Bank wants better deal for WTC site move

Bank wants better deal for WTC site move

	Published : Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:19 By : Agencies Print this Story

NEW YORK (AP) - One of the nation's largest banks has threatened to leave the city if it doesn't receive bigger tax breaks to develop one of five planned office towers at ground zero, government officials said Wednesday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been negotiating for weeks to build and lease the last skyscraper planned to replace the office space destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, officials familiar with the talks told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The bank has offered the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site, $300 million for rights to develop the 50-story skyscraper on land now occupied by a vacant skyscraper heavily damaged on Sept. 11, one official said.

If the deal goes through, JPMorgan would build the tower and move thousands of employees from several midtown Manhattan locations to the downtown site, just south of the original twin towers.

But the bank has sought more lucrative tax incentives from the city and state to move downtown and is looking at locations in Connecticut and New Jersey if a deal can't be reached, officials said.

Officials have said they won't offer any other company a deal like the one handed to Goldman Sachs Co. two years ago when businesses were more wary about moving downtown. Since then, office vacancy rates in the neighborhood have dropped to pre-Sept. 11 levels.

'They have been clear in not wanting to replicate the Goldman deal,' said Anthony Shorris, executive director of the Port Authority.

Goldman Sachs began building its corporate headquarters just north of ground zero in late 2005, after receiving $1.6 billion in tax-exempt bonds and more than $100 million in tax incentives to build a $2 billion building.

Officials familiar with the JPMorgan talks said the incentives being sought are nowhere near that large.

Shorris said that JPMorgan and the government have been involved 'pretty intensely' in talks over the planned skyscraper and that the Port Authority wanted to get a 'decent financial value' for the building.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that 'the city's always willing to negotiate.' But he said that funding clean streets, public safety, culture and education is a better way 'to spend the city's dollars rather than giving companies tax breaks.'

JPMorgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti declined to comment Wednesday.

JPMorgan Chase is the nation's third-largest bank by assets, behind No. 1 Citigroup Inc., which is based in New York, and the Bank of America Corp., which is headquartered in Charlotte, N.C.

Associated Press Writer Sara Kugler contributed to this report.