An Interview With Larry Silverstein

The Wall Street Journal this morning carries an interesting interview with 911 CT target Larry Silverstein, mostly discussing the rebuilding of the World Trade Center complex. The idea that this guy has managed some sort of cakewalk boondoggle is pretty silly.

Larry Silverstein began spending every morning at the World Trade Center shortly after he inked a 99-year deal to operate the complex in July 2001. The New York developer would have breakfast at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of the North tower, and then meet for several hours with tenants. But on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he was at home, dressing for a doctor's appointment his wife had made for him, instead of at his usual table at Windows. "I had said to my wife, sweetheart, cancel my doctor's appointment. I have so much to do at the Trade Center," he recalls. "She got very upset and told me I had to go. As it turns out, that saved my life."

While he was still getting ready for his doctor's appointment, Mr. Silverstein learned that the first plane hijacked by terrorists had struck the North tower. He turned on his television just in time to see the second plane fly into the South tower. No one at Windows on the World survived.

A few weeks ago, as Mr. Silverstein and I met at his headquarters on the 38th floor of 7 World Trade Center, the 52-story skyscraper that he quickly rebuilt just north of where the twin towers once stood, we could watch the reconstruction of the rest of the Trade Center site proceed. He pointed out to me the footprints of the three other office towers he is developing there and predicted with some confidence that the site, which will include a fourth skyscraper, the so-called Freedom Tower, as well as a new transportation terminal, will be completed within five years. "I just want to hang around until then to see this through to completion," the 75-year-old developer told me.

Mr. Silverstein can take some satisfaction in watching the cranes operate after a long, tortuous and very public planning process in which the commercial revival of the site was often in doubt. He's fought against skeptics who claimed that downtown Manhattan would never again support an office market after the devastating attacks. He's listened patiently to some relatives of those who died on 9/11 as they lobbied against redevelopment, claiming the site was "hallowed ground." He's squared off against public officials who tried to hijack the redevelopment for their own agendas, pushing to turn Ground Zero into everything from parkland to an arts-and-cultural center to a giant housing project.