With Landlords Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

They’ll obviously have no problem at all leasing all that space:

The head of the Port Authority said he would rather quit than ask his staffers to work in the Freedom Tower — a stance that landed him in hot water yesterday with Mayor Bloomberg.

“Twice these [PA employees] were the subject of that attack, and I am not going to ask them to move into that building,” PA Chairman Anthony Coscia told The Record of Hackensack, N.J., in yesterday’s editions. “I’ll resign, but I won’t ask them to move into that building.”

Coscia, whose agency was based at the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing and lost 84 employees on 9/11, conceded publicly in June that his staffers were skittish about returning to Ground Zero.

Although he’s since pressed on with the PA’s commitment to lease some 600,000 square feet in Tower 4, a smaller, 61-story building planned at the Trade Center site, his Freedom Tower statements to The Record were notable for their candor — which Bloomberg didn’t appreciate.

The mayor said Coscia’s stance “doesn’t help” the effort to lure tenants to the iconic 1,776-foot skyscraper.

“I don’t happen to agree with him,” Bloomberg added. “And I think it is as safe a building as you could possibly ever, ever live in, work in.”