Spitzer Moves To Boost Influence Over Ground Zero Plans

The Spitzer administration wants to increase its involvement in redevelopment efforts at the World Trade Center site, and it plans to reinvigorate a development agency that the Pataki administration intended to close. Its announcement, made at a City Council hearing yesterday, came as the city and state laid out a timeline for altering the plans of a performing arts center at the site.

The president of the Empire State Development Corporation, Avi Schick, said at the hearing that the state would revive the anemic Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the now lightly staffed redevelopment agency that Governor Spitzer once called an "absolute failure." The corporation has dispersed funds and coordinated development efforts at the former World Trade Center site for the past five years.

"LMDC will be the vehicle through which Governor Spitzer expresses his vision and articulates his voice in Lower Manhattan," Mr. Schick said.

The move, which includes a change in leadership and an increase in staffing at the development corporation, marks a shift from the Pataki administration, which announced its plans to shut the agency last summer.

Mr. Spitzer was highly critical of the corporation in his gubernatorial campaign last year, calling the rising development costs an "Enron-style debacle." The bulk of the projects it oversaw have already been approved, including a master plan for the World Trade Center site.

Council Member Alan Gerson, who represents Lower Manhattan, welcomed the announcement as a new pledge by the governor to revitalize the area.

"It's clearly a commitment by the chief executive of the state to get the job done," Mr. Gerson said.

While many of the projects at the World Trade Center site, such as the major towers, have already been approved, details of developments such as the planned cultural center have yet to be worked out.

Late last month, the city announced its intention to scale back a Frank Gehry-designed performing arts building that was to house the Signature Theater Company and the modern dance-focused Joyce Theater.

In the name of development costs on the complicated site, which sits east of 7 World Trade Center over active rail lines, Signature Theater will be relocated to nearby Fiterman Hall, a planned CUNY building.

The city's commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs, Kate Levin, said yesterday that the city would work with the state and other parties to develop a design for the new sites in about eight weeks, with an ideal total price tag of less than $500 million. The plans for a single building had an estimated cost of about $700 million.

Construction of the center would likely not begin until 2010 or 2011, and details of funding have yet to be worked out. While it was once thought the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation would do substantial fund raising for the complex, Ms. Levin cautioned that it was premature to outline funding sources before first seeing a detailed plan.

"I think it is very safe to say that ideally these are going to be really strong public-private partnerships," Ms. Levin said.