Larry Silverstein Spent Years Tussling With the City to Rebuild the World Trade Center. Now He’s Ready to Talk About It

He’s one of the lucky ones: Larry Silverstein narrowly skirted disaster on September 11, 2001. 

As the property developer has recounted numerous times over the last 23 years, the terrorist attacks that brought down the Twin Towers occurred just a few weeks after Silverstein Properties signed a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center in New York City. 

That morning, he was supposed to be eating breakfast at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower. But before he left, his wife Klara reminded him he was due uptown for a dermatology appointment. 

Unimaginable chaos and tragedy ensued. Terrorists hijacked two commercial airliners and flew one into each of the towers. The tallest buildings in New York eventually collapsed, laying in a gargantuan heap of smoldering rubble, and Silverstein made it his remaining life’s mission to rebuild them swiftly. Silverstein’s efforts to rise from the detritus of Ground Zero are recounted in his new book, The Rising: The Twenty-Year Battle to Rebuild the World Trade Center. 

It’s a story rife with political infighting among a rotating cast of 21st-century New York powerbrokers. Across the mayoral administrations of Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill de Blasio, and governorships of George Pataki and Andrew Cuomo, the book casts Silverstein as the hero who sought to heal deep national wounds and bring the NYC skyline back to life. Others criticized Silverstein for tussling with insurance companies and accused him of profiteering during an emotionally charged era in U.S. history. 

Silverstein, now 93, sat down with Inc. to discuss the new book and where he thinks the commercial real estate market is headed from 2024 onward–an era that is far different from the one that saw rebuilding efforts begin. 

(This conversation has been edited for length and clarity). 

Why does the book describe rebuilding efforts as a “battle?” 

There was no shortage of naysayers, people telling me this would never happen. After 9/11, they said nobody would ever want to go back down here. People would leave their residences. People would leave their commercial spaces. And that’s exactly what happened. Lower Manhattan was an unmitigated disaster.

I also came to the realization that the insurance companies were not going to pay me their obligations under the policies, for which I paid some significant premiums. And they said totally flat out building back here would never succeed. Therefore don’t bother, and forget about getting compensation from them. 

They even offered me some kind of monetary advantage if I just picked up and left. And I said, “I’ve been a New Yorker all my life. You just expect me to just walk away from my obligation to New York? I can’t do that.” So I said, “Everybody has their price. My price is: Get on with the rebuilding and do it as quickly as possible.” So we ended up with five years of litigation. That was a terrible time.

Why was there no time to wait in the rebuilding process? 

We needed to bring energy back to Lower Manhattan. I had acquired the site for the original 7 World Trade Center from the Port Authority in 1981; it was the last building to come down on 9/11. And under that building was a Con Edison substation that provided all electricity to Lower Manhattan. 

Eugene McGrath, who was the CEO of Con Edison, called me and said, “We’ve got to get the substation rebuilt as quickly as possible, because we’re now supplying Lower Manhattan with emergency generators; they’re constantly subject to failure.”

In order to get power back to Lower Manhattan, we had no time for plans, no time for specifications, no time for contracts, no time for agreements, no time for anything. I mean, we had to start building, literally, on a handshake. [Editor’s note: Inc. and its parent company are tenants in the rebuilt 7 World Trade.]

Given everything that went into the rebuilding process, how do you feel looking up at the World Trade Center buildings today? 

When the buildings had collapsed, there was nothing there. There was massive debris, terrible, terrible smog, terrible smoke, terrible fumes rising, and the odor of burning flesh. It was just horrible.

But in the most amazing turn of events, people started coming down to Ground Zero days after the attacks, to search for missing people. First from New York, but then from around the country, to try to help rescue people who they assumed could still be alive, but who they had no relationships with. They were just human beings, trying to help other human beings. 

And so, thinking about that, and then looking out at what we’ve been able to create to replace the Twin Towers, gives me a feeling of accomplishment. I was enormously hopeful that we could build something vastly superior to what had been here, originally.

How has the WTC, lower Manhattan area changed since 2001? 

Before 9/11, there was nothing here. After six o’clock at night, it was dead. You could roll a bowling ball down Wall Street and hit nothing. Nobody around: no cars, no vehicles, no trucks, no cabs. It was a dead community.

Now, It’s bustling with human beings. It’s the number of people down here visiting, walking through the Memorial Park. I can tell you, 27 percent of the people who work down here live down here. It’s the highest work-to-residence ratio in the entire United States. 

What’s going on with 2 World Trade Center, which is the last building slated for construction? 

Keep an eye on the press. That’s a no comment from us. 

The pandemic cratered demand for commercial office space. Plus, we have a housing crisis in this country. How can we use unoccupied office space for people who need a place to live? 
Part of working in the business today is the realization that some of the buildings are no longer functional as office space. The Rudin family built 55 Broad Street, maybe 70 years ago, and it became the headquarters building for Goldman Sachs. But Goldman left for a bigger office, and the family couldn’t find a corporate tenant. 

So what we ended up doing is buying the building from the Rudins with the thought of converting it from office occupancy to residential. Frankly, if we are successful in converting 55 Broad Street–and I think we will be–I could see us doing the same with many other commercial buildings. It’s something that will affect New York in a very positive way. In the future, it’ll change neighborhoods very significantly, and create a better environment.