deputy Mayor Bob Lieber, the Bloomberg administration is expected to urge a framework at the summit to break the impasse. As they don’t have much financial investment in the site, more than anything else, the city officials want a solution that brings forward progress, particularly on the memorial and museum. And so long as the city isn’t putting in new money, it would seem the Bloomberg administration would have every reason to favor two towers over one.

From an economic development standpoint, the added office space helps keep rents lower and increase New York’s competitiveness—not a very popular position among competing landlords or anyone who would have to put up money and risk default. In terms of possible financial commitments to help build the towers, the Port Authority asked that the city increase its rent in Tower 4 from $59 a foot to $65, though for now, the rent is still $59. The city also collects Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs) on the site, which, at least based on a 2003 agreement, are worth about $55 million a year. Forgive that over 20 years, and that’s over $1 billion, though it’s hard to think the mayor’s budget office would allow that to go down without a fight.

Governor Paterson

The governor, along with his Port Authority executive director, Chris Ward, has been resistant to committing additional state funds for the project, which, if they came from anywhere, would come from the Port Authority. He’s been relatively mum on this impasse so far, though Mr. Ward has strenuously denied that the Port Authority has enough money to back financing on two towers at the site, even if it wanted to. (It doesn’t.) Instead, Mr. Ward has offered to back financing on one building, Tower 4, along with asking a number of other concessions from Mr. Silverstein.

Any money that went to finance the towers would put a big dent in the agency’s 10-year capital plan, which finances airport, bus and rail improvements. Already, the capital plan, based on projections from a better economic era, has taken a hit from declining toll revenue and airport traffic. It also seems to have eaten up $2 billion that was slated to go toward an unspecified New York–based transportation project.

NJ Governor Jon Corzine

Along with Governor Paterson, Mr. Corzine has final say over any major action at the Port Authority, an agency that is, by mission, devoted to regional transportation and port issues between the two states. Like Mr. Paterson, officials on the New Jersey side of the river, including the Port Authority’s chairman, Anthony Coscia, have been opposed to putting more money into the World Trade Center project for the purpose of speculative office towers. Given that some of the Port Authority’s spending is split, more or less, dollar for dollar between New York and New Jersey, it’s hard to see how Mr. Corzine would be happy with the agency devoting even more of its 10-year capital plan to the Manhattan-based World Trade Center.

He is a big fan of the planned new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, to which the Port Authority has committed $3 billion in its capital plan. Given that he has a reelection in November he’s trying to win, it’s also hard to see a scenario where Mr. Corzine would support raising tolls at the Hudson River crossings, which could very much be necessary if more is spent on the World Trade Center.

Sheldon Silver, New York Assembly Speaker

The constant advocate for downtown, Mr. Silver called for this summit two weeks ago, saying he was “fed up” with the delays. He pushed the debate toward two towers, calling for all the parties to put in money to make it happen. With that said, he, unlike everyone else at the table, has no direct say in the matter, only a bully pulpit.

A few possible broad outcomes:

-Everyone gives more money; build two towers. This seems like the feel-good option at first glance, if Larry Silverstein, the city and particularly the Port Authority were to agree to up their contributions and break any stalemate. But the big question is, where would the money come from? It’s unclear just how big of a bite financing $3 billion or so in office towers would take out of the Port Authority’s capital plan, but it’s safe to assume it’s going to be large. The agency claims it’s already down to skin and bones in the plan, and there simply is not room to finance a second tower—not that the two governors are willing. Mr. Silverstein, perhaps along with his partner Lloyd Goldman, can surely come up with some money, as 7 World Trade Center is doing quite well, though whatever he can produce—he hasn’t discussed how much he’d be willing to put in of his own equity—isn’t going to be the $2 billion necessary to build the second tower.

-Build one tower; offer Larry a better deal. The Port Authority’s offer to Mr. Silverstein to build one tower was taken as a slap in the face by the developer. The agency called for withholding about $150 million in fees, using all his insurance money in the below-grade infrastructure, and a redesign of the podiums for the two unbuilt towers to a model that does not allow for large ground-floor lobbies (which are attractive to big tenants like banks). Sweeten that deal with boosted rent on the part of the city, podium designs that are more amenable to Mr. Silverstein and a more acceptable fee structure, and perhaps Mr. Silverstein would consent to a deal. But at least based on his rhetoric—he and Mr. Lieber have insisted that they aren’t going to settle for less than two towers—that seems unlikely.

-Eternal litigation battle; stalled construction. No one seems to want this route, but then again, all the parties are quite far apart. If nothing substantive is to come out of the summit, it’s not hard to see the litigation and arbitration route being the only option left. Before the summit was called, an increasing number of people involved with downtown redevelopment viewed arbitration as the realistic next step. Everything, of course, depends on what comes out of the summit.

ebrown@observer.com

Like virtually everything else involved with the World Trade Center redevelopment, the official phasing out of the name “Freedom Tower” has been a slow process.

The moniker designated by Governor Pataki in 2003 for the site’s tallest building—which is slated to rise to 1776 feet, if you count the tower’s 408-foot antenna—the name has never been popular with the Spitzer and Paterson administrations and it seems to have been slowly (or delicately) drifting off official references.

But on Thursday, March 26—the same day that the Port Authority signed the first lease for the building—officials acknowledged that the name has been dropped, at least by the agency.

“As we market the building, we will ensure that the building is presented in the best possible way,” Tony Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority’s board, told reporters after the lease signing ceremony. “1 World Trade Center is its address. It’s the address that we’re using. It’s the one that’s easiest for people to identify with, and frankly, we’ve gotten a very interested and warm reception to it.”

The agency's executive director, Chris Ward, suggested that if Freedom Tower remains as the name, it will be a "popular" name, not one of the owners.

"There are a lot of buildings that have popular names," he said. "If the Freedom Tower is the popular name as people think about this, that will be the choice of the people and how they think of downtown. On the other hand, this is a piece of real estate. It has an address. Legally, it is 1 World Trade Center."

At least in press releases, the Port Authority took its first step away from the symbolic handle in mid-2007, when it started referring to the tower as “1 World Trade Center, the Freedom Tower” in various contract authorizations. (An agency spokesman, at the time, denied there had been a shift).

Then, after Governor Paterson installed Mr. Ward as director for the agency in May 2008, the name seemed to drop further from view. In public remarks, Mr. Ward seemed to always call it “One World Trade Center,” though in agency reports and press releases, it maintained its designation as “1 World Trade Center, the Freedom Tower.” That is, until Thursday, when the Port Authority’s press release on its high-priced 190,000-square-foot lease with Vantone Industrial Co. relegated the term to a parenthetical: “PORT AUTHORITY AND VANTONE INDUSTRIAL SIGN FIRST LEASE FOR ONE WORLD TRADE CENTER (THE FREEDOM TOWER).”

At the press conference, reporters wondered what had become of Pataki’s name.

Of course, the Freedom Tower has never been all that much about real estate—with a price tag over $3 billion, it’s perhaps the most expensive skyscraper ever per square foot, and is considered a likely terrorist target. So, whether or not the name can ever be dropped from the popular lexicon is an open question.

For what it’s worth, Vantone, as the first tenant to sign a lease, is planning to use its six floors for a purpose that fits far better with the current name preferred by officials. The Chinese company plans to use the space as something of an incubator for Chinese companies doing business in America, a purpose that has local officials and the Partnership for New York City (the city’s main advocacy group for big business) rather excited.

The deal caps off years of back and forth for Vantone. Its chairman, Lun Feng, said through a translator that it’s been 1,285 days since he first discussed the concept with the Partnership’s president, Kathy Wylde, and he’s been back and forth to New York for 30 trips. Prior lease deals at 7 World Trade Center and 195 Broadway fell apart late in the negotiation process, so after the papers were signed today, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief.

The price for the space is rather high, particularly given the uncertainty in the economy. Vantone will pay $85 a foot (though they’re also getting a $5 a foot subsidy from the state) for a 20-year lease on floors 64 through 69 of the 102-story tower.

Update: 5:35 p.m.

This all does not come as welcome news to Mr. Pataki. In a statement, he attacked the decision to drop the name, saying that 1 World Trade Center and 2 World Trade Center should be retired as addresses.

"The Freedom Tower is not simply another piece of real estate and not just a name for marketing purposes,” he said in the statement. “In design and name it is symbolic of our commitment to rise above the attacks of September 11th. Where One and Two World Trade Center once stood there will be a memorial with two voids to honor the heroes we lost, in my view those addresses should never be used again."

The plan that Mr. Shuster is pushing has been urged by various individuals and groups, though has never gained much momentum among key bureaucrats and elected officials.

The crusade on MSNBC doesn’t come at the most opportune time. The Freedom Tower’s core is rising well above street level and hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts have been awarded.

Attention to detail with the redevelopment doesn’t seem to be a focus of Mr. Shuster’s, as on numerous occasions in the weeklong series, he states misinformation as though it’s fact.

An example:

Not to say things are going great with leasing at the Freedom Tower, but in June, the Port Authority announced it had a commitment from Beijing Vantone to take over 180,000 square feet in the building. No “big potential” tenants have been looking closely at the building, though Mr. Shuster may have been referring to Merrill Lynch, which twice considered moving to a different building on the site.

Speaking in an Assembly hearing room at 250 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Silver suggested to Chris Ward, the Port Authority’s executive director, that the project was in need of an independent party that could monitor the timelines and construction at the site, so as to bring attention to any delays or inter-agency problems.

Mr. Ward did not seem intrigued by the suggestion, saying that the redevelopment is “one of the most transparent projects in the region.”

“Your clear answer is, you’re not interested in independent oversight?” Mr. Silver asked back.

“That’s my clear answer,” Mr. Ward responded.

After taking a few questions from reporters in a crowded hallway, Mr. Ward headed to the elevators. Minutes later, he was implicitly called dishonest by Larry Silverstein, the developer building three of the towers at the World Trade Center. Mr. Silverstein, in testimony, suggested Mr. Ward was greatly exaggerating the extent of back-and-forth between all the stakeholders, and Mr. Silverstein said he had not been invited to large stakeholder meetings since Labor Day.

Mr. Silver’s plan comes in response to what officials felt was a distinct lack of candor by the Port Authority, as until Mr. Ward arrived last year, the agency did not go public with the substantial delays and cost problems at the site. A city/state agency, the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, presented a confidential report of its own in early 2007 (with numerous follow-up evaluations since) that showed risk of massive delays. The findings of the report took well over a year before they began to become public.

Mr. Ward’s “description of regularly held meetings did not jive with my impression of what was in fact happening,” Mr. Silverstein said. “Our representatives regularly asked for information, and the degree of information that’s supplied is but a fraction of the information that we have regularly and continually asked for.”

Mr. Silver seemed to be envisioning a similar structure that would monitor construction progress, not just trusting the Port Authority (a bi-state agency that avoids certain New York-specific transparency laws) to be open and honest.

Mr. Silver said that an independent monitor would allow for a structure where “somebody, if nothing else, can call attention to the fact that somewhere, somehow, somebody is delayed. If we had that in 2003 and 2004, to tell the world things were unrealistic, perhaps some agencies would have responded.”

If the Port Authority does not put aside money itself to contract out such review, Mr. Silver said he had other options, such as appropriating money to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (an agency favored by Mr. Silver, but one Mayor Bloomberg says is redundant and should be shuttered) or the LMCCC.

In a statement, a Port Authority spokeswoman said there was “a substantial and appropriate amount of oversight” at the site.

Update 4:20 p.m.:

The Port Authority sent over this response to Mr. Silverstein's charges:

The museum will indeed take considerably longer--earlier studies by the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center found it may not be ready to open until perhaps 2015--as will the complex PATH hub that interconnects with the memorial. Yesterday, the city and the memorial foundation generally agreed on a Port Authority design for the PATH hub that pledges to allow the memorial to be opened by 2011.

That the mayor wants the Port Authority to eat all the overruns is significant, as such overruns are likely to be substantial, certainly in the hundreds of millions of dollars range. The Port Authority has resisted a less costly, simpler design for the PATH hub as the agency tried to preserve the iconic architecture underground for the station.

The mayor, governor and memorial foundation have been pushing very hard for the memorial to open by the symbolic date of 9/11/11. Should the Port Authority be able to meet that deadline, however, the surrounding area will be a large construction site. Greenwich Street, to the east, will be one of the last components to be completed at the site; the northern border will be an unfinished Freedom Tower; the eastern border, a reconstructed Route 9A, will not be finished; and construction will be going on below-grade as the museum and PATH hub are being built.

Mr. Ward’s announcement, as expected, did not outline any specific dates but rather the new director pledged to come back in September with a revised plan for the site [see a PDF of the report here].

The biggest challenge for the agency is the PATH hub, a project budgeted at $2.5 billion with overruns. The project, which encompasses aspects unrelated to PATH such as retail and costly infrastructure for the broader World Trade Center site, is highly unlikely to fit within that budget.

The laundry list of potential problematic issues included an unfinished land deal with St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church; the underpinning of the structure that holds the No. 1 subway line; the demolition of the former Deutsche Bank Building; staging and funding issues for the reconstruction of Route 9A; a deal over how security will be controlled on the site; and the design of the Cortlandt Street subway station. [More on some of these issues in a June 3 Observer article on the matter.]

"We now stand at a crossroads in the rebuilding effort to achieve a fully rebuilt site on an acceptable schedule and within an acceptable budget," Mr. Ward wrote to Governor Paterson in the report's cover letter. "This will require a new way of doing business as we move forward."

From The Observer’s Em Whitney:

Also in the article:

Update 4:00 p.m. 

The folks at Senator Schumer's office just sent over this statement from him. Mr. Schumer has been publicly pushing the idea since March: