Public Comment on Port Authority Capital Plan — Washington Street Advocacy Group

Public Comment on Capital Plan by Todd Fine
President, Washington Street Advocacy Group
tdfine@gmail.com / 857-234-0920
December 15, 2025

The proposed 2026-2035 Capital Plan allocates approximately $1.2 billion to the World Trade Center, with the stated implication that these funds will support development activity at 2 and 5 World Trade Center. Unlike other major capital commitments related to airports, tunnels, bridges, and core transportation infrastructure, these World Trade Center expenditures are not disclosed at a project level with sufficient specificity to permit meaningful public review or comment.

Beyond approximately $68 million identified for radio systems and an additional $75 million for public safety and radio equipment replacement, the Capital Plan provides no itemized breakdown, scope description, or financing rationale for the remaining balance of the proposed World Trade Center allocation. As a result, members of the public have no reasonable way to assess whether these funds are intended for routine site operations, public safety investments, or additional financial support for long-delayed private development projects.

This lack of disclosure is particularly troubling in light of the Port Authority’s own recent bond statements of April and August 2025. Those statements acknowledge that ground rent for 2 World Trade Center became contractually due in December 2022 regardless of whether construction commenced, yet further disclose that Silverstein Properties has not made payment and has requested additional time before beginning to pay ground rent. The unpaid obligation is quantified at approximately $2.5 million per month prior to construction, now totalling approximately $90 million. The same statements confirm the approximately $48.2 million in deferred rent to Silverstein Properties associated with Tower 3 as of December 31, 2024.

Against this financial backdrop, it is also necessary to consider the history of representations made by the Port Authority and its private development partner regarding the timely advancement of 5 World Trade Center. The Authority’s 2019 Request for Proposals for 5 World Trade Center, together with subsequent conditional designations, development and lease arrangements, Board approvals, capital plan inclusions, and public statements, consistently conveyed that construction of 5 World Trade Center was expected to proceed on a defined and reasonably prompt timeline. These representations were not limited to the initial RFP, but were reaffirmed through later administrative actions, including approvals that necessarily rested on the premise that delays were temporary and that performance remained imminent.

However, the most recent bond statement of August 13, 2025 declares that “no schedule for commencement of construction has been provided by the Site 5 Developer” and “[t]here can be no assurance that the transaction will move forward,” without providing any real explanation. 5 World Trade Center remains unbuilt five years after the RFP and more than two decades after the site was cleared, with no publicly disclosed, binding schedule for commencement or completion. The public had been repeatedly told by the Empire State Development Corporation and the Port Authority that there was no time to secure further commitments to support a design that would maximize affordable housing due to the urgent timeline necessary to support economic development. The cumulative effect is not merely delay, but a sustained failure to perform and to meet public needs following multiple rounds of public and contractual assurances, accompanied by ongoing financial forbearance and the contemplation of additional capital support.

Under basic principles of administrative law and public authority governance, an agency may not properly seek approval for major capital expenditures while withholding the information necessary for the public to evaluate their purpose, necessity, beneficiaries, and relationship to prior commitments. Where an agency has repeatedly relied on representations of near-term performance to justify extensions, accommodations, and continued capital plan inclusion, it bears a heightened obligation of transparency before seeking approval of further funding.

Moreover, the implied dedication of future toll revenues and operating surpluses to further subsidize luxury residential or commercial development raises serious questions regarding the proper use of public funds, particularly at a time when New York City and Lower Manhattan face acute shortages of affordable housing and have other urgent public needs. These concerns are amplified by the Authority’s and New York State’s ownership interest in the underlying sites and by the prolonged failure of the current development strategy to deliver on its repeatedly stated objectives.

Given these facts, the Washington Street Advocacy Group submits that the Port Authority is well within its legal authority and fiduciary responsibility to reconsider its development strategy for 2 and 5 World Trade Center. This reconsideration should include working with the new Mayor and the Governor to issue new Requests for Proposals oriented toward one hundred percent affordable housing or other uses that clearly and directly serve the public interest.

Accordingly, approval of the 2026-2035 Capital Plan should be suspended, at least with respect to the World Trade Center, until the Port Authority provides full project-level disclosure of the proposed expenditures, including their purpose, beneficiaries, interaction with existing lease and rent deferral arrangements, and their consistency with past representations regarding development timelines. Anything less would render public comment a hollow exercise and undermine the transparency obligations governing the Authority’s stewardship of public assets.