MW: Larry Silverstein is very upfront. He's sort of like this old time sales person. He's very much out there. He's very lively for a man of his age. He's like a bubbling ten year old. And he's very enthusiastic and he tries to catch you up in his enthusiasm. He is also someone who definitely has his own ideas and his own thoughts. I think it's difficult for him to initially engage in a conversation where he's actually listening in a way that makes a difference. I think it takes him a little time to hear what you're trying to say.. You kind of have to repeat it over a period of time before he actually really understands it. But he does have a lot of really good people also around him. He's a very smart man. Certainly he hasn't gotten where he is by chance. He's a very smart man and he surrounds himself with very, very smart people. He has someone working for him who is a very good listener and was very careful to really understand what the issues were when we were having lunch. Larry's a very gregarious person. He has all these cookies baked and he's always giving them out. It's like a salesman who's trying to make a friend by saying, "Here, have a cookie, have a cookie, everybody have a cookie." But I think it's been difficult for him because he feels like he wants to build something. He wants to make a statement. He has his own insurance issues. And then on the other side, he's also a person of an age where he also has a chance to make his place in history. I think in slowing this process down, I believe that he's been able to think more about what his legacy could be by creating something that everyone wanted instead of what people would loathe. I do believe that although the building is now getting smaller and maybe it's not what he originally intended that it's something that will certainly make him more endearing to people in the future.

MW: The new plan is for a building that has been moved to the south. I met with David Childs who is the Chief Architect for 7 World Trade Center who has been hired by Larry Silverstein. He is a principal in Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The building that is now being worked on, and certainly in a coordinated effort with Con Ed, is a building that has shrunk by about eight thousand feet in its footprint. It's about thirty-two thousand square feet as opposed to forty thousand square feet. It's been moved to the south. Because it's a trapezoid shaped building, it's been moved a little bit to the west as well. Making it smaller and moving it to the southwest has now created the ability to put it back Greenwich Street. The building will cantilever a little bit over Greenwich Street, which is fine but it's over a hundred and ten feet high, the cantilever. But it enables us to have not only pedestrians but to have vehicular traffic down. And it also puts the building back in line with Greenwich Street so it doesn't stick out, so when you're looking down the road, it's not like "Oh, there's 7 World Trade Center again." It's actually in line with the street wall. I think it just opens up the space and it creates more of a gateway to the sixteen acres that will be built in the future. I think it's looking good.

MW: Both the governor and the mayor said that they're going to slow down on 7 World Trade Center and I think it's a combination of because it needs to be that way to make sure we get it right. I think it's also for someone like Monica Iken who has a very different issue with 7 World Trade Center, which is that nothing should be built. So how and when the governor and mayor decide that they've given enough time to this particular issue, I really can't speak for them about it. But I do believe that we will bring those plans in front of the Community Board when they're done and then the Community Board will advise Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on whether or not it's appropriate.

MW: In terms of how the Community Board meetings work and what the agenda is and what my feelings are works in regard to the other board members. I'm probably the most educated of the board members because I had an opportunity to meet with certain people and have shared some ideas that enabled me to have a little education on certain issues. However, having said that, we've had Town Hall meetings, we've had urban planning meetings, we've had Executive Board Meetings and there is a unanimity within those meetings which says that people want the street grid put back into the World Trade Center site, particularly Greenwich Street. We passed a resolution saying that. Now obviously I will deliver my ideas to the Executive Board and the Community Board and hopefully they will agree with this. I don't generally come up with these things because they don't make sense. I come up with these things because they're what the community needs. I mean, I lived with 7 World Trade Center outside my window for the last sixteen years. I watched it go up. I watched the wall be built and I looked at this structure and analyzed it for so many years. So it's one of the more obvious kinds of interest that this community would have but it's certainly one that the community said they wanted. Plus I've gotten a lot of letters about it. I probably have gotten thirty or forty letters about putting Greenwich Street back and this was before I started pushing for it. But it made sense to me very, very early on. And yes, I did speak about it to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. I also spoke to the mayor about it, I spoke to the governor about it, and I spoke to his Chief of Staff about it. You have to speak to a lot of people about these things to get them to understand what the issues are. In terms of the Community Board though, the natural process of a Community Board meeting is to take an idea and make it better. I think that some people think that if they didn't show up or if they weren't the ones who made such a stink about something, nothing would happen. That's not how it works. We bring an issue to the Community Board or a building to the Community Board or a bridge to the Community Board and we discuss it. Then out of the interaction between the board members and the community, a decision is made, usually not yes or not but more like, "What if we did it this way?" Projects always come out better after they get to the Community Board, which is why we are the planning board of the community. We make these recommendations in a normal process to the City Planning Commission and to the Borough President because that's what we're supposed to do. We're not supposed to rubber stamp something. We're supposed to look at a project and make it better.

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