Governor gets real with WTC schedule

Real Estate Weekly, Oct 8, 2008 by Daniel Geiger

Governor David Paterson said that the cost and timeline of plans laid by former Governor George Pataki to develop the World Trade Center were never realistic.

His comments came during a press conference held to discuss a report released last Thursday by the Port Authority to assess and deal with delays and budget overruns at the site.

"I think what may have happened after the tragedy, in an attempt to be resilient and help New Yorkers get past the incident of that horrific day, that there was a desire to go as quickly as possible," Governor Paterson said at the event held in his office.

The result, he said, was an overly optimistic "timetable, if it doesn't rain. But it always rains."

Governor Paterson said that the site's redevelopment was in disarray when he took office earlier this year.

"It's kind of alarming that after six and half years, in my perusal I couldn't find anyone who knew what was being built, who was building it, when it would be completed and how it would be erected," Governor Paterson said.

In June, the Governor inserted Chris Ward into the authority's executive leadership and instructed him to provide an assessment of the problems.

"I appointed Chris Ward ... to spare us any spin or any false optimism," Governor Paterson said. "I wanted the truth of the situation. When he came back, he showed us what was a tale of unrealistic expectations."

Development of the WTC site seemed to begin in earnest in 2006 after years of delays when the Port Authority reached a redevelopment agreement with Larry Silverstein, the WTC's leaseholder who plans to build three office towers on the site. But officials say that the complexity of the projects under the Port Authority's management soon made the deadlines and budgets laid out in that agreement, which was overseen by Governor Pataki, impossible to meet.

Chief among the problems was the WTC transportation hub, an elegant structure designed by Santiago Calatrava, that swelled, by some estimates, more than a billion dollars over its original $2.5 billion cost.

Outlined in last week's report, Ward's team simplified the station's design, bringing its new estimated cost to $3.2 billion by inserting columns in place of elaborate and expensive trusses that were to be used to support an open mezzanine level in the station.

Those columns also aided in expediting construction of the 9/11 Memorial so that it will be done in time for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In the previous plan, construction of the Memorial essentially was forced to wait for the station to be built below before many of the above ground elements of the Memorial could begin.

Ward described the new strategy as doing the construction project "upside down" in which the roof of the station, which serves as the plaza deck, is constructed first allowing work to start on the Memorial as the train station is built independently below.

The approach doesn't guarantee however that the Memorial's reflecting pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers will be completed in time for the anniversary, a risk that Mayor Bloomberg noted by saying that the Port Authority's plan represented progress but did not meet his goal.

"The Port Authority didn't go as far as we had hoped, but I think in all fairness the progress that we've made is crucial to construction of the Memorial," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the press conference, fresh off a separate meeting with reporters in which he confirmed publicly for the first time that he would seek a third term as mayor if term limits are changed by the City Council.

"Let me be clear, fully completing the Memorial by the 10th anniversary remains our goal and today's plan doesn't promise that goal. Today's announcement brings us a lot closer to that goal than we've ever been and we're going to keep pushing to complete development of the Memorial faster and more efficiently."

It's not clear yet what extensions the Port Authority will grant Silverstein, who likely wouldn't be able to develop the three towers according to the timeline set in the 2006 agreement because he won't receive the parcels in time from the Port Authority.

"We thank Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg for their leadership, and we appreciate the Port Authority's work over the past several months in trying to develop greater certainty about the schedule and cost of its projects at the World Trade Center site," Silverstein said in a statement released by his rep.

"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. This will allow us to gauge the impact on our part of the World Trade Center rebuilding effort."