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Tower Opens at Ground Zero with Fanfare, but few Tenants - NY's First 'Green' Building also offers Safety Features
Associated Press/San Jose Mercury News
By Amy Westfeldt
May 30, 2006
The first destroyed skyscraper to be rebuilt since Sept. 11 opened May 23 with few tenants but with many state-of-the-art features that developers say will be part of all the new office towers to rise at the World Trade Center site.
Developer Larry Silverstein opened the 52-story 7 World Trade Center for business by unveiling a bright red sculpture called ''Balloon Flower'' by artist Jeff Koons outside his building and hosting a concert featuring Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega.
''We've come a very long way,'' said Silverstein, who built the first 7 World Trade nearly 20 years ago and has struggled to rebuild destroyed office space at the 16-acre site for more than four years. ''What you're looking at today is just the beginning.''
The building was the third to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001, after the twin towers. Like the trade center, it is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and leased by Silverstein.
The shimmering glass tower was redesigned by David Childs, the same architect who designed the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, intended as the symbolic replacement to the trade center.
Including 7, the trade center site lost well over 10 million square feet of office space on Sept. 11. But new tenants haven't been clamoring to return.
Following recommendations to make high-rises safer and sturdier after the terrorist attacks, the skyscraper adheres to ''a set of standards unique to any high-rise office building in America,'' Silverstein said.
It is the first commercial tower in New York to be certified as green because it uses less electricity and high-efficiency cooling and heating systems. And it has adopted newer safety standards, with wider stairwells and two-foot-thick concrete walls.
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