Old Lion's Arch and the portal area under construction

Back at release the area around the Easter Ward PoI (http://imgur.com/a/12U5d) had around 7 (I'm not sure of the exact number) asuran portals that were being worked on by a krew. The krew leader there never revealed where would those portals lead; I speculated that they would lead to new cultural hubs or maybe dungeons.

Nowadays, on this exact spot we have the racial capital portals, which had been moved from their original spot (as see in the lower left corner in the image above), and this does sound like a logical move because that area already had semi-complete asura gates. But what I am wonder is, what was their original purpose? Why were they being build at the time? Certainly not to lead to the racial capitals because there were already functional portals in Old LA.

What were your speculations about that place when you first explored the city? Is New LA going to get those portals back? If their purpose go scraped in the end, would a kind developer give as an answer of their purpose? ^^Please