Two decisions of a federal jury — one Thursday, another on Monday — cost developer Larry Silverstein and his partners $2.7 billion that would have gone toward rebuilding the World Trade Center site. The money will now stay in the pockets of insurance companies. The court case was over whether the insurers had to pay for two attacks or just one, and the jury sided with the insurers.

The New York Sun has until now been quite supportive of Mr. Silverstein, who, after all, has a 99-year lease with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for the World Trade Center site. When the deal was announced in April 2001,Governor Pataki heralded it as “one of the largest privatizations ever of a government asset.” Mr. Pataki and his aides spoke of getting the Port Authority out of the real estate business, and city officials spoke of getting the World Trade Center onto the New York City property tax rolls.

But a 99-year lease is something different from an actual ownership of property, as New Yorkers have learned since September 11, 2001. The plans for the site since its destruction in a terrorist attack have been controlled by Mr. Pataki’s appointees at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, with Mr. Silverstein taking something of a back seat. Mr. Silverstein has had his victories, such as wresting architectural control of the “Freedom Tower” away from the Pataki-appointed architect, Daniel Libeskind, and handing it to Skidmore Owings and Merrill. We would have preferred giving Mr. Silverstein an even bigger role, but in fact what has occurred has been a process with an extraordinarily high degree of government participation.

Some of that is necessarily so. The site of the terrorist attacks is, like Pearl Harbor and the battlefields at Gettysburg, Lexington and Concord, now a part of American history. It’s appropriate for the American government to preserve some part of it as a memorial to those killed in the attacks, as a tribute to those who died trying to rescue others, and as a reminder of the savagery of the radical Islamic terrorist enemies that America confronts in the war we fight to this day.

The remainder of the site, however, is open for other uses. Until now, the planning has been driven by the Port Authority’s desire to maintain the flow of rental income it was due from Mr. Silverstein and by Mr. Silverstein’s desire to adhere to the terms of his lease. That has resulted in a plan packed with office space to be leased to commercial tenants. Maybe those tenants will materialize. Maybe they won’t. But before Mr. Silverstein racks up more legal bills — he’s reportedly already spent $100 million on a team led by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz — the matter begs rethinking.

After all, the jury decision means that Mr. Silverstein, who is 72, will have far less money than he needs to rebuild the full 10 million square feet of office space lost on September 11. The Associated Press reported Monday that the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Kevin Rampe, said, as the AP reported it,”government and private resources were available to make sure the full rebuilding plan could be completed.”

In other words, the signs are that the government is getting ready to rush back into the real estate business it so proudly claimed it had gotten out of back when the World Trade Center was “privatized.” Before it does so, the obvious question is whether there is a way to undo the mistake Mr. Pataki made when he caved to New Jersey interests on the Port Authority and agreed to a 99-year lease rather than the genuine sale that he had advocated earlier in his career as an enthusiast for privatization.

A transparent bidding process would be the best way to let the free market, rather than the politicians, dictate what happens to the leftover land at Ground Zero. If the highest bidders want to build office space on the land, let them go ahead. If the Jets or the Yankees are willing to pay more to put a stadium there, let them build it. If City Opera decides it is the place for an opera house, let them go ahead. If it is housing or retail rather than office space that makes the most sense for a profit-seeking developer, let that go ahead.

If Mr. Silverstein wants to bid for the land with private financing, let him go ahead. He might emerge the winner, as he did in the last round of bidding, before the attacks. But it’s a changed situation now. No amount of litigation or even of the admirable steadfastness and determination that Mr. Silverstein has shown so far — not even the rent he has paid on the site, which can be refunded — can change that. The basic principle is that, once you get past the memorial, the best way to decide what should get built on the rest of Ground Zero is a proper privatization.