Silverstein buys Sears Tower

[dailykoff]

This is pretty old news but I just heard about it. It also appears the Port Authority returned Larry's original WTC investment, so he basically got the leases for nothing. Odd isn't it? You might say he made out like a bandit! :mad:

MetLife Will Sell Sears Tower

By Dean Starkman
The Wall Street Journal Online
March 12, 2004

Two investors who are part of Larry Silverstein's group that owns the World Trade Center lease are among the buyers of the Sears Tower, which MetLife Inc. agreed to sell Thursday for more than $800 million, according to people familiar with the situation.

Lloyd Goldman and Joseph Cayre, New York investors who are among Mr. Silverstein's backers in the Trade Center, are part of a group that agreed to buy the Chicago landmark, these people said. Another New York investor, Jeffrey Feil, was also a participant in the Sears Tower deal, the people said. Names of the other investors couldn't be learned.

(snip)

Mr. Goldman led a group including Mr. Cayre that put up most of the $125 million of the equity that Mr. Silverstein, a New York developer, used to buy the 99-year office lease on the Trade Center office portion from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The deal, valued at $3.2 billion, including the Trade Center's retail mall, closed in July 2001, weeks before the September terror attacks that destroyed the complex.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Port Authority in December had quietly agreed to return all of the $125 million in equity that Mr. Silverstein and his low-profile group originally invested to buy the leases. The full details of that transaction haven't been released to the public. But the deal effectively eliminated the Silverstein group's capital risk in the project, while allowing the group to retain control of 10 million square feet of office space. The Port Authority has rejected a Wall Street Journal request to review the transaction, citing Mr. Silverstein's ongoing lawsuit against his insurers, led by Swiss Reinsurance Co., over how many claims may be collected as a result of the attacks.

http://www.realestatejournal.com/propertyreport/newsandtrends/20040312-starkman.html

[mhatrw]

1. Uh, oh, So when are they going pull it?

I mean, evacuate the firefighters, of course.

[mirandapriestly]

2. bwahahaha.

so, I read all this stuff about him owning a strip club a long time ago that was involved with heroin,"Runway 69" but no one seemed very interested. It appeared to really be him . It's awfully strange to go from strip clubs to billion dollar real estate.

[orleans]

3. not so unusual....it happens all the time

(at least in larry's case!)

maybe he won the lottery before he hit the jackpot w/the twin towers

[Generarth]

4. The strip club

http://www.queenstribune.com/anniversary2003/runway69.htm

[mirandapriestly]

12. Here is my old post, it IS THE SAME SILVERSTEIN

you can see the lawsuit says Larry not Lawrence, the Queen Tribune was some kind of cover up. I trust Haaretz over "The Queens Tribune" They took the Haaretz article down but I got some of it.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=85

857&mesg_id=86239

Maybe this is old news, but I didn't know any of this:
(I think Silverstein's close relation with Israeli politicians is interesting because the

US was warned about 9-11 from Israel, could they have warned him too? I can't imagine they

would not have unless intelligence doesn't communicate with politicians. And, of course,

Silverstein did cancel the 911 meeting in the WTC at the last minute.)
Excerpts:
"...Two former prime ministers - Benjamin Netanyahu, who this
week called Silverstein a "friend," and Ehud Barak, whom Silverstein in the past offered a

job as his representative in Israel - also called soon after the disaster."

"Many Israeli politicians are acquainted in one degree or another with
the 70-year-old Silverstein. For 10 years, he tried to bring
about the establishment of a free-trade zone in the Negev,..."
"Harry Miller, a Vietnam War veteran, sued Silverstein, who owned the
Runway 69 dance club in Queens, for his alleged involvement in the
trafficking of heroin."
This is the lawsuit: http://members.aol.com/schwenkler/wcc/miller.htm
it was dismissed as "frivolous", but you got to wonder what Silverstein
was doing with a dance club called "Runway 69"? In the suit Captain Miller, says that they
were using Runway 69 as a MONEY LAUNDERING joint for heroin from Laos.
Money laundering comes up again with Silverstein in something else from the article.
It was dismissed and it also included Clinton and Nixon (!), but if you've
read Michael Ruppert then it really isn't that unbelievable. I'd guess something was going
on at "Runway 69".

The article emphasizes how eager he was to get the wtc contract.

"The Israeli political world got to know Silverstein when he tried to create a
free-trade zone in the country. He became friendly with Yitzhak Rabin,
Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon.
Ahaz Ben Ari, ..., remembers Silverstein as being "not easy to deal with,
a hot-tempered type who spoke aggressively to the prime minister...." (How did a guy who

was born into a lower class sounding family and owned a dance club called "Runway 69" have

this kind of clout with these guys?)

Criticism of "free trade zones":
"...Peres and Beilin objected: Free-trade zones of the kind envisaged were usually created
in the Third World and had the reputation of being slave markets. The local workers
earn starvation wages, while the entrepreneurs enjoy full tax exemption and make high
profits. "
..."I told them that in the end, the zone would become a MONEY-LAUNDERING center and that
no one apart from lawyers would make a profit from it."

So, what kind of guy is Silverstein?

More at:
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?ite...

[HamdenRice]

5. I think the strip club connection proved to be false ...

The owner of the strip club was Lawrence Silverstein. The leasee of the TWC goes by Larry Silverstein. Larry or Lawrence Silverstein are extremely common names in NYC. Several local papers showed they were two different people and there even some humor pieces about Larry being asked by business friends for freebies at "his" club that he knew nothing about.

[Generarth]

6. No it's him

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=97338&contrassID=3&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0

"In 1993, he became entangled in a lawsuit. Harry Miller, a Vietnam War veteran, sued Silverstein, who owned the Runway 69 dance club in Queens, for his alleged involvement in the trafficking of heroin. Also on the list of defendants were Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and Colin Powell, who were alleged to have perpetrated acts including serial murder for 25 years, since the war in Vietnam, as part of a conspiracy to distribute heroin. In January 1994, a New York court threw out the suit; an appeal by Miller was later rejected."

[mirandapriestly]

14. It is definitely him

my post above has the original lawsuit, it says "Larry" not Lawrence, the tribune is pulling a fast one, it was also in haaretz. See how easy it is to fool people? Almost everything about it is gone from the internet now.
I see you also have Haaretz, great I'm not alone, although it looks like they "PULLED" it.

[SidDithers]

7. You're right...from the link above...

Silverstein, a Forest Hills resident, may have been red in the face when his community showed up outside his offices wearing angry faces and shouting slogans against his operation. But he was also the cause of some embarrassment for another Silverstein– Larry, the real estate magnate and former head of the Real Estate Board of New York. The New York Times reported on that story and said Larry Silverstein had been getting some of his friends asking him if they could get tickets to the club.

“I have to tell them it sure as hell is not me,” Larry told the Times.

From the link above: http://www.queenstribune.com/anniversary2003/runway69.htm

Sid

[mirandapriestly]

13. NO!

It was in Haaretz and at one time the lawsuit was online and it was NOT LAWRENCE, it was Larry. there was an article in Haaretz the Israel paper that was pretty much a blockbuster, and guess what? it disappeared. probably wasn't meant for Americans to see. That "Queens tribune" article is a cover up and I don't think it was in "several". The whole thing has disappeared from the internet except that one article.
The Haaretz link is still up but they took the article down. I posted about it a long time ago.
The article also documented his close relations with Israeli politics.


Up in smoke - Haaretz - Israel News
... Minister Ariel Sharon called Larry Silverstein, a Jewish real estate magnate ... Silverstein, who owned the Runway 69 dance club in Queens, for ... © Copyright Haaretz. All rights reserved ...www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=97338&sw=wtc - More from this site - Save

[dailykoff]

8. That's just what I was thinking.

Larry's a whiz at fixing up aging asbestos-filled eyesores.

[Rich Hunt]

11. Sears tower is an engineering marvel

If I were you, I wouldn't be sniveling about it at just this moment.

Don't you people read the news?

I mean, anyone who has lived in Chicago since 2000 or 2001 at least knows that it has been under attack and sabotage from heroin drug lords with ties to terror and white supremacy.

I'd be very careful about what you say, lest it appear to be sympathetic to those who want to give a "black eye" to Chicago for refusing to co-operate with the fascist queens of heroin.

[dailykoff]

15. Hey I like the Sears Tower.

But then I liked the World Trade Center, too. Didn't stop them from deciding it was time to get rid of it. :shrug:


Sears Tower, Chicago, Illinois

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/searstower2_skyscraper.html

[sabbat hunter]

9. very old article

and wrong..

the PA and silverstein THIS year reached an agreement in which he gave up his right to rebuild WTC 1 (aka the freedom tower) in exchange for keeping the other buildings and doing as he wanted with them.

the lawsuitwith the insurance company was settled long ago its why the rebuilding finally is proceeding. it couldnt until it was settled.

[Old and In the Way]

10. So he got the insurance money and his original investment back?

Not bad....pretty good ROI.