Brookfield Properties unveiled its redesign plan for a revamped World Financial Center at Monday's Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) board meeting, according to an article by Dianne Renzulli in today's edition of the Broadsheet Daily.

"The $370 million project will create a new glass-pavilion entrance to the Winter Garden on West Street, more light-filled glass entrances and lobbies, and a greater density of retail opportunities. Work on the project is scheduled to begin this year and finish by 2013 for all but the retail portion, which will continue into 2014" the article said.

Lawrence Graham, executive vice president of Brookfield Properties, said that the World Trade Center's redesign have necessitated a more open and accessible layout at the World Financial Center.

According to the article, Mr. Graham said that "one of the advantages of this project is that we are able to create a front door for the Financial Center. The Financial Center has never had a front door facing Manhattan. This pavilion clearly signals this is the entrance to the Financial Center and to some extent Battery Park (City)."

"Mr. Graham said redesign was necessitated by the new transit infrastructure at the World Trade Center,' the article continued, "which will require commuters from the E, R, and #1 subway lines and the PATH to travel under West Street instead of passing over a bridge to the Financial Center's second level as they did before September 11, 2001. Additionally, Brookfield is motivated to maximize its retail opportunities because the lease of one of the World Financial Centers, anchor tenants, Bank of America (formerly Merrill Lynch), will end in 2013, leaving half of its eight million square feet empty. To attract new retailers and corporate renters, and to draw in more of Battery Park City's roughly 12,000 residents, Brookfield has decided to modernize its 25-year-old design."

The tunnel under West Street is expected to be completed in 2012. "Because most of the Winter Garden is built over water and the PATH train tubes," the article said, "the farthest west a tunnel can reach is just outside the structure's West Street facade. Brookfield's design team created a three-story glass pavilion over this approach to the Winter Garden, so that commuters will come up the stairs and through the main entrance without being exposed to the elements. The Brookfield design team looked at five options for redirecting the flow of people through the main entrance, four of which kept the Winter Garden's iconic staircase, but determined that the staircase inevitably caused 'pinch points,' obstructions and turning problems in pedestrian flows."

According to the plan, the article said that "commuters will travel up one of five escalators to the second floor,' adding that "Brookfield estimated that 45,000 daily commuters come through the Winter Garden, 30,000 of whom need to get upstairs. The pedestrian flow is complicated, says Brookfield, by a counterflow of 3,000 Battery Park City residents leaving the area for work across West Street and 3,000 daily ferry commuters coming into the Winter Garden from the west."

"The staircase blocks the view to the river and obstructs the commuters' access to the Financial Center's second level," said Mr. Graham, adding that removing the stairs creates 30 percent more space, or 7,000 additional square feet in the Winter Garden, for exhibits and concerts.

"The new plan calls for the section currently occupied by such retailers as Boomerang and Hallmark to be replaced by an indoor food market along a central corridor that opens onto related restaurants," the article said, "with open access to a dining terrace that will include 700 public seats."

The article said that Gayle Horwitz, BPCA president said the Authority will look at Brookfield's plans to remove the staircase and have an independent analysis to make sure that its removal is necessary.