A Community Board 1 committee is throwing its weight behind the Port Authority in its lengthy battle with Larry Silverstein over financing for the developer’s buildings at the World Trade Center site.

Locked in a bitter stalemate for more than a year over financing for Silverstein’s three planned office towers at the site, the two sides have until Friday to end their feud or face an arbitration panel’s intervention. The Authority, which owns the 16-acre site, offered last week to guarantee construction loans for two of Silverstein's buildings—Towers 3 and 4—if the developer can raise $300 million in private funding.

Tuesday night, CB1’s World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee passed a resolution urging Silverstein to use the Authority’s offer as a basis for a new construction agreement between the warring sides.

“We think that Port Authority’s most recent position is a reasonable one,” committee member Jeff Galloway said. “It’s a clear indication that the Port Authority is going in the right direction. We think the Port Authority should draw a line in the sand.”

In January, an arbitration panel gave Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority until March 12 to produce a new construction schedule and financing plan for the site’s eastern half, where Silverstein had originally intended to build three massive office towers. But a weakened credit market has kept him from raising money in the private market. Last month, Silverstein offered to put up $250 million of his own money toward building Towers 3 and 4—and suspend indefinitely construction of the more costly Tower 2—but the Authority rejected the proposal.

If an agreement is not reached by Friday, the arbitration panel may choose to impose a construction plan of its own. The World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee’s resolution marked the first time Community Board 1 members have formally supported a specific offer from either side since the 15-month stalemate began.

“Up until this point, I’ve been impatient with the Port Authority because I felt like they were stonewalling,” committee member Bill Love said, noting that the Authority’s latest offer was significantly more generous than its last proposal, which asked Silverstein for $625 million and only offered to back loans for Tower 4, current under construction at the corner of Liberty and Church Streets.

“To me, [last week’s offer] is a serious enough offer that Silverstein Properties really should get a room somewhere for the next 48 hours and hammer out an agreement,” Love said.

While the Port Authority’s offer may be the closest the two sides have come to an agreement in more than a year, some of its provisions are likely to prevent a deal from actually getting done by the Friday deadline.

Before the agency will back any loans for Tower 3, Silverstein would have to pre-lease bout a quarter of Tower 3’s total 2.1 million square feet, at rates almost double the average asking rent for high-grade office space in Lower Manhattan. The developer would also have to rework the tower’s design to bring down its cost, and continue to pay ground rent on the proposed sites for his three towers until his insurance proceeds—collected after the destruction of the original World Trade Center—run out.

Silverstein has not indicated to what degree he is considering the Port Authority’s offer, though a source familiar with the negotiations said his reaction to the proposal was “not immediately favorable.”

"We are pleased that the Port Authority has responded to our February 10 offer with their own proposal, which we are currently studying," Bud Perrone, a spokesman for Silverstein Properties, said in response to the offer. "We will continue to work with the Port Authority and other stakeholders in order to achieve an agreement that will protect the public’s interests and ensure the World Trade Center is rebuilt in a timely manner."

Before the committee  took its vote Tuesday night, Galloway said it was crucial, in advance of the March 12 deadline, for Community Board 1 to support what he believed was the most rational proposal either side had produced in 15 months. Without a firm statement from the board, Galloway said it might be to Silverstein’s advantage to rely on the arbitration panel for a new construction agreement. 

“If I were in [Silverstein’s] position, I would continue to hold out just as he has, to wait and see if the market is in fact what everyone hopes it will be,” Galloway said. “There’s no incentive for him to build these towers, or to do anything other than sit there and wait for the Port Authority to give him more and more money.”

Whatever happens between Silverstein and the Port Authority in terms of a new agreement on tower construction, the committee members agreed that, at a minimum, the two sides owed Lower Manhattan residents a plan for rebuilt streets and infrastructure at the World Trade Center site, regardless of whether Silverstein’s towers are ever built.

“We want our street grid back, we want vitality back on the streets Downtown,” McVay-Hughes said. “We’re sick and tired of walking around a construction site. If a deal is not met this Friday, it’s just going to drag on longer.”