Posted Nov 30, 2018, 3:32 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 51,869
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From and interview with Larry Silverstein...
https://commercialobserver.com/2018/...y-silverstein/
BY CATHY CUNNINGHAM
NOVEMBER 28, 2018
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Larry Silverstein’s name has become synonymous with the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, but the Silverstein Properties chairman has many other projects in the works.
On a particularly rainy day in New York City, Commercial Observer caught up with Silverstein over hot chocolate and freshly-baked cookies (the best this reporter has ever tasted) at his office at 7 World Trade Center.
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...You recently received the Urban Land Institute’s Visionary Leadership in Land Use award. What does this mean to you, in the context of your work at the World Trade Center?
Is it visionary? I suppose so. Is it an achievement? Sure, I suppose so. Where the hell the time has gone? I don’t quite know. But we’ve spent 17 years since 9/11 rebuilding the Trade Center. I acquired the Twin Towers six weeks before 9/11, and so the circumstance was obliterating from the standpoint of eliminating the buildings we had acquired for $3.2 billion. It changed my life and the direction of my life, because the next 17 years required a hugely intensive focus on anything and everything to do with respect to rebuilding the Trade Center.
Where did you begin?
One of the first things we had to do was to try to recover the multiple billions of dollars that would be needed to rebuild as it turned out that we had to litigate with 22 insurance companies. That ultimately produced court verdicts in our favor and enabled us to collect $4.5 billion, although that turned out to be totally inadequate in terms of rebuilding—but that’s besides the point.
.....now, we’re deeply involved in negotiations for Tower 2 [at 200 Greenwich Street], which will be 2.8 million square feet. End of day, it’s been a labor of love, a major personal commitment to rebuild it and it’s been a fascinating study in human nature.
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Has your World Trade Center vision been realized, so far?
It has been totally realized. We just have to finish Tower 2. And once that’s done then I’ll say, “Ok, I quit. I’m gonna find something else to do with my time.”
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I understand that you’re a fan of street art and that some of it is finding its way into World Trade Center. How did that come about?
When we finished the original 7 World Trade Center, I realized that I had put too much of the same marble in the lobby of the building and it looked like a mausoleum. I remember saying to myself , “How could I do such a dumb thing?” I called my wife and said, “Sweetheart, come down here and take a look with me.” She came down and said: “Larry, it’s a mausoleum. Maybe you should try finding some contemporary art to change it.” So we starting looking. We found a piece by [abstract expressionist] Al Held, a major artist of that time [the late 1980s], a very graphic and hard-edged piece with lots of color and activity. Then we went out to find another, a piece by Lichtenstein. We proceeded to buy different pieces of art and developed a terrific collection in that lobby. Of course all that was destroyed on 9/11. The good thing is that we weren’t destroyed, but the art was gone.
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You also allowed artists to paint a floor in Tower 4, too?
We had an empty floor and we let a group of artists go up there and told them: “Paint to your heart’s delight.” And we let them paint the floors, the ceilings, the windows. One day the CEO of Spotify came in and we took him up to that floor and he fell in love with it. He ended up leasing 400,000 square feet of space there. Now we’re thinking about what we’ll do in Towers 3 and 2. We have street art on the containment wall around Tower 2, we gave the artists the opportunity to have exposure there, which is enormously important.
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