Freedom Tower Gets Tenant, New Name

The Port Authority has its first commercial tenant for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site and a new name for the building.

Bejing Vantone, a Chinese firm that promotes trade between the US and China, will lease five floors in the tower slated to be up by 2013. This announcement also marks a subtle rebranding of the beleaguered project.

The official paper work no longer makes any reference to the so-called Freedom Tower. Instead it will be simply One World Trade Center.

In addition to the one tenant, the Port Authority expects government agencies to lease a million square feet of the 2.6 million square foot building. Meanwhile behind the scenes, the agency is still negotiating with developer Larry Silverstein on how it can help him finance a portion of his part of the complex.