The authority’s board met Wednesday and selected Durst over the other finalist, the Related Companies, one of the city’s most prolific developers. The authority and the Dursts plan to negotiate a final agreement over the next 30 days. If the deal is completed, the Dursts will invest at least $100 million for an undisclosed stake in the project and take over leasing and management of the building.

The authority figured that it was good at building but would need an expert to lure top-notch tenants from the United States and abroad. In one of the more intriguing possibilities, the publishing giant Condé Nast has expressed interest in moving to 1 World Trade Center from a Durst building in Times Square.

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“We’re extremely pleased that some of the most prominent developers in the country saw market value in this world-class office tower, and engaged in an extremely competitive process for a stake in it,” said Anthony R. Coscia, the authority’s chairman. “What is most important is that we reach an agreement that is good for the building, for the World Trade Center site and for the region.”

So far, the Beijing Vantone Industrial Company, a Chinese real estate firm that signed a lease for the 64th through 69th floors, a total of about 190,000 square feet, is the sole private tenant. The authority has preliminary agreements with the state and federal governments for one million square feet.

The authority had explored selling the building in 2007 to a private equity firm, but the recession quickly wiped out that possibility. In January, the authority solicited interest from a select group of developers who might be interested in a partnership deal. Six responded: the Durst Organization; Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, a national real estate company; Mortimer B. Zuckerman, chairman of Boston Properties and the owner of The Daily News; Brookfield Properties, one of the largest landlords downtown; Hines, an international developer based in Texas; and Stephen M. Ross, chief executive of the Related Companies.

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Mr. Ross expressed disappointment on Wednesday. “I wish them the best,” he said, “because I realize how important this job is. It’s going to need some nontraditional thinking.”

The deal is also a remarkable reversal for the Dursts, and not the first for a member of New York’s real estate royalty. Seymour Durst was a vociferous opponent of the original World Trade Center complex. And his son, Douglas, had been an outspoken critic of the Freedom Tower. Like many critics, the son said the tower was ill conceived and too expensive.

But the Dursts, who have been eager to get into a new development project since they completed the Bank of America Tower on 42nd Street last year, recognized that it was better to get involved downtown because there would not be many office towers built in Manhattan over the next decade.

The Durst family, which owns 10 Midtown office buildings, had also opposed the redevelopment of the Times Square area in the 1980s. It was bad policy, the Dursts argued, for government to subsidize four planned office buildings in Times Square that would compete with privately built towers along Avenue of the Americas, particularly theirs.

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The designated Times Square developer, George Klein, once blamed them for 46 of the 47 lawsuits that delayed redevelopment there for much of the 1980s. But in the end, it was Douglas Durst, not Mr. Klein, who built the first of the four Times Square towers — the Condé Nast Building at 4 Times Square — in 1996.