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.

The stalled negotiations for the church land were listed among more than a dozen obstacles to rebuilding the site in a June 30 report written by the authority's executive director, Christopher Ward.

“We're bringing a proposal to the board that will resolve one of the 15 fundamental issues presented in our assessment last month and will allow us to continue to move forward in the rebuilding of the site,” he said.

Builders needed the parcel to begin work on a southern foundation wall for the site; the agency was expected to hire a contractor for that job on Thursday.

Under the agreement, the Port Authority would pay $10 million and the other $10 million would come from JPMorgan Chase & Co., which made a tentative deal last year to build one of five office towers planned to replace the trade center.

The Port Authority would have to pay the $20 million if JPMorgan opted out.

The land where the bank plans to move is taken by the 26-story former Deutsche Bank tower, a demolition project slowed by a fatal fire, the discovery of human remains and regulatory squabbles.

That building and the church site have snagged the Port Authority's schedule for building an underground security center for parking tour buses and other vehicles at the complex.

Ward said in June that all projects at ground zero are over budget and behind schedule, and he said he would have new estimates in September.

Plans for five office towers, a memorial, a multibillion-dollar transit hub and a performing arts center were announced five years ago. None will be built by the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Ward has said.