BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN

The Silverstein Properties marketing center on the seventh floor of 7 World Trade Center has the air of a sacred vault. After entering past the sliding glass doors, visitors are greeted by a hallway lined with pictures documenting the World Trade Center’s sometimes contentious, sometimes momentous journey from somber graveyard to gleaming new development featuring state-of-the-art office space and retail.

Pictures depicting union construction workers at a 2010 protest and Larry Silverstein unveiling Jeff Koons’s balloon flower monument outside 7 World Trade Center compete for space with five LCD televisions broadcasting Silverstein promotional videos.

But the most effective marketing in the entire suite may be the building itself.

“7 World Trade Center is kind of the model, because we opened it six years ago,” said Janno Lieber, president of World Trade Center Properties, a subsidiary of Silverstein Properties. “No tenants. Everybody was gnashing their teeth and tearing at their hair about that. And now we’ve fully leased it.”

The remaining World Trade Center towers are experiencing a similar situation. It’s still too early to predict whether companies will flock to the Downtown market once the buildings are completed. But just a few years away from opening to the public, the key properties are nearly 50 percent leased, according to Mr. Lieber and published reports.

To read the full story, click here.

BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN

Before tenants can set foot inside the new World Trade Center, the men and women behind the development’s massive and ambitious construction have to place the iron, sometimes at staggering, dangerous heights. Local 40 Ironworker Matt Gelbke, who works as a connector for DCM, have helped turn Tower 4 into a 977-foot standing structure. It is a job that is risky and interesting enough for The Weather Channel to feature the building’s construction on the network’s reality show “Iron Men.” Mr. Gelbke, 27, spoke with The Commercial Observer about working at great heights while a camera crew films his every move. The Commercial Observer: How did the show come about, and how did you guys get picked to have a camera crew follow you around? Mr. Gelbke: It’s actually kind of a funny story. When Pipeline39 [the producers of “Iron Men”] started coming around and filming, we weren’t really that keen on it. We were actually kind of standoffish. That’s why the first two episodes are mostly [about] the other raising gang, because there are two cranes.

But for whatever reason, I don’t know if they wooed us over and we just kind of fell for it or whatever, but we ended up cooperating eventually. I don’t know what made them come to our raising gang more than the other, they wound up just following us a lot more. Maybe because me and my former partner Jesse [Rice], we were just fun. We joked around a lot, we had a lot of fun at work.

To read the full story, click here.

BY DANIEL GEIGER

In the years it has taken to rebuild the World Trade Center site, Janno Lieber, a top executive at Silverstein Properties, has become the face of the company’s efforts to develop its collection of skyscrapers at the site. Serge Demerjian, a development and construction manager who joined Silverstein from the architecture firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill in 2006, has become a behind-the-scenes asset at the firm, leading its efforts to negotiate the site’s infamous complexities and rebuild the millions of square feet of commercial office space that was lost 11 years ago. Both men spoke to The Commercial Observer last week about all the challenges of building the towers.

Did you ever get an early inkling that some of the construction plans and agreements would eventually cause an impasse over the development of your portions of the site and the transit hub? Mr. Demerjian: Every architect wanted to do things their own way, but there was a master plan. There was the basic rules that you had to follow and then you sort of just had to work it out, and that was the challenge and the fun part of it.

Mr. Lieber: Serge came over in the beginning of ’06, in the summer. We made the deal where we gave up the Freedom Tower and we gave up Site 5 but we got Liberty Bonds, which was the essence of that deal. The Port said you have to design the whole east bathtub by September. You have to design the thing to a schematic level of design.

Mr. Demerjian: It’s basic space planning, basic rules. The program is established, the concepts of entrances and exits and egress. There is a first pass at mechanical systems. All that stuff is established.

Mr. Lieber: I debated with Steve Plate [one of the Port Authority’s chief executives in charge of World Trade Center construction]. I remember the discussion, because he was at home and had gone out to dinner with his wife ,and I asked what level of design was going to have to be achieved.

Was that a friendly conversation? Mr. Lieber: It was complicated, because we were speaking different languages. Serge speaks standard in the trade architectural design standards. The Port has their own lingo for everything. So you have to kind of translate. And Steve said, “So I want it up to stage 2.” We said that’s like an early schematic, right? And Steve said, “No no, it’s a full schematic.” But we got it done. We had to achieve a certain level of design in three months, or the Port wouldn’t do the deal.

To read the full story, click here.

BY DANIEL GEIGER

The hacking of Go Daddy that brought down scores of websites this afternoon hit several prominent real estate companies.

Colliers International, CIM Group and The Durst Organization all had their websites disabled as a result of the attack, which reports claim was committed by the outlaw hacking group Anonymous.

“We’re monitoring the situation and working to get the site back up,” Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the Durst Organization said.

Mr. Barowitz noted that Durst does not use the domain name provider and web hosting company, but that the Durst website was still ensnared in the widespread shutdown because Go Daddy guides some of its traffic.

To read the full story, click here.

BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN

HonestBuildings, a new tech start-up co-founded by a former Tishman Speyer executive, has secured its first round of financing from a group of venture capital firms that include RockPort Capital and Mohr Davidow Ventures, the company is expected to announce later today.

Since launching in March, the website has expanded its roster of buildings listed on its site from 30,000 to 600,000, and now operates in markets that include New York City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Dallas and Houston.

With the new financing secured, HonestBuildings.com is looking to grow the number of buildings featured on its site, among other improvements.

"We have a good user experience update to the platform and we are streamlining the look and feel of the site," said Riggs Kubiak, c0-founder and CEO of HonestBuildings.com. The company also announced that it will featured information of 37,000 buildings in Portland, Oregon, and is looking at eventual grow in foreign markets like London.

To read the full story, click here.