Stringer calls for end to 'national embarassment' at WTC site.

Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer has called on the city's Independent Budget Office (IBO) to prepare a thorough review of the economic picture surrounding the rebuilding of Ground Zero, to help resolve the dispute between Mayor Bloomberg and Larry Silverstein that threatens to stall the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

"The lack of progress rebuilding the World Trade Center is a national embarrassment for our City," said Stringer. "It is a moral imperative, as well as an economic necessity, that the rebuilding of lower Manhattan proceed without unnecessary delay."

The borough president said New Yorkers deserved to hear from an independent voice to better understand the real financial and economic scenarios at the center of the debate over rebuilding which he said seems headed for a protracted stalemate. Underlying many of the points raised by Bloomberg about the realism of Silverstein Properties' plans for the WTC site are questions about conditions in the lower Manhattan real estate market and broader trends in the City's office space market.

In his letter to IBO Director Ronnie Lowestein, Stringer asked that the IBO review the total amount of new office development likely to be needed in the city as a whole in the coming decades, and then use these findings to comment on the Bloomberg Administration's January 2006 financial analysis and similar analysis by Silverstein Properties.

Stringer requested that this analysis be prepared before the March 14 deadline set by the Governor for Silverstein to reach agreement with the Port Authority.