The deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, Daniel Doctoroff, yesterday reasserted Mayor Bloomberg’s support of the ground zero redevelopment plan.

The mayor “just wants to speed things up,” he said at yesterday’s grand reopening of 90 West St., a landmarked skyscraper that was severely damaged on September 11, 2001.

“We’re not talking about a wholesale change to the World Trade Center site. In fact, he’s reaffirmed his commitment to the Freedom Tower” and other elements of the present plan, Mr. Doctoroff said.

Mr. Bloomberg’s criticism of the plan adopted by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had grown following Governor Pataki’s decision to oust the proposed International Freedom Center from the site. Mr. Bloomberg complained that the site did not include enough residential and retail space, and questioned whether the city’s commercial real estate market could absorb the 10 million square feet of office space planned for the site.

Last Sunday, the Daily News quoted him as saying “it would be in the city’s interest to get Silverstein out.” Larry Silverstein holds the lease on the World Trade Center site.

However, Mr. Doctoroff took a much more measured stance yesterday.

The mayor “recognizes that Larry Silverstein has rights there and he’s played a very important role in redevelopment. But there is an inherent conflict between someone who is market-driven and the city’s interests, which should be rational ly discussed,” Mr. Doctoroff told The New York Sun in a telephone interview.

The mayor wants to hasten development of major retail stores along Church and Greenwich streets, he said, “but you can’t build retail without building what’s on top of it,” namely, Buildings 3 and 4 in the present plan. Neither building is currently slated for completion before 2013.

Mr. Doctoroff suggested that Building 3 might be built quicker were it to house the Port Authority headquarters.

“We’re committed to returning to the World Trade Center site, but we’re not committed to any specific building,” a spokesman for the Port Authority, Steven Coleman, told the Sun.

Ninety West St., a 1907 Gothic Revival skyscraper designed by the celebrated architect Cass Gilbert, sits just past the southwest corner of ground zero. It was gutted by fires after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, but remained structurally sound as a result of the same sturdy steel-frame construction that Gilbert later employed for the Woolworth Building, once the tallest building in the world.

Originally an office tower, it now contains 410 rental apartments, ranging in price from $2,500 to $5,500 a month, 324 of which are already occupied. Its restoration was financed by $100 million in tax-exempt Liberty Bonds.

Mr. Doctoroff, who described the building’s survival as “miraculous,” said its restoration was “a shot in the arm for … what we all said we want: a 24-hour live, work, and visit place that’s a capital of culture and commerce.”