Larry A. Silverstein (born May 30, 1931) is an American billionaire, and real estate investor and developer in New York City. Silverstein was born in Brooklyn, and became involved in real estate, together with his father, establishing Silverstein Properties. Silverstein separated from his partner, Bernard Mendik, in 1977, and bought a number of large office buildings in Midtown and Lower Manhattan in the late 1970s. In 1980, Silverstein won a bid from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to construct 7 World Trade Center, to the north of the World Trade Center. Silverstein was interested in acquiring the entire World Trade Center complex, and put in a bid when the Port Authority put it up for lease in 2000. Silverstein won the bid when a deal between the initial winner and the Port Authority fell through, and he signed the lease on July 24, 2001, only weeks before the towers were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.
Soon after the September 11 attacks, Silverstein declared his intent to rebuild, though ran into dispute with his insurers over whether the attacks constituted one or two occurrences. A settlement was reached in 2004, with insurers agreeing to pay out $4.55 billion, which was not as much as Silverstein sought. Silverstein also ran into dispute with other parties in the rebuilding effort, including the Port Authority. In an agreement reached in April 2006, Silverstein retained rights to build three office towers (150 Greenwich Street, 175 Greenwich Street, and 200 Greenwich Street), while 1 World Trade Center will be owned by the Port Authority as well as Tower Five which may be leased out to another private developer and redesigned as a residential building.
Background
Silverstein was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn in 1931 into a Jewish family. Growing up, Silverstein enjoyed classical music and played the piano. He attended the High School of Music and Art in New York, and then New York University, graduating in 1952. During college, Silverstein worked at a summer camp, where he met his wife, Klara. The couple married in 1956, and had three children: Lisa, Roger and Sharon. His wife worked as a school teacher, supporting the family on her salary for the first few years of their marriage while Silverstein attended classes at Brooklyn Law School.
Silverstein became involved in real estate, together with his late father, Harry G. Silverstein, and then friend and brother-in-law, the late Bernard Mendik, buying buildings in Manhattan. In 1957, they established Silverstein Properties, as Harry G. Silverstein & Sons, and bought their first building. Mendik and Silverstein continued the business after Harry's death in 1966. In 1977, Mendik divorced Annette Mendik Silverstein, with the business partnership also splitting up at that time. Mendik also cited disagreements over real estate strategies, with Mendik wanting to buy buildings while Silverstein wanted to build.
Silverstein Properties
After splitting with Mendik, both remained involved in the real estate industry, but in separate firms. By 1978, Silverstein owned five buildings on Fifth Avenue, as well as 44 Wall Street, and a shopping center in Stamford, Connecticut. In 1980, he renovated the building at 11 West 42nd Street, and acquired the lease for the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway. In 1983, Silverstein sold the building at 711 Fifth Avenue to Coca-Cola for $57.6 million, having bought the building in 1977 for $11.5 million.
Also in 1980, Silverstein bought the building at 120 Wall Street, which was constructed in 1930. In 1991, Silverstein set aside 20 floors of 120 Wall Street to be leased by non-profit organizations, as an Association Center, with tax incentives for the tenants and bonds for Silverstein to undertake building renovations. By 1994, Silverstein had signed up 14 nonprofit tenants for 120 Wall Street, and the building was nearly at capacity by 1997, with 38 nonprofit tenants including the National Urban League and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America.
In 1980, Larry Silverstein won a bid to lease and develop the last undeveloped parcel from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to build the 47-story 7 World Trade Center.
World Trade Center
During the 1990s, New York was suffering from the effects of the 1987 stock market crash, which led to high vacancy rates at the World Trade Center. George Pataki became Governor of New York in 1995 on a campaign of cutting costs, including privatizing the World Trade Center. A sale of the property was considered too complex, so it was decided by the Port Authority to open a 99-year lease to competitive bidding.
In January 2001, Silverstein, via Silverstein Properties and Westfield America, made a $3.2 billion bid for the lease to the World Trade Center. Silverstein was outbid by $50 million by Vornado Realty, with Boston Properties and Brookfield Properties also competing for the lease. However, Vornado withdrew and Silverstein's bid for the lease to the World Trade Center was accepted on July 24, 2001. This was the first time in the building's 31-year history that the complex had changed management.
The lease agreement applied to One, Two, Four, and Five World Trade Center, and about 425,000 square feet (39,500 m 2 ) of retail space. Silverstein put up $14 million of his own money to secure the deal. The terms of the lease gave Silverstein, as leaseholder, the right to rebuild the structures should they be destroyed and should he comply with the onerous financial obligations of the lease.
Upon leasing the World Trade Center towers, along with 4 World Trade Center and 5 World Trade Center, Silverstein insured the buildings. The insurance policies on these four buildings were underwritten by 24 insurance companies for a combined total of $3.55 billion per occurrence in property damage coverage.
September 11 attacks
All of the buildings at the World Trade Center, including buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5, were destroyed beyond repair on September 11, 2001 (see September 11 attacks) as a result of terrorists crashing large jet airliners into the Twin Towers, and the ensuing fires and building collapses.
After a protracted dispute with insurers over the amount of coverage available for rebuilding World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5, a series of court decisions determined that a maximum of $4.55 billion was payable and settlements were reached with the insurers in 2007. The money is being used to rebuild, and the Silverstein properties lease has continued without change.
Insurance dispute
The insurance policies obtained in July 2001 for World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5 had a collective face amount of $3.55 billion. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Silverstein sought to collect double the face amount (~$7.1 billion) on the basis that the two separate airplane strikes into two separate buildings constituted two occurrences within the meaning of the policies. The insurance companies took the opposite view. Because some of the policies contained certain limiting language and some did not, the court split the insurers into two groups for jury trials on the question of whether their policies were subject to the “one occurrence” interpretation or the “two occurrence” interpretation.
The first trial resulted in a verdict on April 29, 2004, that 10 of the insurers in this group were subject to the “one occurrence” interpretation, so their liability was limited to the face value of those policies, and 3 insurers were added to the second trial group. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on one insurer, Swiss Reinsurance, at that time, but did so several days later on May 3, 2004, finding that this company was also subject to the “one occurrence” interpretation. Silverstein appealed the Swiss Re decision, but lost that appeal on October 19, 2006. The second trial resulted in a verdict on December 6, 2004, that 9 insurers were subject to the “two occurrences” interpretation and, therefore, liable for a maximum of double the face value of those particular policies ($2.2 billion). The total potential payout, therefore, was capped at $4.577 billion for buildings 1, 2, 4, and 5. An appraisal followed to determine the value of the insured loss.
In July 2006, Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey filed a lawsuit against some of its insurers for refusing to waive requirements of the insurance contracts that Silverstein claimed were necessary to allow renegotiation of the original July 2001 World Trade Center leases. This litigation, was settled together with the federal lawsuits and appraisal, mentioned in the prior paragraph, in a series of settlements announced on May 23, 2007 . Silverstein's lease with the Port Authority for the World Trade Center requires him to continue paying $102 million annually in base rent. He is applying insurance payments toward the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.
Rebuilding
As leaseholder of buildings One, Two, Four and Five, Silverstein had the legal right to rebuild the buildings, including 1 World Trade Center at the World Trade Center site which would later be designated as building One, and while the site remains unoccupied, he continues to pay $10 million per month in rent to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
After the September 11 attacks, the United States Congress approved $8 billion in tax-exempt Liberty Bonds to f
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