Not long ago I participated in the Forbes 9/11 memorial with two posts one on aheroic Port Authority officer and the other something of a public service promotionto encourage people to give blood more regularly. Now here I am writing about the World Trade Center because of a recent tax decision by the New York City Tax Appeals Tribunal -In the Matter of One World Trade Center LLC. It is over a month old but it does not seem to have attracted much attention perhaps because it is a little difficult to understand. Still I think there is an interesting story there.
I think it is fairly probable that the fact that the World Trade Center was leased to private interests just months before the attack is a cooincidence. Conspiracy theorists of course think otherwise and attribute non-humantiarian motives to Larry Silverstein�s suggestion to the Fire Department that they �pull it�:
The interests that Larry Silverstein represented and presumably formed a part of did not own the World Trade Center but they had 99 year leases on which the ink was barely dry :
Of course the nature of the tragedy was such that the Silverstein interests could not just go in and rebuild:
There were several agreements between Port Authority and the lesseess as to how redevelopment would proceed with the Port Authority ultimately taking ownership of One World Trade Center LLC and leaving other parts of the original footprint to the Silverstein interests. It is a complicated story and I�m sure it will lead to more litigation for the remainder of the 99 years and maybe beyond. The important point for this case, though, is that the Silverstein interests, in order to preserve their rights, had to keep paying rent on buildings that were not there anymore.
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