Brookfield Properties, owner of the plaza and the building, One Liberty Plaza, which towers above it, unveiled the new design to a Community Board 1 Committee last month.

After Sept. 11 the plaza’s trees were cut down to create a staging area for Ground Zero workers, and it was closed until January 2003.

But the $7.5 million renovation, to begin this spring, was being planned before the disaster, said Larry Graham, Brookfield’s executive vice president. “The park has been sinking in certain spots,” he said. “It needs heavy-duty structural work.”

Long planters with benches will run along parts of the plaza’s north and south edges, and two dozen granite benches will be placed among 55 honey locust trees covering the site. About 500 light fixtures, six inches wide by three feet long, will be built into the granite paving, creating a dramatic effect.

“At night it’s going to be very festive,” said Alexander Cooper, a partner at Cooper, Robertson & Partners, the redesigners of the plaza.

But the renovation will require the World Trade Center Greenmarket to find a new site. “We can’t fit both the trees and the Greenmarket,” Graham said. “You need a big open space for the market.”

The plaza design won praise from the committee. “It’s beautiful,” said Pat Moore, who lives at 125 Cedar St., half a block from the plaza. “I’m so happy the trees are coming back. The plaza is like our backyard.”