Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey should sell the World Trade Center site's proposed Freedom Tower. And then it should rebuild Pennsylvania Station.

It was a good idea for the Port Authority to get out of the real estate business back in the 1990s, when the idea of selling or leasing the World Trade Center was first discussed. It is an even better idea now.

Especially now, because there are so many investors looking to buy or lease public assets, things like toll roads, lotteries and airports, and manage them for a profit. States and localities from coast to coast are looking at their assets and considering which businesses to sell.

Surely developing real estate, and then acting as a landlord, isn't exactly one of the core competencies of any municipal government. As more than one observer has pointed out, the original World Trade Center was a white elephant for years after it was opened in 1970.

As for Pennsylvania Station -- maybe now it is time to restore one of the glories of New York, almost four decades after one of the worst acts of urban vandalism was perpetrated in the name of commerce.

I'm not talking about the Port Authority somehow getting involved in the long-delayed transformation of the Farley Post Office into a new, ersatz Pennsylvania Station. That's been talked about for years. No, I am talking about rebuilding the old Pennsylvania Station.

Train Stations

The American Institute of Architects released the results of a poll on ``America's Favorite Architecture'' on Feb. 7. Almost without exception, the architecture favored by Americans is old.

The Empire State Building was No. 1 on the list, which also contained a lot of the usual suspects: the Chrysler Building in New York; the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina; the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego; Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There were also a lot of train stations on the list. That's not surprising, because so many of the train stations were built at the turn of the century, in the grand Beaux-Arts style, like Grand Central Terminal in New York, and Union Stations in Washington, Chicago and St. Louis. Those buildings were imposing. They filled the eye and lifted the soul.

Rallying Preservationists

Pennsylvania Station was on the AIA's list, too, down at No. 143, although it isn't even a memory for most people. The building was demolished between 1963 and 1966. Its destruction proved decisive in rallying the urban preservation movement, both in New York and elsewhere.

New Yorkers now know that pulling down Penn Station was a very great mistake, if not outright insane, and sadly diminished the city. But it's not irreversible. The McKim, Mead & White architectural plans are on file at the New York Historical Society. Sure, there are office towers and Madison Square Garden and real estate moguls to deal with, but nothing is ever simple in New York.

Rebuilding Pennsylvania Station may be a dream. Getting the Port Authority out of the Freedom Tower makes lots of sense and is eminently achievable.

The Port Authority leased the Trade Center site to developer Larry Silverstein six weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. The authority got back control of the Freedom Tower site last year after a new agreement with Silverstein.

Mass Transit

The World Trade Center was the brainchild of Austin Tobin, the Port Authority's executive director from 1942 to 1972, who thought of it as a modern-day version of the Tontine Coffee House, site of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1790s.

The Trade Center was the result of a swap -- New Jersey allowed the Port Authority to build the center, but only if it also purchased the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, a commuter train that ran from New Jersey into lower Manhattan. The Port Authority had resisted any involvement with commuter transit since its inception, saying it would be too much of a financial drag on an agency that was entirely self-supporting.

Some New Yorkers called for the Trade Center to be sold even before it officially opened. Labor leader Theodore Kheel, in a November 1969 article in New York magazine entitled, ``How the Port Authority Is Strangling New York,'' called upon the agency to embrace mass transit.

``The World Trade Center is a striking example of socialism at its worst -- a state agency needlessly and inefficiently intervening in a market already well served by private capital,'' Kheel wrote.

That was 1969. Private capital is clamoring for investment opportunities today. Maybe now, six years after 9/11, private capital and new blood can make a difference in lower Manhattan.

(Joe Mysak is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Joe Mysak in New York at jmysakjr@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 16, 2007 00:03 EST