Tall & Urban News

One of the final undeveloped World Trade Center parcels will give rise to a residential skyscraper with more than 1,300 apartments.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey chose a vision for the site submitted by Silverstein Properties, Brookfield Properties, Omni New York and Dabar Development Partners, which calls for a 1.56 million-square-foot (144,928-square-meter), mixed-use tower, Commercial Observer reported.

The project, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, is expected to feature 1,325 rental units, with approximately 330 set aside as affordable, as well as 190,000 square feet (17,651 square meters) of office space, and 7,000 square feet (650 square meters) of retail space.

Opting for a project that is mostly residential will require a change to the site’s General Project Plan, which called for an exclusively commercial development. The shift to residential comes as the city grapples with high office vacancy rates and as work remains stalled on Silverstein’s 2 World Trade Center. That project has been dormant since 21st Century Fox and News Corp. abandoned an agreement to anchor the tower in 2016.

Silverstein and Brookfield’s proposal beat out four other bids. Port Authority executive director Rick Cotton noted that all bidders were given the option to modify their proposals to reflect the realities of the pandemic but all “stayed with their pre-COVID bids.”

The board unanimously approved the proposal, but Todd Fine, founder of the Washington Street Historical Society, testified that community members weren’t given enough time ahead of Thursday’s vote to review the development.

“To build a luxury residential tower at 5 WTC represents a betrayal of the core principles proposed at the start of the post-Sept. 11 reconstruction,” Fine said.

The vote means the Port Authority will exclusively negotiate with Silverstein and Brookfield before finalizing the development agreement.

For more on this story, go to The Real Deal.