Why Is the Port Authority Accommodating Larry Silverstein After He Called Them 'Grossly Incompetent'?

In March 2026, the Port Authority told Community Board 1 that the 5 World Trade Center deal — a project won by Larry Silverstein and Silverstein Properties — is “on pause” because the developer failed to receive financing or is otherwise unwilling to begin construction. The Port Authority asked for patience. It asked the community to trust that the agency and the developer could fairly renegotiate the contract a third time, due to Silverstein’s complaints about rising building costs.

Yet, what does the developer the Port Authority is protecting and accommodating actually think about the agency and the people who work there? Here is what Larry Silverstein has to say, in his own published words in his recent book, about the public agencies and public servants who have spent years accommodating his demands for subsidies and leniencies at the World Trade Center. He shows little appreciation for the engineering problems of building the Transit Center and the complex underground facilities and utilities to support his buildings, even as Silverstein conceded that he introduced the Port to Santiago Calatrava, the selection of whom was perhaps the biggest mistake of all in terms of delays!

On Government Workers

“The sad truth, I came to understand, was that anybody of any quality or experience wouldn’t be working supervising construction for the government. They would go into the private sector, where they would get paid a lot more generously for the work — and where, if they wanted to keep their jobs, they would need to keep a sharp watch on how every dollar was spent.”

“In government, people had a tendency to shrug off cost overruns; it wasn’t their own money they were spending.”

“I was locked in a constant battle with people who had neither the expertise to get the job done nor a sense of responsibility.”

On the Port Authority

“I would witness colossal government ineptitude, the promiscuous spending of public money as years blithely passed and the construction overruns totaled billions of dollars.”

“The real power at the agency resides in the vast administrative bureaucracy.”

“Their managers were in way over their heads… They just didn’t have the expertise to deal with rapacious contractors, nor the spine to stand up to a celebrated architect.”

“What the Port had demonstrated in its supervision and construction of the Trade Center transport hub was not just incompetence. It was gross incompetence. And it was the sort of capricious and cavalier behavior I had to deal with the entire time as I struggled with the Port to rebuild the Trade Center site.”

“These guys at the Port are spending buckets of money. Money that comes from the citizens of New York. The Oculus is years behind schedule and will wind up billions over budget. They’ve already paid me a hundred million dollars in penalties, but I still don’t know when the sites will be delivered. It’s not incompetence. It’s gross incompetence.”

“As for money, do you know how the Port, despite the constant revisions of the construction schedules, kept on budget? They simply ripped up one budget and replaced it with a new one. Higher costs didn’t affect them; as they’d bragged, they could always raise tolls on bridges if cash was needed. They wasted billions; the site would wind up being $5 billion over budget. Yet it wasn’t their money they were profligately throwing around, but the taxpayers’.”

“This was the sort of undisciplined, free-spending mentality that I, a private developer, had to deal with in my partnership with a public agency.”

“Was I exaggerating the incompetence of the Port and the other government agencies? Was it vanity or ego that had caused me to believe that I could get things done while they would flounder?”

“I couldn’t help noticing that even the most routine matters at the Port moved at a glacial pace.”

“As I watched this free-spending disaster taking shape, I decided I should try to intervene. The constant delays, the staggering cost — I feared it would all spill over to affect the progress of the towers I wanted to construct. To be completely truthful, I was embarrassed, as well as enraged, by the cavalier way things were proceeding. There was a right way and a wrong way to get things done, and this was definitely the wrong way.”

What the Port Authority Has Given This Developer at 5 WTC

For the developer who wrote these words, the Port Authority and the state have:

- Waived a $300 million purchase price and replaced it with a below-market lease

- Set rent at $12.5 million per year — 23% less than a competing bidder offered — with 2% annual escalation that trails inflation and has no real fair market value resets for 99 years

- Provided a $12.5 million rent credit, making the first year free

- Committed $65 million in direct state subsidies

- Imposed no binding obligation to build

- Allowed the developer to hold a non-binding, revocable designation for over five years without performing

- Not revoked the designation despite the project being declared “on pause”

The developer who calls government workers incompetent, who says anyone of quality wouldn’t work in the public sector, who accuses the Port Authority of wasting billions with “neither the expertise to get the job done nor a sense of responsibility,” this developer has received more public accommodation, more financial concessions, and more institutional patience at 5 World Trade Center than any affordable housing developer in the history of Lower Manhattan has ever been offered.

All quotations are from Larry Silverstein, “The Rising: The Twenty-Year Battle to Rebuild the World” (Knopf Doubleday, 2024). Chapter citations: “colossal government ineptitude” (Prologue); “vast administrative bureaucracy” (Ch. 1); “Was I exaggerating the incompetence,” “glacial pace” (Ch. 10); “anybody of any quality,” “in way over their heads,” “not just incompetence… gross incompetence,” “capricious and cavalier,” “free-spending disaster,” “embarrassed, as well as enraged” (Ch. 12); “shrug off cost overruns,” “ripped up one budget,” “undisciplined, free-spending mentality” (Ch. 13); “buckets of money… gross incompetence,” “neither the expertise to get the job done” (Ch. 14).