One World Trade Center Rises, Along With Its Rents

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was quick to congratulate itself on April 30 when One World Trade Center surpassed the Empire State Building in height, making it New York’s tallest skyscraper. In a news release, David Samson, the agency’s chairman, said the tower was “much more than steel and concrete, it is a symbol of success for the nation.”

The Port Authority is justifiably proud of One World Trade Center, the tallest of six towers that will rise at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. The redevelopment of the site of America’s worst terrorist attack was delayed for years by lawsuits and political squabbling. Now that One World Trade Center has reached 1,271 feet, it has begun to fill the void in the Manhattan skyline where the Twin Towers once stood. When it is finished in 2013, the David Childs-designed skyscraper will be 1,776 feet.

But will the rents soar along with the tower’s height? The Port Authority is asking $75 per square foot in the building—comparable to the average for top-notch commercial space in midtown Manhattan. But real estate experts say the agency has had to discount the price to attract Conde Nast, its anchor tenant, which has agreed to take floors 20-45 in the building. “The market has yet to validate” the Port Authority’s asking rent, says John Wheeler, managing director of real estate broker Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL).

Douglas Durst, chairman of the Durst Organization, which is co-developing One World Trade Center and handling its leasing for the Port Authority, would not discuss the tower’s lease prices. However, he acknowledged that the agency was offering rental subsidies of $5 per square foot. “We’re very optimistic that we’ll have the building fully rented by the date of 2017, 2018,” he says.

The Port Authority has been through this before. Mitchell L. Moss, Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University, says the Port Authority employed similar tactics when it opened the first World Trade Center in 1973. “They had to practically give away space to attract tenants,” he says. “They had dentists in there and artists. They moved a lot of state agencies in to fill the place.” Even so, according to Moss, it took 13 years for the Port Authority to fill the Twin Towers. He says the agency didn’t really attract Wall Street tenants to the complex until after the 1993 terrorist bombing, when it renovated the buildings and upgraded the retail space.

Moss agrees with Durst that it won’t take that long to fill One World Trade Center. The urban studies professor points out that the surrounding neighborhood is no longer the stodgy business district that it was in 1973. It is now filled with expensive residential buildings, fancy restaurants, and fashionable people.

He also says that One World Trade Center is easily accessible by public transportation from New Jersey and Brooklyn, where most Manhattan office workers now live. Surely they will appreciate the upscale additions in lower Manhattan. They may also enjoy saving some money. Moss notes that retailer Century 21?s flagship store is only a short walk from the tower on Cortland Street. “Everybody wants to shop there,” he says.

Leonard is a staff writer for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York. Winter is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York.

View the original article here

Schwarzenegger Pulling Right to Center: Margaret Carlson

May 18, 2011, 11:23 AM EDT By Margaret Carlson

(Updates fifth paragraph with preliminary election results.)

May 18 (Bloomberg) -- In one of his last significant acts as California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger backed Proposition 14, an “open primary” initiative that California voters passed last June. California has one of the nation’s most politically polarized state legislatures and congressional delegations. The open primary has the potential to alter that.

In an open primary, all candidates compete in a single preliminary contest, with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, going on to compete in the general election. Instead of trying to consolidate their party base, candidates have an incentive to appeal to a broader group of voters, all of whom are free to cast a primary vote. In a solidly Republican district, for example, Republicans might claim first and second place in the primary, but the more moderate of the two candidates would have an advantage by appealing to Independents and Democrats in the general election, a point that might also affect primary voters’ calculations.

The first of these jungle primary free-for-alls took place yesterday in a special election to choose a successor to U.S. Representative Jane Harman, a Democrat who retired in February from the Los Angeles seat she had held for 16 years. Democrats have an 18-point registration edge in the district, and five Democrats competed in the primary along with six Republicans, three Independents, a Libertarian and a Peace and Freedom candidate.

Crowded Field

For some candidates, standing out in such a crowded field required unusual measures. Democrat Dan Adler, who balanced an endorsement from former Fox News firebrand Glenn Beck with one from former Disney Chief Executive Officer Michael Eisner, ran ads so peculiar they went viral. (In one, filmed at a dry cleaner, Adler establishes ethnic solidarity with the store’s Korean owner on the grounds that, as a Jew, Adler is a minority -- and his wife is Asian.) A recent debate looked like open- mike night: each candidate was allotted one minute to make a case on issues ranging from terrorism to sex education.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn and Secretary of State Debra Bowen, both moderate Democrats, led throughout the race. In a surprise, conservative Republican businessman and Tea Party candidate Craig Huey looks to have squeaked past Bowen into the general election, scheduled for July 12. But with almost 10,000 mail-in, provisional and damaged ballots yet to be counted in a low turnout contest, the results might change.

In the general election, Hahn will be a favorite. She was born in the proverbial smoke-filled room, the daughter of Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and the sister of James Hahn, a former mayor of Los Angeles. She gathered the endorsements of establishment Democrats, labor unions and the Los Angeles Times.

Republican Boon

Schwarzenegger and other moderate Republicans are hoping the new system will be a boon to the GOP, which lost all eight statewide races last year even as Republicans swept to victory across the country. To win their respective Republican primaries, gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Senate candidate Carly Fiorina tacked to the right on abortion, health care, taxes and immigration. (Ronald Reagan might have serious trouble winning a Republican-only primary in the Golden State today; after all, he raised taxes.) Having moved to the right to win over conservatives, Whitman and Fiorina found they couldn’t get back to the white stripe in the middle of the road. Their opponents, Democrats Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, were both vulnerable. Boxer won handily by 10 points, Brown by 13.

If the open primary idea spreads, it could help put a brake on the GOP’s rightward lurch outside California as well. Many Congressional Republicans fear that if they vote to raise the debt limit, they will earn themselves a primary challenge from the right. Even U.S. House Speaker John Boehner isn’t immune to the threat.

Good With Bad

Reforms may throw out some good with the bad. For instance, party labels, especially when preceded by an adjective like “progressive” or “Tea Party,” convey a wealth of information to the casual voter. Democratic political consultant Garry South sees some potential for mischief in open primaries that do away with party identifications on the ballot. “A Democrat might try to pass himself off as having no party preference to get an advantage in a Republican-leaning district, or vice versa,” he says. “He’d be called out for that during the campaign, of course, but low-information voters may not realize that when they go into the voting booth.”

Compared with continued polarization and the collapse of the political middle, that seems a minor threat. Moderates should get another boost from California’s new bipartisan redistricting commission, which is likely to redraw district lines to soften the hyper-partisan edges that both parties have gerrymandered onto the map.

Up in Harman’s old office this week, her former chief of staff, John Hess, was overseeing the final emptying of desks, scrubbing of hard drives, and painting of walls. With Harman’s tenure over, another moderate appears bound to move into her office. This time, it won’t be a moderate Republican, as Schwarzenegger had envisioned when he backed open primaries. Next time, it just might be.

(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

--Editors: Francis Wilkinson, Paula Dwyer

Click on “Send Comment” in the sidebar display to send a letter to the editor.

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this column: Frank Wilkinson at fwilkinsoin1@bloomberg.net

View the original article here