After 11 years of grueling talks, a $93.9 million payment yesterday finally clinched a deal between the Port Authority and Westfield Group for control of the World Trade Center’s retail space.
Global shopping mall developer Westfield wired the Port Authority a check, sources told The Post — the first installment of $612.5 million Westfield will pay the PA for a 50 percent, joint-venture stake in the site’s eventual 460,000 square feet of retail.
Although a tentative agreement was struck last year and the PA board approved it in February, like many other concrete-sounding “deals” at the WTC, it had no teeth — until now.
“Remember, the PA board also approved Vornado’s office tower over the bus terminal years ago. Have you noticed an office building over the bus terminal?” an insider cracked.
Westfield will lend its skills in developing, leasing and operating an initial 365,000 square feet inside under-construction 4 WTC, the WTC Transportation Hub, above-ground along Church and Dey Streets and inside 3 WTC in the planning stage.
It will also include 90,000 square feet more when 2 WTC is developed in the future.
Westfield, whose US operations are led by co-CEO Peter S. Lowy, had, three years ago when the office towers seemed stalled, proposed to develop free-standing shopping malls that could support towers on top of them later — an initiative that went nowhere.