NEW YORK, NY April 17, 2009 —For years, the Port Authority has been trying to get a new World Trade Center complex built quickly. Now, it's slowing down the pace of building the office towers. WNYC's Matthew Schuerman has more.

REPORTER: One of the Port Authority's consultants determined there won't be enough market demand to fill all of the planned office towers until the year 2036. That prediction sounds familiar to people like David Kallick of the Fiscal Policy Institute. He questioned, seven years ago, why the government was pushing to replace all of the office space from the Twin Towers so quickly.

KALLICK: It wasn't a hard prediction to make that it might take a long time to fill up the office space. That's exactly what happened in the 70's when the world trade center was first built.

REPORTER: The report may turn out to be just a negotiating tool as the Port Authority tries to fight off the developer responsible for building three of those office towers, Larry Silverstein. He's looking for more financial help, and arguing it's in the public's interest to get the site rebuilt quickly. For WNYC, I'm Matthew Schuerman