City awaits WTC cost-cutting plan

Real Estate Weekly, Oct 1, 2008 by Daniel Geiger

A day away from the release of Port Authority executive director Chris Ward's much-anticipated report on the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, a mixed picture has emerged on what Ward will recommend to reduce the site's mounting costs and delays.

Ward announced over the summer that the plans laid by former Governor George Pataki to redevelop the site were potentially years behind schedule and billions above budget and that the site needed a new set of construction deadlines and cost estimates combined with a plan on how to rein in the overruns.

That strategy is expected to be unveiled at the Port Authority's board meeting tomorrow (Thursday), but there are varying expectations just how comprehensive it will be. Some sources, including stakeholders at the site, have speculated that the Port Authority still won't be able to put an accurate price tag on what some of the projects may cost nor definitive new timelines for all the delayed construction. So far, sources and written reports have revealed some of the details of Ward's plan for the World Trade Center Memorial and the site's transportation hub, perhaps Ground Zero's two most controversial components.

Ward's disclosure that the Port Authority wouldn't be able to deliver the Memorial in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 drew outrage from the public as well as officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has spearheaded its fundraising effort.

Ward's plan reportedly includes a proposal on how to finish the Memorial's most visible elements, its waterfall-fed reflecting pools and an expansive street level park with tree plantings, by the anniversary deadline. A museum that is to be built below ground at the site would be completed at a later date, with a report in the New York Times stating that it would be done a year after.

Thursday's plan also is said to hold answers on how to hem the WTC transportation hub's massive cost, which some suggested had swelled beyond an original $2.5 billion budget to close to $4 billion. The Times report indicated that Ward had embraced a plan to keep an open mezzanine level and the station's elegant oculus structure above ground in a strategy that would cost about $3 billion.

It isn't clear, however, if this will be the final word in the project's design. Governor David Paterson is expected to hold a press conference tomorrow, according to his office, in order to comment on the findings of the report. With the state trying to manage what appears to be severe deficits over the next three years while still investing in major infrastructure projects, Paterson may seek to direct the Port Authority's spending priorities elsewhere--specifically Moynihan Station, a project he has said he wants the Port Authority to oversee.

Earlier this month, Paterson revived the Moynihan project by stating that he had arranged a panel to investigate how the state could develop the project, which had become bogged down earlier this year in logistical complexities and after its estimated $14 billion price tag began to look untenable amid the sinking economy.

But Moynihan Station, a project that includes an overhaul of Penn Station, handles far more passengers than the World Trade Center hub would.

A steering committee comprised of the WTC site's stakeholders that was organized by Ward to figure out ways to cut the WTC transit hub's cost and schedule came up with a possible solution that could radically reduce the project's price tag. The suggestion, which a source said was rejected by Ward and made Port Authority executives bristle, was to preserve the temporary transit hub that is now in operation at the site and simply cap it with the winged oculus designed by architect Santiago Calatrava.

That would allow the authority to shave hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, from the station's cost, money that could then be used to fund Moynihan Station.