By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Nothing will be built on the cursed Deutsche Bank site for the next decade, the city's outgoing deputy mayor said Thursday.
Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber said the city and state should leave the World Trade Center Tower 5 site vacant until lower Manhattan’s office market recovers over the next 10 years, rather than build a mixed-use development there sooner.
“There will be [demand] for office space in lower Manhattan,” said Lieber, who is leaving city government later this summer. “[But] it’s going to take place a decade from now.”
But Community Board 1 Chairwoman Julie Menin said she sees no reason to wait 10 years when residential and hotel developers are interested in the Deutsche site now.
“To have another blighted plot of land, another hole in the community, makes no sense,” Menin said at a meeting of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, of which she and Lieber are board members.
”We’re sitting on this and we don’t have a plan.”
The demolition of the Deutsche Bank building, which was heavily damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers, has been plagued by tragedy and delays.
Two firefighters died in a 2007 blaze at the building, which resulted in a criminal inquiry and the indictment of three construction supervisors and a contractor with reputed mob ties. The total cost for the state to buy, decontaminate and tear down the building has ballooned to about $300 million.
JPMorgan Chase once planned to build a 1.2-million-square-foot skyscraper at the Tower 5 site, but the bank scrapped the idea after taking over Bear Stearns’ plush Midtown headquarters in 2008.
John Cicero, managing principal at commercial real estate consulting firm Miller Cicero, agreed with Lieber that it could take 10 years — or longer — for the market to support office space at Tower 5.
“It’s going to be an extended period of time,” Cicero said. “Historically, lower Manhattan has trailed Midtown in terms of absorbing vacant office space."
Menin started her exchange with Lieber Thursday morning by urging the LMDC and Port Authority to formally solicit new proposals for the Tower 5 site, which she hopes New York University and others will be interested in.
Lieber replied that opening the door to alternate proposals for Tower 5 would be “a useless exercise,” and could even make it harder to lease the office space already under construction at the World Trade Center site.
“The more we mess with this, the more uncertainty [we create], the more difficult it will be to get tenants to come down and occupy space,” Lieber said.
City and state agencies would have to sign off on a new use for Tower 5, and Lieber’s objection indicates that the city likely will not do so.
The LMDC is in the process of demolishing the Deutsche Bank building and expects to finish by the end of the year, at which point the site could become available for new development.
