WTC Construction on New Timetable

By Matt Dunning
POSTED OCTOBER 3, 2008

After admitting earlier this year that virtually none of its deadlines or budget predictions for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site were realistic, the Port Authority released a much-anticipated report showing just how far behind and over budget it really is.

According to the report, delivered Oct. 2 by Port Authority executive director Christopher Ward, the Freedom Tower’s completion is expected in summer 2013 and the Santiago Calatrava-designed transit hub is unlikely to open before mid-winter of 2014. Overall, the rebuilding of the site (excluding Silverstein Properties’ three towers) will cost $1.5 billion more than first projected.

 “Today isn’t a ribbon cutting,” Ward said. “Today [we’re] simply stating the news. We now know what we are building, how we’re going to build it, who is going to build it, when it can be done and how much it will cost.”

Ward said the memorial plaza will be open, though not completed, for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, at an additional cost of $75 million. The entire above-ground plaza, including landscaping and the Museum entryway, would not be finished until 2012, and that unfettered public access to any part of the site in the interim between the 10th anniversary and the plaza’s completion was “unlikely.”

“I think, given its construction, it would be wrong to have open access throughout the site,” Ward said.

During a City Council hearing convened Oct. 6 by Councilman Alan Gerson, Joe Daniels, president of the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, countered that he believed it would be possible for the authority to complete the entire plaza by Sept. 11, 2011.

 “Fully completing the memorial by the 10th anniversary remains our goal, and [Ward’s] report doesn’t promise that,” Daniels said. “Our hope is to have the entire, eight-acre plaza to not have continuing construction on it.”

Gerson, who used much of the hearing to push his own list of recommendations for expediting construction at the World Trade Center site, said he expected Daniels and the Authority to have reached some conclusion on the possibility of having the memorial finished before the 10th anniversary when the hearing resumes later this month.

“If it cannot be done, I want the engineering explanation as to why,” Gerson said.

What’s In the Report

In his report, Ward outlined two sets of deadlines for the Authority’s projects on the 16-acre site: target dates based on relatively problem-free construction, and “probabilistic” dates based on computer analyses of unanticipated problems. Gov. David Paterson, who in May ordered the Authority to come up with realistic deadlines and cost projections, said he was optimistic that the Port Authority would stay on schedule.

“Figuring that something always goes wrong, we still think we can meet [the new] deadlines,” Paterson said at a press conference with Ward and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “If something goes wrong...we’ll know about it right away.”

In order to meet the new deadlines, several of the Authority’s original designs and construction plans have been altered. Most significantly, Calatrava’s much-heralded but highly complex transportation hub needed to be simplified, as almost all of the Authority’s other projects on the site depend on its construction. A timely delivery of the eight-acre memorial plaza, to be built on the roof of the hub’s underground mezzanine in the southwest corner of the site, requires the Authority to reverse its construction plan and install the roof first, then build the mezzanine corridor underneath it. Ward said the Authority has finalized changes to the hub’s design that would facilitate the new construction plan. 

“We literally turned the project upside down,” Ward said, adding that the hub’s original design would have delayed the plaza’s construction another three years. The new design replaces the stylized, welded trusses that would have supported the plaza in the original plans with more traditional bolted-steel columns.

“We needed to come up with a dynamic engineering solution to provide the floor of the plaza, and we’ve done that,” Ward said.

The Silverstein Towers

Although Paterson and Bloomberg both seemed satisfied with Ward’s report, there are still questions over how the new schedule will affect other projects at the site, including the MTA’s Fulton Street Transit Center and Silverstein Properties’ construction of Towers 2, 3 and 4. The Authority was supposed to have completed excavation and infrastructure work on the site designated for Tower 2 in September. Since it missed the originally scheduled June 30 deadline for the turning over the site, the Authority has been paying Silverstein a $300,000 penalty for every day the site remains undelivered. Following the Gerson hearing, Ward said the Authority plans to finally hand the site over by Oct. 10.

“We are now going to study the Port Authority’s report and back-up materials so that our construction professionals can evaluate the new dates they have identified,” Larry Silverstein said in a statement. “This will allow us to gauge the impact on our part of the World Trade Center rebuilding effort.”

Despite the sinking economy and plummeting fortunes on Wall, the Authority continues to insist it can cover the $1.5 billion overrun in its construction budget. And Bloomberg is confident that tenants will be found for the four towers planned for the site.

“There’s no question that Wall Street and the financial community are suffering, but they will come back,” Bloomberg said. “This is a great place to have your office. Downtown will be a phenomenal place for a lot of businesses to get some spectacular space in unbelievably beautiful buildings.”

Cost to the Community

Whatever progress the Port Authority makes on the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site, it will come at a cost to residents and businesses near the site.

Ward said service will be suspended on the No. 1 subway line below Chambers Street for at least six weeks in 2010. Vesey Street will need to be closed to pedestrians when Silverstein Properties begins construction on Tower 2. Liberty Street will be closed sometime after the demolition of the former Deutsche Bank tower.

Catherine McVay-Hughes, chairwoman of Community Board 1’s WTC Redevelopment Committee, said she is waiting to see how shifting construction schedules will affect movement of trucks, materials and workers in and out of Lower Manhattan. But she praised the Port Authority’s establishment of an Office of Program Logistics, a new department within the agency that will, according to its director, Quentin Brathwaite, be responsible for coordinating the scheduling and engineering of the redevelopment, as well as resolving future construction problems. Brathwaite said during a recent meeting of the WTC Redevelopment Committee that the office would also become the new communication and community relations department for the Authority’s World Trade Center projects, working both with the general public and the dozens of city and state agencies, businesses and investors with a stake in the rebuilding of the site.

“It’s nice to see that they have realistic timetables and budget estimates and that they are inviting the public to look at them,” McVay-Hughes said.

“I think we’re seeing a new level of receptivity and openness and transparency from the PA that we didn’t see before,” CB1 Chairwoman Julie Menin added.

Acknowledging the difficult road ahead, Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia said the complexity of the task can no longer be an excuse for inaction.

“The Port Authority should be able to do difficult things, which is why days like today are so important,” Coscia said. “We know it’s difficult, and we know it’s hard, but it’s got to get done.”

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