In his weekly radio segment after the SPI offer was made, Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed the developer's plan and challenged the Port to make a viable counter-offer. Silverstein, Bloomberg said, "had a very rational plan, and I can tell you at this point it is the Port Authority who has to come back. And if they don't come back rationally with something that is doable and doable now, we're going to have a hole in the ground."

However, when the Port's counter-offer was made public, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie—one of the two state governors to whom the Port must answer—appeared to take the authority's side. "We simply cannot delay any longer on the World Trade Center site, which is why I have worked with the Port Authority to put together a thoughtful and substantive counterproposal," Christie said in a statement late last week. "Now is the time for all interested parties to quickly and responsibly finalize an agreement that both protects the memories of those we lost and the overstretched taxpayers of New York and New Jersey. This is a good first step we must all quickly build upon, so we can come to a timely and meaningful conclusion."

In addition, the General Contractors Association weighed in with a statement of its own on Friday, firmly backing the Port. "We need to rebuild the World Trade Center site, but we need to do so in a way that does not bankrupt the Port Authority and curtail critically needed investment in the Port's transportation infrastructure," says GCA managing director Denise Richardson in the statement. "The Port Authority's funding, which is generated by fees paid by the public, needs to go to public purposes, which is infrastructure, not to private development." Richardson's predecessor at the GCA, Chris Ward, is the Port's current executive director.