WTC owner offered $20 million for 1,200 square feet near ground zero

NEW YORK - The World Trade Center site's owner has offered $20 million to acquire the 1,200-square-foot lot of a church destroyed on Sept. 11, freeing one more piece of land needed to rebuild every inch of ground zero.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's board was to consider a complicated land deal with the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at a board meeting Thursday. The 300-member congregation's leaders have been negotiating with the agency for years over a price for the lower Manhattan site where the church stood before the trade center's south tower collapsed on it on Sept. 11, 2001.

The church agreed to rebuild on a smaller footprint a few blocks east, on land owned by the state rebuilding agency dismantling a toxic skyscraper also damaged on Sept. 11. The Port Authority was to do some work on the church's floor, which would sit above an underground parking facility it is building.