Four months before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Larry Silverstein, president and CEO of Silverstein Properties, looked out the window from the 10th floor of 7 World Trade Center and watched the progress taking place down below on the site where 2,982 lives were lost on September 11, 2001. Today, the 16-acre area is rising from the ashes, thanks to a $20-billion redevelopment—which includes four brand-new class A office towers, the WTC Transportation Hub and the 9/11 Memorial. Today, the $20-billion, 16-acre redevelopment area is rising from the ashes—and the climate of Lower Manhattan is changing dramatically as a result.

“Most people won’t have a clue about what’s to come, and when it does, you are going to see a transformation here overnight,” Silverstein told investors at a Real Estate Lenders Association meeting on June 13. “The impact and transformation will be similar to what Rockefeller Center did in 1930 for Manhattan’s West Side.”

And slowly but surely, that transformation is already taking place. The nation has turned its attention to the 9/11 Memorial, which opened to the public on Sept. 12, as well as to One World Trade Center, now standing 80 stories tall. The building—owned by a joint venture of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Durst Organization—has become the centerpiece of the changing real estate landscape in Lower Manhattan. It is the future home of magazine publisher Cond