And BTW, don't these guys ever wear a different color tie other than red?
Childs does the same thing.

Freedom Tower has a willing captive
Julie Earle-Levine, New York
June 07, 2007

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21861062-25658,00.html

MARC Colella knows a thing or two about pressure cooker work environments. The Melbourne-born structural engineer is in charge of New York's Freedom Tower, being built on the World Trade Centre site.

The Freedom Tower, also known as Tower 1, will be 105 storeys tall with a 120m spire, and will project the city's image of resilience after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Colella's client for the tower is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the architect is David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

The huge rebuilding project at the World Trade Centre site - where four new office towers, memorials and a Performing Arts Centre designed by Frank Gehry - is well under way.

As an associate for WSP Cantor Seinuk Structural Engineers Colella, 34, is working hard to ensure the Freedom Tower delivers the architect's vision. He is also overseeing three office towers, or 555sqm of offices, for developer Larry Silverstein, a memorial site and a structure to retain the Hudson River and the force of soil on the site. "After the destruction of the towers there is a 20m deep basement, what we call the bathtub, in that part of Manhattan.

"We have a huge involvement in the WTC rebuilding. The only area the company is not involved in is the transportation hub by architect Santiago Calatrava," Colella says.

Colella was working in London when the WSP Group acquired US company Cantor Seinuk, now WSP Cantor Seinuk. "I always wanted to develop a career in high-rise buildings, and I was offered the job."

He started working in 2002 on Building 7, the third building that collapsed, just north of the WTC site.

Colella heads a large team of engineers - about 10 on the Freedom Tower alone, and spends much of his time in offices overlooking the site.

"It can be difficult. It is an emotionally charged environment, but I tell my team this is just another building, and we have to get on with the job. I tell them not worry about the political aspects, or the emotions.

"I say, work with me guys, please. Don't feel that it is just an event that happened on American soil."

Colella often attends meetings about the memorials, involving families of people who died in the terror attacks.

"The memorial design has taken a long time but is finally moving forward. Most families have approved it, some individuals don't like it, but I think it is a fabulous design."

The foundation at the Freedom Tower is almost finished. "That is always a nervous time for a structural engineer and now all of our work is being constructed," Colella says. Public complaints about the long lead time have been frustrating.

"People are upset but they don't realise the infrastructure below street level is incredibly complex," Colella says. "A lot of agencies are involved, and a lot of interests."

Colella says criticism by some developers that the Freedom Tower is a mistake, or a legacy of poor planning and decision making, is unfortunate. "The architects involved in all of these towers are the best in the world, assembled to showcase their artistic style on one of the highest profile sites in the world. I like to call the site an architectural sculpture park."

The architects for Silverstein's three towers are Britain's Sir Norman Foster and Sir Richard Rogers, and Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki (of Maki and Associates).

There will be restaurants, below-ground shopping and access to subway trains, as well as the World Financial Centre in the Freedom Tower. Hotel developers are planning new hotel rooms that will help to revitalise Lower Manhattan.

There are also plans for new streets, footpaths, parks and transportation. The area remains a central business district, as big investment banks move back. Goldman Sachs is building a new, 186,000sqm headquarters in nearby Battery Park City, but the area is becoming more of a residential community than it was. According to the Downtown Alliance, a business group, the residential population has grown by 16,000 to 39,000 since the attacks.

Freedom Tower is expected to be completed in 2011 - on September 11. "We are still on target for that, but there won't be any construction above street level until the middle of next year," Colella said.

Does he lose sleep over the impending deadline? "Constantly. It is not a normal project, it is intense and we are working around the clock. When you pass a major deadline or submission, something bigger comes up, but it is a challenge. Aussies can do that, I am up for it."

http://www.nysun.com/article/57033
Construction Costs Could Rise as Mega-Projects Increase Demand

By ELIOT BROWN
Special to the Sun
June 21, 2007

http://www.nysun.com/pics/57033_main_large.jpg
Konrad Fiedler

Almost 50 million square feet of publicly administered development are scheduled to start in the next few years, increasing the demand, and the cost of building, materials. Above, the Freedom Tower site.

Developers could see construction costs rise at an even faster rate in coming years, as the city's megaprojects substantially increase demand on a sector already flooded with work, industry officials say.

With prices escalating for building materials, this could test the strength of the historic construction boom, which has persevered despite the rising expenses.

"The demand is going to get much greater, and we have to do a lot of work to do everything we possibly can to moderate the effects of increasing levels of construction," Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said yesterday. "Everywhere, we feel the impact of rising construction costs — that's the big public projects, it's the private sector projects."

Spending on construction has reached all-time highs for the past three years — the New York Building Congress estimates that spending exceeded $24 billion in 2006 — even though the bulk of the city- and state-administered large-scale projects conceived in the past decade have yet to begin, most of which are scheduled to start in the next two to three years.

Between the World Trade Center, Moynihan Station, Atlantic Yards, the Hudson rail yards, and Willets Point in Queens, almost 50 million square feet of publicly administered development are scheduled to start in the next few years — the equivalent of about 20 Empire State Buildings going up at the same time. Add to that the more than $12 billion projected for the no. 7 line subway extension, the first phase of the Second Avenue subway, and the Trans-Hudson Express project for a new NJ Transit tunnel to Pennsylvania Station, and the flurry of activity is sure to drive up the need for construction workers and materials, likely causing prices to jump.

"As you have all this work going on, there's an increased economic pressure on labor," the assistant executive director of the General Building Contractors of New York State, Joseph Hogan, said. Wages of unionized construction workers tend to be steady for years at a time due to bargaining agreements, though Mr. Hogan said the trend in wages will surely be sent upward by the city's big projects in coming years.

The industry is already seeing a shortage of project managers, a problem that will be exacerbated in coming years, according to the president of the Building Trades Employers Association, Louis Coletti. "You can't manufacture a project manager overnight," he said.

The spike in development could send local prices for construction materials such as concrete up as well, the chief economist at the Associated General Contractors of America, Kenneth Simonson, said.

Already, developers and public agencies have been socked with soaring expenses for construction, as demand from rapidly expanding markets in India and China has caused skyrocketing prices of materials such as copper.

Total construction costs have gone up by as much as 1% a month, builders say, pushing developers to move briskly and forcing public agencies to scale back plans for new buildings.

"Every month-delay that we have, we estimate that we have a $9.5 million escalation hit," the chief of administration for the $1.8 billion United Nations Capital Master Plan renovation project, Vivian van de Perre, said.

For private developers, construction officials say, project price tags are sent up even further by the city's rapidly rising land values, which, like raw material costs, show no sign of slowing their growth.

With a mind to future price hikes, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Steven Coleman, said the agency has already handed out about $1 billion in contracts for the $2.8 billion Freedom Tower.

"We're trying to award contracts as early as we can," Mr. Coleman said.

While the towers at the World Trade Center site are generally on budget, plans for the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH transit hub are estimated to cost as much as $1 billion more than the $2.2 billion planned for the facility, and the Frank Gehry-designed Performing Arts Center has been repeatedly scaled back as its price tag has climbed hundreds of millions over budget.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/07/05/2007-07-05_3_workers_hurt_at_wtc_site_1_in_coma-1.html
3 workers hurt at WTC site; 1 in coma

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, July 5th 2007, 4:00 AM

Three construction workers have been hurt in Ground Zero accidents in recent months, one so seriously that he remains in a coma, officials overseeing the site say. A 26-year-old man who works for Kiewit/Trevi Icos JV was seriously injured on May 22 when a hose pumping material into a retaining wall broke loose and hit him in the head and on the upper torso, officials said. The worker was still in a coma yesterday, said John McCarthy, spokesman for the Port Authority, which owns the 16-acre World Trade Center site. In addition, a Port Authority employee fell off a ladder on June 25 and hurt his hand while working on the eastern edge of the site, and an ironworker tripped and broke his ankle on June 22 during work on the new transit hub, said Steve Plate, the agency's director of priority capital programs.

The Associated Press

View of the site on July 13:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1051/804398286_d35f836497_o.jpg

source: Mn Photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mnsomero/)

people dont really visit the NYC thread anymore since all of the mega buildings have their own threads in the supertall section.

I do !......and l live on the opposite side of the world (Melbourne, Australia)....Most people follow their own cities in their own countries...but New York is......New York !!!!!...nuff said!

I hope nobody minds, but I wanted to post a picture of my sister and best friend at the WTC site in April. I just love the photo because neither knew I was taking it and they were both speechless when we got there(as was I).

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e42/haldcottingham/WTC-1.jpg

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08222007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/wtc__past__future__halted_agai.htm
WTC, PAST & FUTURE: HALTED AGAIN?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08222007/photos/oped031.jpg
Fatal: The Deutsche Bank building burns last weekend.

August 22, 2007 -- NEW Yorkers who care passionately about the future of the World Trade Center site - those who understand that Downtown's fate still depends on that, despite the area's current boom - can only pray for a swift resumption of work at 130 Liberty St., where two firefighters lost their lives last weekend.

More of Ground Zero's rebirth than first seems apparent depends on the complete demolition of the old Deutsche Bank tower. Common sense, however, suggests that it might be a long time - not just a few days or even weeks - before the takedown of the tragic, contaminated hulk can resume.

If the delay drags on, there's no telling how badly it might derail the reclamation of a site that has taken six years to gain traction.

The importance of the Liberty Street demolition was explained in detail by The New York Times' David W. Dunlap last winter. For starters, the site must be cleared before the LMDC can turn it over to the Port Authority, which will then hand it over to JP Morgan Chase to start work on its planned new headquarters tower there.

The PA technically has until mid-2009 to turn the land over to the bank - but that's based on an option to extend a more desirable deadline of mid-2008. Who can say how JP Morgan's confidence in the deal might be jarred by a year's delay?

The Deutsche site, as Dunlap explained, is also intricately linked to conditions on the north side of Liberty Street in Ground Zero itself. In a nutshell, the PA can't fulfill its commitment to construct new underground infrastructure there without first having access to the earth beneath 130 Liberty St., because the two sites are connected by sewer pipes.

Without being able to dig under 130 Liberty St. and moving the pipes, the PA can't create a new "bathtub" along Ground Zero's south side. Without the bathtub, it can't build an underground vehicle security center there.

And without the vehicular facility, Dunlap pointed out, it can't provide the truck access Larry Silverstein will need to complete the interiors of Towers 3 and 4 - the first two of three office buildings he is to develop in Ground Zero, and on which he is to start work immediately after Jan. 1.

In fact, a downtown rebuilding official ominously told me yesterday, "Not having the vehicle security center will negatively affect everything - not just Silverstein's buildings, but also the Freedom Tower, the Memorial and the new PATH terminal."

PA officials say the delay at 130 Liberty St. won't affect its construction of a new east bathtub wall, which it's obliged to finish by Dec. 31; assuming they're right, Silverstein can at least start on Towers 3 and 4 on time.

But - and here's the scary part - the PA must also finish the south bathtub by the fourth quarter of 2010, according to agency spokesman John McCarthy. A prolonged delay in completing the removal of 130 Liberty St. - which seems highly likely, given the time it will surely take to learn what went wrong and to implement new safety procedures - can easily push the south bathtub job back.

That looming possibility can throw monkey wrenches into the whole process.

Both the PA and Silverstein are contractually bound to meet various deadlines, and must pay heavy fines if they fail to meet them. But what if circumstances make meeting those deadlines impossible?

Why, for example, should the PA be penalized for not completing the south bathtub on time if it's physically impossible to do that because 130 Liberty St. hasn't been fully cleared yet?

Why should Silverstein start construction on a giant tower without assurance that he'll be able to finish it?

A well-informed downtown source says Silverstein could, in theory, complete Towers 3 and 4 by letting trucks in through Church Street. But that limited access would be insufficient to allow tenants to build out their new floors or move in.

Why should tenants sign leases when they can't be sure when they can claim their space?

These questions, assuming a worst-case chain of events, might sound paranoid. But Ground Zero's tortured history makes paranoia justified. Let us hope all parties find a way not to let 130 Liberty St. become any more permanent than it already seems.

scuozzo@nypost.com

Ground Zero's rebuild will STILL go on.

This is just a stumbling block to strip that spot for constr. of the planned Tower 5 and a park there.

"Without being able to dig under 130 Liberty St. and moving the pipes, the PA can't create a new "bathtub" along Ground Zero's south side. Without the bathtub, it can't build an underground vehicle security center there. And without the vehicular facility, Dunlap pointed out, it can't provide the truck access Larry Silverstein will need to complete the interiors of Towers 3 and 4"

sadly and apparently not.

You're right.

Blame all of that on the careless and reckless company in charge of dismantling the old tower.

Time, after time, after time, after time, after time, after time again, this bullcrap co. has been screwing things up left and right! And everyone, so it seems, is turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to it.

I think the officials are all of a sudden suffering from permenant memory loss when it comes to this building. Because the workers seem to do whatever they please whenever they please and are flagrantly violating every rule in the book to the point where two former 09-11 firefighters were friggen killed and their children made fatherless!!

This irresponsible behavior has got to stop before more lives are needlessly lost there.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09052007/news/regionalnews/ground_zero_to_60.htm
GROUND 'ZERO TO 60'

WTC TOWER WORK SURGES AHEAD AT LAST

By TOM TOPOUSIS

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09052007/photos/news012.jpg

September 5, 2007 -- What a difference a year makes, even at Ground Zero.

Once dogged by bitter fights over how to rebuild the World Trade Center, construction there is finally booming, with more than 600 hardhats pouring concrete, blasting rock and raising steel in a bid to fully rebuild the site by 2012.

The Freedom Tower - the first skyscraper to rise at Ground Zero - has reached street level with the setting of jumbo steel beams that will form the below-grade base. Next year, the tower's frame will begin to rise above street level.

Alongside the Freedom Tower, hardhats have built 121 out of 150 concrete footings for the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum, with steel expected to be shipped in later this year to begin raising the memorial to street level.

The $2 billion transit hub designed by Santiago Calatrava is also under way.

Perhaps the least heralded project at the site is the massive, 80-foot-deep excavation of the eastern half of the trade center to create a watertight "bathtub" for three Church Street office towers.

Most of the work began after last year's agreement between Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority, which owns the site. The bistate agency is in charge of the bulk of the project, with Silverstein concentrating on three towers.

"We've restored a level of confidence to the rebuilding process and that's translated to the marketplace," said PA Chairman Anthony Coscia.

He said that the reconstruction project has helped fuel renewed interest in the downtown office market, where demand for space is booming.

"These buildings will be built and the site will be restored," Coscia told The Post during a recent interview.

Added together, $16 billion worth of construction will take place on the 16-acre site, making the World Trade Center the most expensive and most complicated construction project in a city brimming with tower cranes.

Because so many projects are being squeezed into the site, each one is linked to the other through shared subterranean structures - from piping to concourses to underground railroad and subway lines - further complicating the work.

"It's not an easy project to build," said Coscia, who likened the engineering effort to building a "subgrade Rubik's Cube."

Construction so far is mostly limited to the western half of the site, inside the 70-foot-deep bathtub that was built to contain the foundations of the Twin Towers. A second bathtub is being excavated on the eastern half of the site for Silverstein's towers 2, 3 and 4.

Silverstein, who last year completed World Trade Center 7 just across Vesey Street from the WTC's main campus, expects to begin construction of his three towers in 2008.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," Silverstein said.

His design team of 120 architects and engineers has been working at a studio on the 11th floor of 7 World Trade Center.

"We will hit the ground running when the sites are handed over to us in January," he said.

One setback for the reconstruction is the fiasco at the Deutsche Bank Building, which is being taken down by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. a block south of the WTC. Two firefighters died battling a blaze inside the toxic tower last month.

The Port Authority, which will take over the Deutsche Bank site once the tower is removed, has an agreement to sell it to JPMorgan Chase as a fifth WTC tower beside a park and new home for St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.

tom.topousis@nypost.com

Tal, this was already posted in another thread.

Daquan, it was posted in a thread that was titled, "Twin Towers Advocacy", while this thread is titled "Freedom Tower News", where it actually does belong.

this shit is looking kind of hot

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/6046/picture1ux7.jpg

by the way, check out the freedom tower's spire

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/nyregion/07tower.html
Developers Unveil Plans for Trade Center Site

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: September 7, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/09/07/nyregion/07tower-600.jpg
James Estrin/The New York Times

The State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, pointing, and the developer Larry A. Silverstein studying a model on Thursday as new details emerged about what visitors can expect to see in five years at the site of the World Trade Center Memorial.

From deeply somber to brightly kinetic, a picture emerged today for the first time of what pedestrians can expect to see five years from now along the Greenwich Street side of the World Trade Center memorial.

Rather than emphasizing the distant bird’s-eye perspectives typical of most ground zero design unveilings, the developers and architects who are working on the redevelopment project stayed pretty much at street level, showing many of the details that will make or break the pedestrian experience.

They showed two of the distinctive steel tridents that once supported the facade of 1 World Trade Center, up to 90 feet tall, housed behind glass in the entrance pavilion to the memorial museum. They showed a 90-by-35-foot “media wall” of light-emitting diodes, with transparent elevators to the side, overlooking the channel between the two voids that compose the most recognizable element of the memorial. They showed stores that would face the memorial across Greenwich Street. They also showed a wall of polished black granite that would reflect the memorial plaza.

Greenwich Street will offer a critical transition between the sanctity of the memorial plaza itself, on the west side of the street, and the unabashedly commercial quarter on the east side.

Therefore, the three enormous office buildings being developed at the trade center site by Silverstein Properties — Tower 2 at 200 Greenwich Street, Tower 3 at 175 Greenwich Street and Tower 4 at 150 Greenwich Street — will have a great effect on the memorial.

New design details for all three buildings and also for the memorial museum pavilion on Greenwich Street were described today in a news conference at 7 World Trade Center.

Joseph Daniels, the president of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum (as the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation is now known) said that two raw steel tridents from the north face of the north tower would be brought back to the trade center site. They are now in Hangar 17 at Kennedy International Airport, where the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has been storing large-scale 9/11 artifacts.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_226/wtcworkmaygo.html
Volume 20 Issue 17 | September 7 - 13, 2007

W.T.C. work may go round the clock

By Josh Rogers

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_226/wtc.gif
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_226/wtc1.gif
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_226/wtc2.gif
Downtown Express photos by Elisabeth Robert

Construction at the World Trade Center site Wednesday included work on the train station, above, the underground east-west connector that will lead commuters to the World Financial Center, bottom, the Freedom Tower, below.

Port Authority officials said this week that World Trade Center construction progress is proceeding rapidly but they may have to go to a 24-hour schedule to avoid paying developer Larry Silverstein $300,000 a day in fines if they miss a January deadline.

“As we ramp up the project, [construction work] could be 24 hours a day,” Steve Coleman, a Port spokesperson, said during a press tour and briefing of the W.T.C. site on Wednesday, six days shy of the six-year anniversary of the terror attack.

Over 500 Port employees and contractors are working at the W.T.C. on the memorial, train station, Freedom Tower and “eastern bathtub,” which is needed to build three office towers on Church St. If the bathtub is not finished for the Tower 3 and 4 sites at the south end of Church St. by Jan. 1, the Port will begin paying Silverstein $300,000 a day under the renegotiated long-term lease the two parties signed a year ago.

During a tour of the site in May, Anthony Shorris, the Port’s executive director, said of the Silverstein deadline: “That’s what we lose a lot of sleep over-delivering the site on time.”

One person who has been losing sleep lately is Pat Moore, who lives across the street from the site at 125 Cedar St. Moore said on the Sunday morning after last month’s deadly Deutsche Bank fire, she was jarred awake at 5:45 a.m. as her building shook from the W.T.C. bathtub work across the street. Later in the morning she spoke with Gov. Eliot Spitzer who was right outside her window checking the air monitors and assuring her that everything was safe.

Moore, a Community Board 1 member, said that the early morning work had started about a month before the fire. A Port official had called her a week or two after it began to inform her and her neighbors about the early work and the Silverstein time pressures.

“You know I don’t care,” Moore said. “That’s not my problem.”

More recently, work has been getting started at 7 a.m. “Those two hours make a big difference,” Moore said.

Coleman said this week it’s not clear yet when there could be round the clock work.

This week’s visit to the site revealed visible progress on all four major projects on the site compared to the Downtown Express tour in May.

“We are now finally pumping every piston in the project,” Shorris said Wednesday. He said they are still on schedule to turn over sites 3 and 4 to Silverstein in January, open the train station and part of the memorial plaza in 2009, and the Freedom Tower in 2012.

The train station will cost more than the $2.2. billion originally budgeted, Shorris said. Architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava is now shaving costs off the design through engineering efficiencies, and is not making any major changes to the design, Shorris added. Of all the W.T.C. proposals, Calatrava’s design has probably received the highest raves from residents and critics. Shorris said the final cost will go up, but he won’t know the amount for a few months.

He hopes to keep the memorial costs down. “We’re working on the costs to keep it on budget,” he said. The current estimate to build the memorial block is $768 million.

The Port currently owns the memorial site and the rest of the W.T.C., but at some point, it may transfer the memorial land to the W.T.C. Memorial Foundation in exchange for the Deutsche Bank site and an adjacent parcel, where a vehicle security center, tour bus garage, an office tower for JPMorgan Chase, a Greek Orthodox church and a public plaza are planned.

Early this year, officials hoped to be able to finish dismantling the Deutsche building by the end of this year, in which case the bus garage would not have been finished until two years after tour buses were expected to begin swarming the memorial. The fire has pushed back the Deutsche demolition indefinitely, thus extending the so-called “bus gap” time period.

Shorris said the Port is not thinking of slowing down any work to wait for the garage, but is constantly adjusting the sequencing of construction as new problems arise every day. He likened it to conducting an orchestra. The payoff will come at the end when the construction is finished, he added.

“This thing is moving, “ he said. “It is being conducted and this thing will make great music someday.”

Josh@DowntownExpress.com

by the way, check out the freedom tower's spire

i see they added rows of lights on the top i dont give a shit what people say this building kicks ass sure its nothing as amazing as the WTC but it has to eb the nicets comples or super tall buildings ever to be added to a city skyline im just kinda sad that it wont be americas tallsted thanks to that ugly ass chicago spire but in the end nyc will have a nice new tower while chicago will have a really ugly one

i was wondering though godforbid if anouther 9 11 happend will these buildings hold well in a plan crash ??? like thats something im wondering

The Freedom Tower is fine. The entire complex will look great. People forget allot of the earlier proposals and how bad they were. Be thankful this is the final choice.

^^ precisely

The Freedom Tower is fine. The entire complex will look great. People forget allot of the earlier proposals and how bad they were. Be thankful this is the final choice.

Did you see that tick-tack-toe grid!!?

It was horrible...

Did you see that tick-tack-toe grid!!?

It was horrible...

lol...Yea, the Richard Meier proposal was pretty dumb...

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2002/12/18/wtc3.jpg

Yeah, wasn't that stupid?!!

Looks like giant pieces of the Twins after they fell! In the beginning, I liked the Sky Park and Foster "kissing" towers proposals.

But now that the Freedom Tower's design has been revamped into a beautiful elegant swan, it looks great!

i remebr alot of the preposels they had for the tower and alot of them were horrble the desinge they have now is amazing its not the same as the WTC but its still nice im also glad the rechaged the outher 3 buildings as well

lol...Yea, the Richard Meier proposal was pretty dumb...


Yeah, it was stupid. Notice how all the buildings are the exact same height. How boring is that? That thing would've messed up our skyline for good...

There were some pretty dumb, stupid and outrageous designs and ideas for replacing the former WTC.

One of them was a tall statue of Jesus Christ. One other one was a replica of two giant picnic baskets on tall stilts!!

And still another one were those skeleton versions of the Twins - World Cultural Center. What a disgusting pile of junk THAT was, Donald Trump!!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/09/09/2007-09-09_daily_news_probe_finds_wtc_contractors_w-1.html
Daily News probe finds WTC contractors with mob ties, fraud
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BY GREG B. SMITH

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, September 9th 2007, 4:00 AM

Seven contractors cited for everything from mob ties to tax fraud to fatal accidents are getting a slice of the $16 billion reconstruction at Ground Zero, a Daily News investigation has found.

The problem firms are found every day working the bulldozers, cranes, jackhammers and pile drivers rebuilding the site of the World Trade Center.

All of the companies work for the Port Authority, the Dormitory Authority or the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. on taxpayer-funded contracts worth millions of dollars.

The list starts with the John Galt Co., the shell company at the heart of growing investigations into the Aug. 18 fire at the Deutsche Bank tower that killed two firefighters.

Galt has ties to Safeway Environmental, a company with a lousy safety record that has been barred from city work because one of its directors is a reputed mob associate.

The News found six companies with issues:

QUADROZZI CONCRETE

Last week, a steady convoy of Quadrozzi Concrete's distinctive yellow and orange trucks delivered cement to the Freedom Tower job.

Six months before the Sept. 11 attacks, the city Department of Environmental Protection rejected Quadrozzi's request to be an approved city supplier, citing then-owner John Quadrozzi Sr.'s ties to the Luchese crime family and other concerns.

In 2004, Quadrozzi Sr. died and the company was taken over by his son, John Jr., who was owner of an affiliate that refused to answer a subpoena from city investigators vetting a permit application.

In October 2004, Quadrozzi Jr. reapplied to the city for approval as a supplier. Last year, Quadrozzi Concrete withdrew the request without explanation. He did not return calls on Friday.

That withdrawal came after the January 2005 indictment of Constatine Quadrozzi, then a vice president of Quadrozzi Concrete. He was charged with dumping toxic waste into Newtown Creek.

In June 2006 Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Demarest dismissed the indictment. The judge found that although Quadrozzi had knowledge of the illegal dumping, he'd fixed the problem so no further prosecution was necessary.

The district attorney has appealed.

PAL ENVIRONMENTAL CORP.

In 2005, PAL Environmental signed a consent order admitting it had illegally disposed of toxic office equipment from the notorious Deutsche Bank tower at 130 Liberty St.

For four months in 2004, PAL shredded computers and furniture at the contaminated site without obtaining a permit from the state Department of Environmental Conservation. This meant DEC did not monitor the job.

Instead PAL monitored itself, providing the state with data it said showed no toxins leaked into the neighborhood.

In August 2005, the state DEC dismissed criminal violations against PAL after owner Salvatore DiLorenzo agreed to take "full responsibility" for claims arising from the illegal shredding and paid a $10,000 civil fine.

The Dormitory Authority, which is paying PAL $16.3 million to clean out Fiterman Hall behind 7 World Trade Center, was aware of this violation. DiLorenzo did not return calls.

LETICIA INC.

The black and white trucks hauling dirt from Ground Zero Wednesday had an unusually un-macho name - Leticia Inc., named after company president Leticia Rojas.

In April 2006, Rojas' husband, Manuel Mier, signed an affidavit promising "for the remainder of my life" to stay out of his wife's trucking business - Leticia Inc.

That's because Mier is a felon who pleaded guilty to using Leticia Inc. and other companies in a wide-ranging tax fraud scheme. He was sentenced to a year in jail and owes $523,000 in back taxes and penalties.

In April 2006, Rojas signed an agreement with the city Business Integrity Commission promising to keep her husband out of the company. (Mier is allowed to work for Rojas' real estate company, MEM Realty LLC).

Rojas agreed to hire a special monitor picked by the city to ensure her husband doesn't get a dime. Because of the monitor, the Port Authority allowed her company to work at Ground Zero.

On Friday Rojas said, "Why do you care about this?" and hung up.

TESTA CORP.

Testa Corp.'s bright yellow cranes dominate the southeast end of Ground Zero.

In April, Pamela Ciampi, whose family owns Testa, pleaded guilty in Boston Federal Court to dodging $250,000 in federal income taxes.

Investigators had seized records from Testa and Ciampi's other firm, PT Corp., both of Lynnfield, Mass., in a probe of sham women- and minority-owned firms.

That followed a July 2005 citation by federal regulators charging Testa with 15 job safety violations after a 190-foot tall steel craneway collapsed during a Testa demolition job, killing two workers.

OSHA slapped Testa with $60,000 in penalties, alleging that Testa did not do an engineering survey to determine the craneway's stability. In July 2005 Testa agreed to a $16,800 settlement.

A Testa executive who would only give his first name, Tim, said the Port Authority was aware of the craneway accident when it was hired.

LAQUILA GROUP

The firm is an offshoot of Laquila Construction whose owner, Dino Tomassetti Sr., has long-time ties to the mob, the FBI says.

Several informants have told the FBI Laquila Construction paid off mob-controlled unions so it could inflate profits by using nonunion help. Tomasetti Sr. pleaded guilty to one count of construction labor fraud in April.

Laquila Group - owned by Dino Tomassetti Jr. - was hired by developer Larry Silverstein to do excavation for the Freedom Tower. The Port Authority took over the job this year.

When investigators discovered Laquila Group was renting equipment from Dino Sr.'s company, a monitor was put in place and Dino Sr. agreed to stay away from the job.

The monitor, Toby Thacher, says the elder Tomassetti donates equipment to his son for the $35 million Freedom Tower job.

Laquila Group executives did not return calls.

JUDA CONSTRUCTION

Juda Construction has agreements with both Westchester County and the city of New York barring any interaction with a former Juda owner, Joseph Attonito, his son, Thomas, or any of their companies.

Joseph Attonito is a convicted felon. Law enforcement sources have said he was associated with organized crime. His son, Thomas, was convicted of perjury in 2003 for trying to hide from regulators his father's interest in another company, Whitney Trucking.

Juda has no such agreement for its work at Ground Zero, where last week Juda's white dump trucks hauled dirt from the Freedom Tower excavation site.

An employee answering the phone at Juda declined to comment and said owner Nicholas Paniccia was not available.

gsmith@nydailynews.com

Mob ties to construction in NYC? Who would have thought?

I read about this not too long ago!

This same crap happened with the Big Dig in Boston!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/09/17/2007-09-17_white_house_veto_could_hurt_new_world_tr.html
White House veto could hurt new World Trade Center
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY DEVLIN BARRETT
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Monday, September 17th 2007, 6:23 PM

The White House threatened Monday to veto a bill that would add 15 years to a post-Sept. 11 government insurance program which supporters say is critical for major projects like the new World Trade Center.

The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, or TRIA, was one of a series of bills passed by Congress in the wake of the 2001 attacks. It is due to expire this year, and the House of Representatives had planned to vote this week on a 15-year extension.

If the current version of the bill reaches President Bush, his advisers will recommend a veto, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement Monday.

The Bush administration said the government should get out of the insurance business in the near future and end the TRIA program, which is essentially a backstop mechanism to ensure terrorism insurance is available and affordable for major projects and buildings.

"The administration strongly opposes efforts to expand the federal government's role in terrorism reinsurance. The most efficient, lowest cost, and most innovative methods of providing terrorism risk insurance will come from the private sector," budget officials wrote.

"I strongly disagree," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "TRIA is absolutely essentially, and we will continue to support it and work for it one step at a time."

Businesses, particularly in New York, claim that without the program they will not be able to get insurance coverage for nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological attacks, and some local officials fear without the government program they may not even be able to rebuild the World Trade Center site.

If buildings can't be insured, banks may not lend money to build them, insurance groups argue.

The current program provides a federal insurance backup for catastrophic losses suffered in a terrorist attack, which the insurance industry says is needed because such attacks are so expensive and hard to predict. Under the bill headed for a House vote, the program can only be triggered when the amount of property and casualty losses reach $100 million.

The White House is worried over the potential long-term cost of the legislation, noting that a 10-year version could cost more than $10 billion, according to one estimate.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., charged the veto threat "is putting ideology ahead of economic growth."

The terrorism insurance program, Schumer said "is essential to construction and growth in many of our large cities. It is particularly needed now as the economy softens."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09172007/news/regionalnews/haky_ground.htm
$HAKY GROUND

BUDGET WOES AT 'WTC' AGENCY

By CHUCK BENNETT

September 17, 2007 -- The obscure state agency charged with coordinating about 60 construction projects downtown - including demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building - is going broke, The Post has learned.

Not only has the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which is under Gov. Spitzer's control, been blamed for mismanaging deconstruction of the bank building at Ground Zero, it apparently can't even manage its own budget.

State agencies have refused to transfer millions of dollars to the LMCCC, which has authority over every project south of Canal Street worth more than $25 million, because it cannot provide a satisfactory plan of how the funds would be spent.

Unless changes are made, the LMCCC will have a $3 million deficit by next month, said sources with direct knowledge of the budget.

For instance, the Port Authority, which has several megaprojects downtown, including the World Trade Center transit hub and the Freedom Tower, hasn't paid a cent of the $21.7 million it promised last year.

The money is "contingent on completion of an agreement on how the funds will be used. Since the agreement has not been completed, the funds have not been transferred," PA spokesman Steve Coleman said.

LMCCC leaders, including ex-Executive Director Charles Maikish and current head Robert Harvey, have come under fire for their handling of the demolition of the contaminated bank building.

After an Aug. 18 blaze at the site killed two firefighters, it emerged that numerous safety hazards that contributed to the fire had been ignored.

"We are confident that our partners will fully satisfy their funding commitments," said Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for the state-run Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which manages the LMCCC.

The LMCCC has a five-year, $67 million budget, but Cockfield declined to discuss the state of its finances or why it can't document where the money would go.

The MTA committed $10.4 million to the LMCCC, but also hasn't transferred any cash. Jeremy Soffin, an MTA spokesman, said the matter was being looked into.

And the state Department of Transportation's $2.6 million commitment has yet to reach the LMCCC's coffers.

cbennett@nypost.com

http://www.nysun.com/article/63129
Port Authority May Sell Parts of Freedom Tower

By Special to the Sun
September 21, 2007

In a move that could lessen the state's ownership stake in the Freedom Tower, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is moving forward with a search for possible financial partners for the building.

The Port Authority, a state agency that currently is the sole owner of the planned Freedom Tower, yesterday announced it hired Deutsche Bank to perform the work to determine the feasibility of bringing in equity partners.

While the agency has not committed to selling off some or all of the building, the feasibility study marks a clear step in that direction.

"We're looking at any and all options," a Port Authority spokesman, Steven Coleman, said.

The Port Authority owns the entire 16-acre site at ground zero, though it is leasing the land for the other three towers to developer Larry Silverstein.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_230/reportersnotebook.html
Working 20-7

Residents also took their pleas about sleepless nights to the Port Authority. Glenn Guzzi and Quentin Braathwaite of the Port acknowledged that the agency’s current work along the eastern edge of the site — breaking up old concrete slabs and digging out 30 vertical feet of dirt and debris — is noisy, shaky and disruptive. They also acknowledged that while the Port’s crews strive to do their noisiest work during the day, it doesn’t always work out that way.

“We recognize that some noisy work does occur after 11 p.m.,” said Guzzi, who added that there would likely be aggressive jack-hammering for the next few weeks. The Port is pushing to meet its end-of-year deadline to turn part of the east bathtub over to Silverstein Properties so that Silverstein can build Towers 3 and 4. The Port must pay $300,000 for every day it is late.

Brathwaite said that at times between now and the end of the year, the Port will work two 10-hour shifts a day. While most of the eastern slurry wall is complete, the state-city agency is only 40 percent through the task of excavating the sites.

“It’s quite an incredible amount of soil that has to be removed,” Brathwaite said.

As the dig goes on, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner continues to do spot checks to ensure that there are no lingering human remains. The soil composition is also tested to make sure the dirt is compatible with various deposit sites outside the city.

The good news, the Port officials said, is that once the digging is done and the towers begin to go up, the neighborhood will experience shorter work hours and less noise. In the meantime, though, several board members asked why they could not be protected by sound barriers. The Port recently set up a wall of buffers along Church St. to mute the jack-hammers across from the Millenium Hotel.

Brathwaite said that those buffers would not help residents, since they can only mute sound occurring at street level. The dig on the southern side of the site, where the residents are, is well below grade — so the sound would continue traveling upward.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/business/25lynch.html
Merrill Lynch Expected to Quit Downtown for Midtown

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: October 25, 2007

Merrill Lynch & Company, the world’s largest brokerage firm, appears ready to move its longtime headquarters from Lower Manhattan to a new skyscraper in Midtown, across Seventh Avenue from Pennsylvania Station, according to government officials and real estate executives.

The move would be a blow to downtown and its supporters in Albany, including Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and it would hobble efforts to re-establish ground zero as a financial center. But it would be a major boost to the developer Steven Roth’s ambitions for the Penn Station area.

Both Larry A. Silverstein, the developer at ground zero, and Brookfield Properties, Merrill’s current landlord at the nearby World Financial Center, submitted sweetened last-minute offers last week that were as much as $1 billion cheaper than the Midtown option, according to government officials and real estate executives who have been briefed on the negotiations.

But the investment bank has “given every indication,” those officials and executives said, that it plans to build a $4 billion, 3 million-square-foot tower on Seventh Avenue, between 32nd and 33rd Streets, that would be home for 11,000 employees. The building, at the current site of the Hotel Pennsylvania, would have significantly more square footage than the Empire State Building, though it might not be as tall.

Indeed, Merrill is negotiating with the owner of the Midtown development site, Mr. Roth’s Vornado Realty Trust, and interviewing prospective developers for the project this week, including Tishman Speyer Properties, Rudin Management and Hines, according to real estate executives.

The potential relocation, which would not occur until 2013, comes as Merrill reported $7.9 billion in write-downs yesterday, leading to its first quarterly loss in six years. State officials hold out hope that the company’s difficult financial situation will prompt it to reconsider leaving Lower Manhattan.

“We understand that Merrill is still reviewing several options and suspect that they have to take into account a variety of factors, including cost and execution risk, before determining how to proceed,” said Avi Schick, president of the Empire State Development Corporation, who has been involved in discussions with Merrill Lynch.

Jason Wright, a Merrill spokesman, said the company was “evaluating all our options” and expected “to come to a conclusion shortly.”

Jones Lang LaSalle, the real- estate firm advising Merrill, did not return calls requesting comment. A Roth spokesman also declined comment.

Merrill has been negotiating with Vornado over the terms of a billion-dollar 65-year lease that would give the company control of the half-block hotel site, according to executives who have been briefed on the talks. Those executives noted that the negotiations could fall apart given the hard-bargaining nature of the participants and Merrill’s financial situation.

Under the proposed deal, Merrill would demolish the hotel and erect a building that would include 80,000-square-foot trading floors on the lower levels. But there are questions about whether the tower can be completed by 2013, when Merrill’s lease expires at the World Financial Center. The Hotel Pennsylvania demolition project requires public approval, which could take a year, and would entail building over the railroad tracks that run beneath the hotel and pose engineering and security challenges.

“We have not given up on keeping them downtown,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose district includes Lower Manhattan. “There’s more certainty downtown. Uptown, they need all kinds of approvals and zoning.”

Penn Station is the latest real estate frontier. Mr. Roth and Vornado, along with a second developer, the Related Companies, have proposed a $14 billion overhaul of the dowdy neighborhood. Their plans include the demolition of Madison Square Garden to make way for a new Pennsylvania Station, the conversion of the general post office on Eighth Avenue into an adjunct train station as well as a new Garden, and the development of office towers with a total of 6.3 million square feet.

A deal with Merrill would provide some financial security for a bid by Vornado and the Durst Organization for the development rights over the West Side railyards, three blocks west of the Hotel Pennsylvania. The Bloomberg administration has vigorously promoted the railyards project.

“We’d like to see Merrill stay in Lower Manhattan — which is clearly a better value for them and one of the fastest-growing business districts in the country,” said John Gallagher, a spokesman for Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff. “However, it is critical that Merrill stay in New York City.”

Merrill has been actively looking at various options for a new headquarters for more than a year, though it has not discussed leaving the city. It has wanted the kind of huge trading floors that Goldman Sachs is building in its new headquarters on West Street, opposite ground zero, and enough space to bring all its employees under one roof.

Last week, Merrill asked for final offers from three contestants: Mr. Roth and Vornado; its current landlord, Brookfield Properties; and Mr. Silverstein, developing three towers at ground zero. With the possibility of Merrill’s departure seeming to grow more real, Governor Spitzer called Stanley O’Neal, Merrill Lynch’s chief executive, to make a personal appeal.

Brookfield submitted the least expensive plan, to expand the lower floors at 2 World Financial Center to accommodate the trading floors. But it would have required several years of construction and office relocation.

After months of resisting Merrill’s demands, Mr. Silverstein finally proposed selling a site at ground zero and reconfiguring the existing design. But it would not have allowed for the extra large trading floors.

Mr. Silverstein had insisted on what Merrill executives considered an especially high price — until last week, when he cut his price by nearly $400 million, a particularly large sum that late in the negotiations, according to three people involved in the talks.

If Merrill Lynch goes to Midtown, it would mark the third major investment bank after Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Company, that could not come to terms with Mr. Silverstein.

It was only in June that Governor Spitzer, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Silver were trumpeting a remarkable comeback at the former World Trade Center site and downtown generally. JPMorgan Chase had just announced that it would build a $2 billion headquarters near ground zero for its investment banking business. Both the new PATH station and the Freedom Tower, the tallest skyscraper at ground zero, were under construction.

Some downtown business executives and state officials are now concerned that Merrill’s departure would undercut the downtown resurgence. The bank would leave behind 2.5 million square feet of office space at the World Financial Center around the same time the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would be trying to fill more expensive space at the 2.6 million-square-foot Freedom Tower and Mr. Silverstein would be looking for tenants for three other big towers planned for ground zero.

Barry Gosin, vice chairman of Newmark Knight Frank, was cautiously optimistic, however. He said the loss of a single institution would not reverse what has happened downtown. “It may slow down the leasing at the World Trade Center and the World Financial Center,” he said. “But all the things happening downtown will outweigh the impact. There’s a critical mass of firms.”

Is Mr. Silverstein going to have his office near the top of WTC 1 ?..... ( FT )

Is Mr. Silverstein going to have his office near the top of WTC 1 ?..... ( FT )



Silverstein's office is in the new 7 WTC Tower, just as it was with the old one.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11182007/postopinion/editorials/downtown_dithering_76866.htm
DOWNTOWN DITHERING

November 18, 2007 -- Do Gov. Spitzer and Mayor Bloomberg want to rebuild Ground Zero?

If so, they must move swiftly to remove the dangerous monstrosity that may become the chief obstacle to rebuilding there - that is, the Deutsche Bank building.

Given the bureaucratic inertia that seems to have swallowed up that 9/11-scarred site, you'd think neither Spitzer nor Bloomberg cares much about its future.

Or about the long-term future of Downtown itself, which is counting on a rebirth at Ground Zero that can take place only after the Deutsche Bank building is gone.

Indeed, three months after a fatal fire at the building halted its demolition, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a state- and city-controlled entity that owns the property, remains at full stop.

The LMDC is still trying to figure out whether contaminants in the building should be cleaned completely before demolition resumes - or whether both jobs can go ahead simultaneously, as they did before the fire.

Officials also need to settle on contractors for the job. (A key subcontractor, the John Galt Corp., was fired after the blaze.) What are they waiting for?

Meanwhile, preliminary work - bolstering fire safety on the building and repairing some structural damage caused by the fire - is still being completed.

Yet just last month, officials promised that demolition work would have started by now: “We hope the deconstruction will resume at the beginning of November," vowed LMDC Chairman Avi Schick.

Maybe someone should have asked: November of what year?

Now, officials are saying that - assuming the stars line up - work might start next month.

Sure, delay is a hallmark of any operation involving government paper-clip twisters. And federal environmental regulators have doubtless done everything in their power to slow down the demolition.

But this job is different.

For one thing, every day that the building remains standing is another day that it remains a threat to the community.

Remember, the fire wasn't the only calamity at 130 Liberty. A few months before, a 15-foot pipe fell from the building and smashed through the roof of a nearby firehouse, injuring two firefighters. And only days after the blaze, a pallet jack fell, injuring two more of The Bravest.

Beyond that, there's the question of the future of Ground Zero itself.

As The Post's Steve Cuozzo has pointed out, construction work there is inextricably linked to the demolition of the bank tower.

If the structure doesn't get cleared away soon, it may hold up completion of the towers at Ground Zero.

Enough is enough.

Ground Zero should have been finished long ago - and the Deutsche Bank building should be just a bad memory by now.

Spitzer and Bloomberg are letting New Yorkers down by not assuring the building's immediate removal.

How 'bout it, Mike? Eliot?

Not trying to start a fight, Tal, but shouldn't the post above be in the DBB thread, since it's about that building?

It is in that thread, but the article also talks about the WTC site as whole.

Yeah, I found it there.

http://www.nysun.com/article/66714
The Incredible Shrinking Freedom Tower

By GRACE RAUH
Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 20, 2007

The symbolic centerpiece of the effort to rebuild ground zero, a 408-foot spire that brings the Freedom Tower to its projected height of 1,776 feet, could be jeopardized by a new technology emerging as an alternative to the broadcast antenna planned for the inside of the spire.

Some members of the Metropolitan Television Alliance, a collection of 11 broadcasters that has said it intends to use antennae installed on top of the Freedom Tower, have already been using multiple, low-power transmitters placed closer to street level, in lieu of a tall, single antenna. ION Media Networks, a member of the MTVA, is promoting the new technology and, earlier this month, the alliance began its own tests on a similar alternative system.

A long-term contract with the television alliance worth hundreds of millions of dollars would be a key financial component to the $3 billion Freedom Tower project. Sources close to the negotiations have said a contract with broadcasters would net about $10 million a year in annual rent and that an antenna would cost more than $20 million to build.

Following the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building antenna became the primary antenna for the area's major television stations, and the Conde Nast building antenna, at 4 Times Square, became a favorite backup.

The broadcast antennae are now used to transmit to televisions in the area that use "rabbit ear" antennae rather than cable or satellite technology. The industry must switch to digital transmission of television signals by February 2009, as required by the Federal Communications Commission.

In 2003, the television alliance said it intended to use a broadcast antenna on top of the tower once it was built, but at that stage the tower was projected to be completed by 2009. Now, Port Authority officials insist that the tower will be ready by 2012, but there is a degree of uncertainty in the real estate community that the goal will be met.

In the interim, the MTVA has to find another solution, and earlier this month, it began tests on the new technology that could supplant the need for the Freedom Tower antenna.

The system, and the lack of a financial motivation to build the spire to 1,776 feet, could be another setback to the Freedom Tower, which has faced a torrent of criticism over security concerns, costs, planning, and design since its conception. The tower is relying on state and federal agencies to be its anchor tenants, raising concerns about the economic viability of the project.

The leasing agent for much of the building, Cushman & Wakefield, has referred to the Freedom Tower as 1 World Trade Center, in what may be interpreted as downplaying its symbolic importance.

Without the 408-foot broadcast antenna and spire, the Freedom Tower would be cut to 1,368 feet from its symbolic height in feet of 1776, the year America declared independence. It would still be the tallest building in New York City, but it would be the exact same height as Tower 1 before it was destroyed in 2001.

A developer who runs the Empire State Building and who is a critic of the Freedom Tower plans, Anthony Malkin, said if broadcasters aren't planning to use the antenna, it shouldn't be built.

"Common sense would say that it doesn't make a lot sense to build something for which the known user set is not prepared to make a commitment," Mr. Malkin said in an interview.

The Port Authority could decide to build the spire to its planned height for purely symbolic reasons, or it could find another marketable use for the spire.

The president of the Real Estate Board of New York, Steven Spinola, said, "I seriously doubt that there will not be a need for some kind of antenna on what is clearly a perfect spot to communicate from."

A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Freedom Tower, Steven Coleman, would not say whether the Freedom Tower's spire and antenna would be scrapped if the television stations decided they did not want to lease it.

"We are continuing to negotiate with the MTVA," Mr. Coleman wrote in an e-mail message, referring to the Metropolitan Television Alliance. He added that he would not speculate on the talks, which have been going on for more than a year.

A senior vice president at Richland Towers, which has tested the new technology with ION, David Denton said the new system "has the potential to become the primary source of broadcast operations in New York."

"This is no longer an unknown," he said. "We built it. We proved it."

The CEO of ION Media Networks, Brandon Burgess, was quoted by Broadcast Engineering magazine as saying that the Richland Towers network "provides signal quality at least equal to that of traditional digital broadcast towers at substantially lower investment and operating cost." Mr. Burgess could not be reached for comment yesterday.

A spokesman for the television alliance, Patrick Smith, said the organization is testing an alternative system to see if it can bridge the gap during the national switch to digital broadcasting.

"Members of the Metropolitan Television Alliance still plan to broadcast from the top of the Freedom Tower," he said.

Mr. Denton of Richland Towers said many television stations have expressed interest in the new broadcast system, which would operate with four transmitters, with one of them potentially situated on the top of the Bloomberg LP building at 731 Lexington Ave.

Mr. Denton said the new system would cost "exponentially less" than leasing space on the Freedom Tower, but he said he could not give specific figures. The new technology also has the potential to work better with mobile television broadcasting, which is considered the future of television, Mr. Denton said.

I've read this already over at SSP.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/nyregion/12remains.html?ref=nyregion
Ground Zero Hunt for Remains Is Mostly Done

By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: December 12, 2007

An expanded search for human remains begun last year at ground zero is largely completed, according to a memorandum sent to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday and ushering in a new phase of operations.

Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, who is overseeing the search, said in the memo that the medical examiner’s office had completed examining debris from most of the areas officials identified in October 2006 after the discovery of 201 bones and bone fragments in an abandoned Consolidated Edison manhole on the west edge of the World Trade Center site.

The search has thus far recovered 1,772 possible human remains from 15,000 cubic yards of debris at a cost of $38 million, according to the memo. Officials have completed operations at 140 Liberty Street, where St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church once stood, and along the haul road between Vesey and Cedar Streets.

The searches are largely finished on Cedar Street from Washington to West Street and in an area in front of the World Financial Center bounded by Vesey, Albany and West Streets.

Several other areas — including Fiterman Hall, the ground beneath the Deutsche Bank building, and underground structures west of Broadway between Barclay and Albany Streets — remain to be searched, Mr. Skyler wrote, but are not yet accessible.

As demolition and construction moves forward, Mr. Skyler wrote, officials plan to continue examining debris from new locations, but that will be handled by a mobile unit rather than at the medical examiner’s recovery lab at 11 Water Street in Brooklyn.

“The conversion of 11 Water Street to a mobile platform acknowledges the sad reality that the search for remains will go on as long as there is excavation activity in and around the W.T.C. site,” he wrote. “With the considerable expertise of its top scientific and operations staff, the city is well prepared to continue this search, wherever it leads.”

The developments are unlikely to mollify many of the victims’ families, who are waiting for the remains of their loved ones and have criticized the way the search has been handled from the start.

“The whole process of the search and reclamation of human remains was mishandled from 9/12 on,” said Sally Regenhard, who has not recovered the remains of her son Christian, a probationary firefighter who died in the terror attack. Saying that the city had signed off on the area being free of remains long before more remains were discovered, she added, “It’s wrong, and you just can’t manipulate and dance around something that has been wrong from the beginning.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/freedom-set-in-special-concrete/
December 20, 2007, 10:46 am

Freedom, Set in Special Concrete

By David W. Dunlap

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/12/20/nyregion/20groundzero.span.jpg
The Freedom Tower construction site at 1 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/12/20/nyregion/20groundzero.large.jpg
A steel column bears the words “Freedom Tower” and is partially encased in concrete. Enlarge this image. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

Just about every element at ground zero generates heat. Even the concrete.

With walls up to 5 feet 10 inches thick, the core of the 1 World Trade Center project (also called Freedom Tower) requires tremendous amounts of concrete; so much that the chemical process by which the concrete takes form and hardens — starting from a mixture of cement, aggregate and water — actually creates its own considerable heat.

If temperatures at the center of the concrete pour are above 160 degrees, or if there is a difference in temperature of more than 35 degrees between the inside and outside, it can lead to stress and deterioration.

“That’s a major challenge in a project like this,” said Michael J. Mennella, executive vice president of the Tishman Construction Corporation of New York, which is managing construction of the Freedom Tower for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

So it was news when the commissioners of the Port Authority were told on Tuesday that an extremely high-strength concrete formula had been used successfully for the first time in New York City, as part of the Freedom Tower project. This concrete has a strength under compression calculated at 14,000 pounds per square inch. (The highest strength previously used in a New York skyscraper had a rating of 12,000 pounds per square inch. A house might use concrete with a strength of 2,000 pounds per square inch.)

The formula was devised by a company called iCrete and employed at the Freedom Tower by the Quadrozzi Concrete Company, a subcontractor.

“To get this kind of strength in concrete, you usually have to increase the amount of cement,” said Tony Arnold, president of iCrete. “We reduced the amount of cement.”

That in turn lowered the temperature of the chemical reaction. It incidentally helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions during production of the cement. The iCrete formula also uses byproducts of steel fabrication known as slag and fly ash. About 700 cubic yards were poured Tuesday atop an earlier pour of 630 cubic yards, Mr. Mennella said.

“You’re not going to find too many places in the world with walls this thick,” Mr. Mennella said as he looked over the twin cores of the Freedom Tower, still far below street level but now on the way up. “This is one of them.”

You also will not find any other place in the world with a steel column bearing the words “Freedom Tower.” This column was set in place exactly a year ago as part of Gov. George E. Pataki’s last official visit to the trade center site. It is now partly encased in concrete and says simply, “Freedom.”

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12202007/postopinion/editorials/tear_it_down__already_241385.htm
TEAR IT DOWN, ALREADY

December 20, 2007 -- Yet another round of delays at Ground Zero may be leading New Yorkers to wonder: Is the site headed for the same paralysis that held up rebuilding under then-Gov. George Pataki? Is anyone down there in charge?

Yesterday brought word that the World Trade Center memorial, which state officials promised would be open for 9/11's eighth anniversary, now likely won't be done until 2010. And the memorial's museum and visitors' center won't open until 2011 - a full decade after 9/11.

Other work is progressing, but even that may come to a halt if work doesn't soon resume on removing the contaminated Deutsche Bank building, which was irreparably damaged in the terror attack.

As we've said repeatedly, that building should've come down years ago.

Instead, it has stood as a monument to bureaucratic inertia. Even as a pipe fell from one of its upper floors, crashing through a firehouse below. And a blaze killed two firefighters in August. And a pallet-jack toppled down days later, injuring two more firefighters.

The state-controlled Lower Manhattan Development Corp. owns the property; after the August fire halted the building's deconstruction, LMDC head Avi Schick said work would re-start in November.

Never happened.

Now LMDC officials can't even say when demolition might begin. Nor even when they'll hire a new subcontractor for the job.

How pathetic.

We've seen this before, of course: Gov. Pataki vowed back in 2004 to have the Deutsche Bank building down by the following year. But the whole Ground Zero rebuilding was plagued by incompetence and a lack of leadership back then - nothing moved forward.

Now, with other parts of the project finally under way, a protracted delay at the Deutsche Bank building could be fatal, given that other work on Ground Zero buildings is closely linked to demolition of that tower.

Who's to blame for the new mess?

That's not entirely clear, given all the finger-pointing. But the LMDC, which - again - owns the Deutsche Bank tower, is mostly run by the state. Which means Gov. Spitzer needs to get on the ball.

Mayor Bloomberg also has a role to play, given that the fate of the building will greatly affect the city of which he is in charge.

Much is at stake in that building's removal. Officials should act like they understand that - and get that building down pronto.

That's something that was said to be already planned. That the project would open in stages, and not the whole thing all at once.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2007/12/31/2007-12-31_world_trade_center_owner_to_pay_millions.html
World Trade Center owner to pay millions in fines for missed deadlines

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Monday, December 31st 2007, 5:14 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/01/01/amd_wtc-site.jpg
Appleton/News

Heavy equipment operates in the pit at Ground Zero during construction of Freedom Tower, as seen from the 32nd floor of the Millenium Hilton hotel.

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/01/01/amd_silverstein.jpg
F. Roberts for News

World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein

The owner of the World Trade Center site said Monday it is at least a month behind on a deadline to turn over part of the site to a private developer and will pay at least $9 million in fines.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had a Tuesday deadline to excavate foundations for two of five planned office towers at the site and turn the land over to private developer Larry Silverstein, or pay Silverstein $300,000 for every day it was late.

The deadline - and penalties - were worked out last year in a contentious renegotiation of Silverstein's lease that officials said would help speed up long-stalled development at the 16-acre site.

The agency's executive director, Anthony Shorris, said Monday that contractors worked 20-hour-a-day schedules for months and removed 300,000 tons of material so far, but could not finish by the deadline.

"They were ambitious goals. We did our best to meet them," Shorris said. "This is an enormous project. ... I wished we'd be right on schedule."

The agency said it would finish the foundation for one of the planned office towers in two weeks, and the foundation for the next tower two to four weeks later, meaning it will pay Silverstein $9 million to $13.5 million in fines.

Shorris said the job's contractor will not receive a $10 million bonus it was to get if it finished the project on time.

Silverstein spokesman Dara McQuillan said Monday that Silverstein is confident the site will be turned over to him "in the very near future" and said they are prepared to begin building the two towers as soon as the land is made available.

Construction deadlines at the World Trade Center site have changed several times, most notably with the iconic, 1,776-foot Freedom Tower. Once scheduled to open in 2009, its opening was pushed back three years after the tower was redesigned to address security concerns. The Port Authority recently adjusted its timetable for finishing the Sept. 11 memorial it is also building on the site, saying the entire complex, with an underground museum, wouldn't be finished until the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01032008/business/faltering_tower_456087.htm
FALTERING TOWER

SLOW GO ON ANTENNA, RENTS

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01032008/photos/freedom_tower_new.jpg
The new design for the Freedom Tower's antenna.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01032008/photos/freedom_tower.jpg
The old design, leaving the antenna open to the elements.

January 3, 2008 -- IT'S good news the Port Authority finished most of the bathtub job at ground zero on time, and that Larry Silverstein will be able to start construction on towers 3 and 4 within a few weeks.

But the 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower has been largely forgotten in the news blitz. The PA wants us to believe the project is sailing along.

But, the tower's crowning broadcast antenna seems lost in the clouds, with the PA nowhere near a deal on lease terms with TV stations which will transmit from it.

And neither of the ballyhooed office leases with government agencies for 1 million square feet of the project's 2.6 million feet, announced way back in June 2006, has yet been completed.

The good news is that the PA, which owns the $2.9 billion Freedom Tower, and architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill agree on what the antenna will look like. The shaft will constitute the project's top 408 feet.

That design, shown up-close on this page, looks a lot like the one first unveiled in the summer of 2005, when architect David Childs had to redesign the building because of security concerns.

It was suggested at the time that the final antenna design would be more "sculptural" than the original image, and later sketches and models sported various curlicued motifs.

But Childs says those ideas, which exposed the actual antenna to the air, were impractical. "A broadcast antenna is a very technical piece of equipment - it's like designing a hospital operating room," Childs said.

The more open designs would cause "rain to turn to ice, which would break and fall," and also make the antenna impossible to maintain at such a height.

So it was back to the original notion, which called for a top-to-bottom hood enclosing the actual broadcast spire.

The current design, done in consultation with sculptor Ken Snelson, shrouds the antenna in a synthetic material called Ray-dome - "very hard and permanent, but invisible to the broadcast rays that pierce through it," Childs said.

But PA Executive Director Anthony Shorris, asked where negotiations stood with the Metropolitan Broadcast Alliance, a consortium of 13 TV stations, said, "I don't have any news."

In fact, the talks are really bogged down, both over how much rent the stations are willing to pay the PA and by disagreements among the broadcasters themselves.

The negotiations "are complicated because the stations are competitors," Shorris said. "I don't want to diminish how complicated."

Pat Smith, a rep for the TV consortium, said only, "The members remain committed to broadcasting from the top of the Freedom Tower."

Meanwhile, Shorris said a lease for 600,000 square feet with the Federal General Service Administration "is not done. We're still negotiating the long-term escalations over the later years of the lease."

And while a deal with the state Office of General Services for 400,000 feet is signed, "it needs to get final approval in Albany," Shorris said. Meanwhile, the PA has imposed a gag order on Cushman & Wakefield heavy-hitter Tara Stacom and her colleagues who are marketing the rest of the office space.

The PA says steel will begin rising above street level by June. But with construction and material costs escalating almost by the hour, it's unclear whether the job can be completed over five years within budget with out employing "value engi neering" to cheapen the materials and detailing.

I love the name of this tower. Freedom from what? The U.S. government?

It was former governor George Pataki who gave it that name for the fact that the spire reached to 1,776 ft, though freedom doesn't describe the process that picked it.

I love the name of this tower. Freedom from what? The U.S. government?

Post 9/11 "patriotism." It's worn off a bit.

Quietly, FT has reverted to 1WTC... which is good news, I think. No more jingoism, hopefully...

I'm going to sense something when I look at 1WTC in the future, and it isnt the sense of freedom and triumph. Its the sense of "u destroyed 2, but unfortunately we were only able to rebuild 1!" Ya, shows a lot of American strength right there... :ohno:

then when u look at the 2 footprints in the middle and look up only to see 1, to me, it shows we're only half of what we used to be...

Post 9/11 "patriotism." It's worn off a bit.

Quietly, FT has reverted to 1WTC... which is good news, I think. No more jingoism, hopefully...



People, on the other hand, will still be calling it the Freedom Tower though, because they've gotten so used to that name. I like the name.

Some will forget that the name has been dropped.:ohno:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01242008/postopinion/editorials/double_talk_on_ground_zero_635328.htm
DOUBLE TALK ON GROUND ZERO

January 24, 2008 -- The former Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero has stood for years as a monument to bureaucratic bungling - but could finally be coming down!

. . . Sometime this year.

That is, if one is to believe Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Chairman Avi Schick, who took heat at the City Council yesterday over the LMDC's continued inability to bring down the building - which was grievously damaged on 9/11, and in August was the site of a hellish blaze that killed two firefighters.

Schick got a much-deserved tongue-lashing from Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens) after first insisting that any timetable for the building's demolition wouldn't be "productive" at this point.

Maybe not from his perspective. No timetable, after all, means no benchmark for progress - and no standard against which to gauge blame.

No wonder that Schick was soon back to his original plan: asking the council, in essence, to simply accept his assurances that all concerned are "committed" to getting the building down quickly.

Whatever the hell that means.

Indeed, Schick wouldn't (couldn't?) even say what precise steps are still needed before the LMDC gets the all-clear to resume work.

And that's especially odd, given that subcontractor LVI Services says it hopes to restart preliminary deconstruction work by Monday.

Bottom line: Schick's dodgy testimony inspires little confidence that further delays aren't in the wings.

More candor, please.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/nyregion/29rebuild.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=login
Developer Sought for Restaurant in Freedom Tower

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: January 29, 2008

For the price of a meal, Windows on the World atop 1 World Trade Center offered diners a spot in the stratosphere, a spot that was lost — along with so much else — on Sept. 11, 2001.

“It may be merely a footnote to a national calamity,” William Grimes, then a restaurant critic for The New York Times, wrote a week later, “but the collapse of the World Trade Center’s two towers ended an era in New York City dining.”

On Monday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is building the new 1 World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower), set out to find whether anyone wants to try to revive that era.

It issued what is called a request for expressions of interest from developers who would design, construct, operate and manage a 34,000-square-foot restaurant on the 100th and 101st floors of the new tower.

The space, commanding a 360-degree panorama nearly 1,250 feet above street level, would be served by as many as five express elevators.

The grand opening is planned for early 2013.

The restaurant operator may also be chosen to run the 24,000-square-foot observation deck on the 102nd floor.

But a question posed by Mr. Grimes yet to be answered:

“Will diners ever again find that perspective enchanting?” he wrote more than six years ago, and added, “Exhilaration has now become too closely interwoven with terror.”

In the previous post it refers to the possible restaurant being at level 100/101...at nearly 1,250 ft.....an observation deck above on 102.....then I guess some plant floor and roof before the spire....Forgetting the overall height to the top of the spire...does this mean the height to roof is lower than the original WTC ???? 1,250 ft brings recollections of the Empire State Buildings height not counting TV antenna....I would have thought the building roof should have at been at least as high as the original WTC 1 ?????

No the roof is over 1,350 feet in the sky and the crown is 1,400'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/nyregion/29rebuild.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=login
Developer Sought for Restaurant in Freedom Tower

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: January 29, 2008

For the price of a meal, Windows on the World atop 1 World Trade Center offered diners a spot in the stratosphere, a spot that was lost — along with so much else — on Sept. 11, 2001.

“It may be merely a footnote to a national calamity,” William Grimes, then a restaurant critic for The New York Times, wrote a week later, “but the collapse of the World Trade Center’s two towers ended an era in New York City dining.”

On Monday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is building the new 1 World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower), set out to find whether anyone wants to try to revive that era.

It issued what is called a request for expressions of interest from developers who would design, construct, operate and manage a 34,000-square-foot restaurant on the 100th and 101st floors of the new tower.

The space, commanding a 360-degree panorama nearly 1,250 feet above street level, would be served by as many as five express elevators.

The grand opening is planned for early 2013.

The restaurant operator may also be chosen to run the 24,000-square-foot observation deck on the 102nd floor.

But a question posed by Mr. Grimes yet to be answered:

“Will diners ever again find that perspective enchanting?” he wrote more than six years ago, and added, “Exhilaration has now become too closely interwoven with terror.”



2013?!!

I thought that they would at least make it somwhere within the year that they plan to complete an open the tower for business.

Then we probably won't even see the obs deack done until around that time as well.

And if I remember correctly, it took about 7 years for those things to open in the former WTC.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/02/24/2008-02-24_pros_fear_new_towers_at_world_trade_cent.html
Pros fear new towers at World Trade Center site have security gaps

by greg b. smith and douglas feiden
daily news staff writers

Sunday, February 24th 2008, 4:00 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/02/24/graf_wtc.jpg

Law enforcement officials have major concerns about security weaknesses in the planned World Trade Center complex, a Daily News investigation has found.

The potential problems expressed to the Port Authority and others involved in the most high-profile development project in New York City history include:

A row of three mostly glass towers positioned too closely to city streets, increasing their vulnerability to attack.

Difficulties in inspecting some 2,000 delivery trucks and sightseeing buses that will enter or leave the site daily.

A vehicle security center that hasn't been fully designed and relies on vehicle inspection technology that hasn't even been developed yet.

Asked about weaknesses uncovered by The News in the plans for rebuilding Ground Zero, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said, "The NYPD has been in talks with the Port Authority, but we don't disclose any information about possible security vulnerabilities for obvious reasons."

Port Authority spokesman Stephen Sigmund said the agency is "very confident that the entire rebuilt WTC site - every building and every square inch - will operate with an unprecedented level of safety and security."

Michael Balboni, Gov. Spitzer's deputy secretary for public safety, emphasized, "At the end of the day, this will be one of the most secure footprints on the globe."

Law enforcement counterterrorism specialists have pinpointed serious flaws in key components of the Trade Center site, including three of the signature office towers projected to open by 2012.

Towers 2, 3 and 4 - which will rise between Greenwich and Church Sts. to 79, 71 and 64 stories, respectively - contain too much glass, sources familiar with the issues said.

They also are not set back far enough from the two streets - where uninspected trucks will whiz by - to meet the most rigorous security standards, the sources said.

"The reimposition of the street grid is an integral part of the plan to bring vibrancy to lower Manhattan," said Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

"The administration understands the need to balance that goal with legitimate security concerns."

Another concern: The buildings do not meet Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security blast standards. That means they can withstand certain types of explosions - but not more powerful blasts.

The DOD blast standards - rarely applied to U.S. skyscrapers - are typically used in U.S. embassies and missions abroad, sensitive government facilities and military bases.

Counterterrorism officials contend that because of the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and Al Qaeda's pattern of repeatedly striking targets, DOD blast standards should be used in the Ground Zero buildings.

"The plans have been out for quite a while on these buildings, and it would have been nice to voice these concerns at the start rather than wait until now," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents lower Manhattan. "The community wants to move forward."

A spokesman for Larry Silverstein, the developer of the three towers, declined to comment on security issues.

Silverstein's buildings - including a 1,270-foot giant that will be taller than the Empire State Building - have been designed with a steel-encased concrete core and engineered with safety systems exceeding the city's building code and the requirements of the Port Authority, his company says.

The Freedom Tower's extra safety measures - including being set back farther from the street, thicker glass and upgraded blast standards - were done after the NYPD raised questions about the building's weaknesses. Similar changes were made to the trade center's transportation hub after issues arose.

Asked about the overall effort to ensure the new trade center is secure, James Kallstrom, the former director of the FBI's New York office and former Gov. George Pataki's homeland security chief, said: "It's complicated. It's a very crowded area. It's not easy ... It's going to require state-of-the-art technology and competent, trained manpower."

The need for screening every single truck entering the area and the difficulties of carefully managing inspections were key issues Kallstrom addressed in a report he completed before leaving government last year.

Kallstrom and Balboni declined to discuss the report's recommendations, though Balboni said most were being implemented.

While inspecting thousands of vehicles a day is tough enough, the problem is more complicated in lower Manhattan because of narrow streets and thick traffic.

"We can't let anything enter the underground in that acreage that could have the potential for certain size devices or bombs without proper screening," Kallstrom said.

All delivery trucks and buses will access the complex through a new Vehicular Security Center, an underground complex with an entrance and exit on Liberty St. that will function as the central security checkpoint.

The $478 million project has been on the drawing boards since 2003 and was to start last April, but all the Port Authority has done is move some utilities and sewer lines.

Delays in demolition of the toxic former Deutsche Bank tower have made it close to impossible for construction of the subterranean project to begin.

Bids for a contractor haven't gone out, and excavation of the so-called south bathtub for the center hasn't begun, the bistate agency confirmed.

"Obviously, the fact that [Deutsche Bank] is not down presents some serious challenges to the VSC," Sigmund said.

There's more: The design and engineering specifications, which the Port Authority said in 2006 were being finalized, are not ready, and the screening technology does not exist.

Nevertheless, the PA said the Vehicular Security Center is set to be finished when the other buildings come on line, by 2011 or 2012.

"We will have the appropriate technology to do the screening when the VSC is completed," Sigmund said, noting the facility will meet DOD and Homeland Security standards.

Sigmund said they would inspect vehicles "off-site or in a holding area if necessary," declining to specify where it would take place.

That's a nightmare scenario for downtown residents, who say they're worried the Sept. 11 museum and other buildings will open before the Vehicular Security Center is completed, compromising security and the quality of life.

Asked if he was troubled the center has fallen behind schedule, Balboni said: "I'm not concerned yet, but that could change. We're watching it very closely."

dfeiden@nydailynews.com

god dammit, are they serious; again with this shit? do these fucking people realize how easy it is to take out any building in the city if someone really wanted to? i'm a bike messenger and when i drop stuff off at places like rock center and the empire state building, they don't scan or check for shit, no matter how big the package is. If I wanted to, I could take a damn nuclear bomb disguised as a refrigerator up to the top floor of 30 rock with no one even knowing it. At one liberty plaza, across the street from the WTC, there are 2 steep parallel ramps that lead directly to the mess center and loading dock under the building; the only thing stopping a van full of explosives from driving straight into it is a security guard in a little box by the sidewalk. - security in this city is an illusion and over the last year it has become more apparent to me than ever.

I hear ya.

It's just that the NYPD is JUST NOW showing their so-called great concerns about the security of Towers 2, 3 & 4 when they should have said something when the new designs were first revealed.

Why couldn't they voice their opinion back then, instead of waiting until work is about to begin with Tower 2?

I kept shut up because I didn't want to jinx the rebuild, but I somehow and deep down, knew that this crap would happen with these towers also.

Ground Zero is nothing but a 3-ring circus for the so-called law enforcement officials to play friggen mind games with. At this point, we may NEVER see the whole thing done over!!

Don't know if it's just because it's that site but if New York has to resist building skyscrapers close to streets and have glass in them, might as well pack up and close the place down now.....sure have security but don't let it cripple living as normal a life as possible...otherwise it just means the bad guys have already won....

Something tells me that we won't see these towers get started until later this year.

If so, then that would drastically change the scope of the rebuild and set things back even more!

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/farewell-to-freedom-for-a-while/
March 3, 2008, 10:01 am

Farewell to ‘Freedom’ for a While

By David W. Dunlap

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/02/nyregion/03dunlap.1.jpg
The “Freedom Tower” column as it appeared last week, surrounded by the plywood form into which concrete will be poured, encasing and protecting the steel. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/02/nyregion/03dunlap.3.jpg
The “Freedom Tower” column as it appeared on Dec. 19, exactly a year after it had been set in place, when “Freedom” was still visible. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/02/nyregion/03dunlap.2.jpg
A broader view of the east and south perimeter columns of the Freedom Tower, increasingly known as 1 World Trade Center. The “Freedom Tower” column is second from right, surrounded by plywood forms. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

“Freedom” has disappeared from ground zero.

The blue “Freedom Tower” legend on the very first column to rise there, visible for the last 14 months on the column’s wide flanges, is covered in plywood forms. It will soon be encased forever in concrete.

George E. Pataki presided over the column-setting ceremony on Dec. 19, 2006, in his final days as governor of New York.

After learning last week that the lettering was now completely obscured, meaning that construction was advancing, Mr. Pataki said, “It is another milestone that continues what I knew would be the case — for all the difficulties, for all the naysayers, the brilliant master plan for downtown would move forward.”

The disappearance of the name “Freedom Tower,” which was Governor Pataki’s coinage, sometimes seems to be more than just a byproduct of construction. The building is increasingly referred to in official documents as 1 World Trade Center.

“I think the symbolic nature of ‘Freedom Tower’ is meaningful,” Mr. Pataki said on Friday, “but New Yorkers have a way of using, at the end of the day, what they think works best.” (After all, where do you see Sixth Avenue called by its official name, the Avenue of the Americas, except on street signs, corporate letterheads, real estate advertisements and in The New York Times?)

But then Mr. Pataki, whose office was once in the south tower, thought about the matter a bit more and added a personal note.

“One World Trade Center, on one hand, evokes pride in the sense that the trade center is back,” he said. “On the other hand, we’re not going to replace what was there. We’re going to build beyond what was there.

“It is a little troubling to me that again there is a 1 World Trade Center, because a lot of great people and a lot of true heroes died in 1 World Trade Center,” Mr. Pataki said. “I think that name should be reserved, for those who did die on that horrible day.”

What do they mean "for a while"?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03172008/news/regionalnews/rising_from_the_pit_102338.htm
RISING FROM THE PIT

WTC'S '1ST SPROUT'

By TOM TOPOUSIS

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03172008/photos/new021d.jpg
A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL:Digital renderings show the progress planned for the World Trade Center site, including the Freedom Tower breaking street level this year.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03172008/photos/new021c.jpg
2009

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03172008/photos/new021b.jpg
2010

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03172008/photos/new021a.jpg
2010

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03172008/photos/new021a.jpg
2011

March 17, 2008 -- The reborn World Trade Center will begin rising above street level this spring - when the Freedom Tower's steel frame emerges from its 80-foot-deep construction pit, officials say.

The tower itself is now just 10 feet from street level, Port Authority Executive Director Anthony Shorris said.

"We expect it to reach past street level in a few months," he said.

Shorris and Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein, who is building three office towers at the site, said virtually every project at the World Trade Center is now under construction after years of cleanup, design and site preparation.

A time-lapse rendering of the 16-acre site prepared by the Port Authority shows the project coming together over the next five years like a massive jigsaw puzzle, with more than 10,000 construction workers assembling the pieces.

By the end of this year, the Freedom Tower's steel will be racing skyward, while a steel base for the memorial is being set in place. And foundations for Silverstein's three towers and the Santiago Calatrava-designed transit hub will be under construction.

By the end of 2010, the Freedom Tower and Silverstein's Towers 2 and 3 will reach rooftop level, and the memorial plaza will be complete and ready for the planting of more than 400 trees.

Silverstein's Tower 2, the second tallest at the site, will have topped out by the end of 2011.

"By the end of 2012, as they say, it'll all be over but the shouting," Shorris said at a New York Building Congress luncheon last week.

"What is falling into place is a construction-coordination machine of truly unprecedented complexity."

The four towers inside the perimeter of the original World Trade Center site will include 141,000 tons of steel and 593,000 cubic yards of concrete.

A fifth tower is planned a block away on the site of the former Deutsche Bank building. That tower is slated to be complete by the end of 2012.

Just to clear sites for Silverstein's three towers, the Port Authority excavated and hauled out enough dirt and rock to fill Giants Stadium.

Silverstein, who acknowledged that "things haven't always gone as smoothly or as swiftly as everyone - including me - had hoped," predicted that the final outcome in five years will create a new economic engine in lower Manhattan.

But Silverstein said the proof of progress for New Yorkers made skeptical by delays and missed deadlines will be the visible construction now shaping up.

"There has not been this much going on at the site since the cleanup concluded close to six years ago," he said.

tom.topousis@nypost.com

I meant to post this originally when it made the headlines, but I forgot about it until now.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02262008...ance_99273.htm
PA IS SHUT OUT OF WTC INSURANCE

By KATI CORNELL

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02262008/photos/news002a.jpg
BIG ZERO: A judge says leasing the Twin Towers to Ground Zero developer...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02262008/photos/news002b.jpg
...Larry Sivlerstein made the PA ineligible for insurance money.

February 26, 2008 -- The Port Authority lost its right to collect insurance money on the destroyed Twin Towers - and much of the World Trade Center - when it leased the property two months before the 9/11 terror attacks, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

In a written opinion, Manhattan federal Judge Barbara Jones limited claims by the New York-New Jersey Port Authority to buildings that weren't leased to developer Larry Silverstein.

The judge noted Silverstein had his own insurance.

The ruling, which came in response to a lawsuit by a collection of insurance companies, allows the PA's claims to go forward on World Trade Center 6 and the PATH train station.

A PA spokesman had no immediate comment on the latest twist in the many battles over insurance spawned by the destruction of the towers that anchored Manhattan's financial center.

The amount of insurance money the bistate agency will get is a critical issue, partly because construction costs keep climbing and several projects, including the memorial, have already been scaled back.

The PA recently finished the excavation work needed for Silverstein to begin work on two of the three skyscrapers he will build.

But several other hurdles to the vast rebuilding project remain, including completing demolition of the Deutsche Bank building, just south of where the World Trade Center stood.

Jones, in her ruling, also rejected the agency's claim she should not rule until Silverstein had fulfilled his obligation to rebuild the complex.

"Not only does the Port Authority fail to support this argument with citation to any case law, but this position is, in fact, contradicted by the controlling decisions on this issue," she wrote.

"We are gratified that the court agreed with our analysis," said Kenneth Erickson, a lawyer for the Lloyd's of London, which spearheaded the insurance companies' suit.

The Port Authority was fighting to recover an estimated $2 billion shortfall that Silverstein wasn't able to collect under his own insurance policies.

Silverstein entered a 99-year lease on much of the World Trade Center in July 2001 and is required to rebuild the complex.

His lease covered 1 WTC, 2WTC, 4 WTC and 5 WTC.

The PA has estimated losses on its portions of the site at approximately $3 billion.

With Post Wire Services

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/ny...erstein&st=nyt
Developer Sues to Win $12.3 Billion in 9/11 Attack

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: March 27, 2008

Larry A. Silverstein, who has won nearly $4.6 billion in insurance payments to cover his losses and help him rebuild at the World Trade Center site, is seeking $12.3 billion in damages from airlines and airport security companies for the 9/11 attack.

Mr. Silverstein, the developer of ground zero, sought the damages, whose amount was not previously known, in a claim filed in 2004, that says the airlines and airport security companies failed to prevent terrorists from hijacking the planes used to destroy the buildings.

His case was consolidated last week with similar, earlier lawsuits brought by families of some victims of the attack and by other property owners. But in seeking $12.3 billion, he is by far the biggest claimant in the litigation.

The size of Mr. Silverstein’s claim was revealed last week at a status conference on the litigation in United States District Court in Manhattan.

The claims by the parties involved total about $23 billion, and Mr. Silverstein’s claim for such a large chunk could jeopardize claims from other businesses and property owners, according to defense lawyers. A lawyer for the victims’ families, Donald Migliori, said he was confident that their claims would not be affected because they would take priority over the property claims.

A lawyer for the airlines, Desmond Barry, said that if Mr. Silverstein won his claim, he could push the total claims beyond the amount of insurance that the airlines and security companies have available. “There ain’t that much insurance,” Mr. Barry said.

The federal government has capped the liability at the amount of available insurance, to avoid bankrupting the airlines. The exact amount of insurance available is still being explored in the court proceedings.

Richard A. Williamson, a lawyer for Mr. Silverstein, said at the court conference on March 18 that Mr. Silverstein was seeking damages to compensate him for continuing losses at the site. Mr. Silverstein, through his company, World Trade Center Properties, has a 99-year lease, worth $3.2 billion, on four buildings at the site, including the fallen twin towers. He signed the lease in July 2001, just six weeks before the attack.

Since the attack, Mr. Silverstein has been paying rent to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on towers that no longer exist, his lawyer told the judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein. Mr. Williamson said that his client had also lost rental income from about 400 tenants.

Dara McQuillan, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, said that the $12.3 billion represented $8.4 billion for the replacement value of the destroyed buildings and $3.9 billion in other costs, including $100 million a year in rent to the Port Authority and $300 million a year in lost rental income, as well as the cost of marketing and leasing the new buildings.

Mr. Barry, speaking for the airlines, contended that Mr. Silverstein had been more than compensated by the nearly $4.6 billion insurance settlement, reached after almost six years of litigation. He argued that Mr. Silverstein was entitled to the market value of the property, which he said had been established by the $3.2 billion lease.

Judge Hellerstein expressed skepticism about Mr. Silverstein’s claim, and asked why he had not stemmed his losses by just “walking away.”

Turning to Mr. Williamson, Judge Hellerstein asked: “What’s the nature of your recovery?”

To which Mr. Williamson replied, “For damages suffered by the events of 9/11, not value. Damages.”

Mr. Williamson said that the lease required Mr. Silverstein to rebuild and to continue paying rent.

“And so I’m putting to you if you walked away from the lease, you would lose the value of the lease,” Judge Hellerstein said. “Would you have a further obligation to pay money?”

Mr. Williamson replied, “You have to examine that question. “But to me that’s not the test of what are our damages.”

Judge Hellerstein pressed Mr. Williamson to put a dollar figure on the damages. “I don’t think it’s necessary to know the precise amount,” the judge said. “I think some order of magnitude would be appropriate.”

When Mr. Williamson balked, Mr. Barry jumped in.

“I think their claim is $12.3 billion,” he said.

“Plus prejudgement interest,” Mr. Williamson confirmed.

To which the judge tartly replied, “We shouldn’t forget that.”

Judge Hellerstein ordered Mr. Silverstein to provide more documentation of his claim, or risk losing it.

Mr. McQuillan, the spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, said on Wednesday the developer felt both an obligation under his lease and a moral obligation to rebuild, rather than walk away. He said that the insurance companies who paid him would be repaid if he prevails.

Plaintiffs also revealed that after a spate of settlements, there are seven wrongful death cases and two injury cases remaining, out of more than 90 filed.

Those who sued represent just a small fraction of the casualties on Sept. 11. Most of the victims of the attack and their families chose to take the compensation offered through a federal fund, forgoing their right to sue.

Mr. Migliori, the lawyer for victims’ survivors, said he believed that the claimants with property-damage claims — including Mr. Silverstein and some insurance companies trying to recoup their payments — would allow the death and injury cases to get priority in payment of damages.

The judge declined to set any trial date in the case, saying that it would be “fictitious,” but set a fact-finding deadline at the end of this year. Any trials in the case appear to be more than a year away.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03242008/news/regionalnews/eye_on_17_wtc_cranes_103250.htm
EYE ON 17 WTC CRANES

EXTRA SAFETY AT SITE

By TOM TOPOUSIS

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03242008/photos/new09a.jpg

March 24, 2008 -- With fears rising over crane safety since the disaster in Midtown, the Port Authority plans a crane-inspection process at the World Trade Center that far exceeds city standards.

By early next year, the WTC will have the largest concentration of tower cranes of any building site in the nation, with 17 enormous hoists - some of which will rise higher than the Twin Towers once stood.

"There's no other proj ect in America, or in the world, with so many tower cranes," said PA Executive Director An thony Shorris.

"It's not just that there will be so many, but that the whole site is just 16 acres," said Shorris.

Shorris said the PA planning began well before the March 8 disaster on East 51st Street.

The World Trade Center site is owned by the PA and is not subject to city building or fire regulations.

But Shorris said the agency has asked the two city agencies to take part, with regular inspections of the cranes.

"The Fire Department comes in every two weeks and the Buildings Department will be in to inspect the cranes," Shorris said.

"We not only want to meet city standards; we want to go beyond the city standards."

The city inspections will be in addition to reviews done by the PA's own safety officials and inspectors for the contractors building the towers.

Citywide, there are roughly 40 tower cranes at work. The city unit charged with checking those cranes has come under fire since one inspector was charged last week with falsifying records of inspections at the disaster site.

The WTC will be an increased burden for the Buildings Department, which has six inspectors who can monitor cranes.

By 2009, all 17 cranes and their accompanying projects will be rising above the World Trade Center.

Two tower cranes are already at work on the Freedom Tower, with a third to be added as the building approaches street level. Those cranes will have to rise taller than the building's rooftop at 1,368 feet - the height of the Twin Towers.

Meanwhile, a civic group yesterday began a petition aimed at halting further construction on the high-rise where the crane collapsed, killing seven people.

The building, at 303 E. 51 St., is now at 18 stories.

The petition, begun by the Turtle Bay Association, states that allowing the structure to go to its planned 43 stories would require the use of a crane similar to the one that collapsed, posing a threat to the community.

"It would be relatively simple to just . . . leave it at 18 stories," said association Vice President Bruce Silberblatt.

Additional reporting by Leonardo Blair

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03272008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/downtown_unraveling_103783.htm
DOWNTOWN UNRAVELING

March 27, 2008 -- WORLD Trade Center-area reconstruction suddenly seems on the brink of un raveling again. The ascension of woefully inexperienced David Paterson to the governor's job threatens to unleash anarchy Downtown.

Yes, work is underway on the Freedom Tower and the memorial - but large questions linger about how they'll actually look when finished, compared with what the public's been led to expect.

Eliot Spitzer at least had a handle on the Ground Zero agenda and commanded some respect from the principal players. Under the green new governor, agendas and plans once set in stone now look to be as flexible as they were in the George Pataki years.

Don't bet a dime on the timetables recently announced with great fanfare by developer Larry Silverstein, the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Three ominous developments over the past few days call into question even the most concrete-sounding plans:

* As The Post first reported on March 18 in the wake of JP Morgan Chase's plan to take over Bear Stearns, Morgan will move its investment banking unit into Bear's tower on Madison Avenue - meaning it has no need to build a new headquarters at 130 Liberty St., as it once planned.

Sure, Morgan - feeling heat from Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents Downtown - says it's still interested in using the site for some kind of building. But the Port Authority is already thinking about using the site for something completely different, like a hotel or a mixed-use project.

Even if Morgan decides to make a deal with the PA, it will likely be for a smaller tower than the 1.1 million square-foot jumbo it had wanted. So it would surely seek softer terms than the $300 million land lease for which it has a handshake with the PA.

That in turn would delay things further - or give either side an excuse to back out. (The Morgan-PA deal has always been non-binding, and will remain so until they draw up a contract and sign it - a process that hasn't even started.)

And nobody can build even a woodshed at the site until the LMDC takes down the old Deutsche Bank ruin - a job for which the LMDC refuses to give a time estimate, although decontamination has resumed.

* LMDC Chairman Avi Schick - the same fellow who has presided over the failure to take down 130 Liberty St. - is now throwing a monkey wrench into the MTA's tormented Fulton Street Transit Center project.

The Fulton boondoggle (first budgeted at $750 million and now pushing $1.2 billion) was already spinning its wheels as the MTA tries to milk more dough out of the state (i.e., the taxpayers).

The MTA doesn't have nearly enough money to build the above-ground domed pavilion that was the project's public face. Nor has the agency even started on "untangling" the existing station's "maze" of platforms, which was the scheme's entire original raison d'etre.

Worse, the MTA has torn up streets and sidewalks to build an unnecessary pedestrian tunnel that will eventually (maybe by the end of the century?) connect the Fulton station with the PA's new PATH terminal at Ground Zero (another delayed, over-budget scheme that might not ultimately resemble what's been shown to the public).

Now the New York Observer reports that Schick recently "brought forward" an idea to move the Performing Arts Center that's planned for Ground Zero to the above-ground part of the Fulton Transit project.

Although the Observer termed Schick's brainstorm an "idea" but "not yet a proposal," it's all too clear what it means: Nobody has any idea what to build at the Fulton Street site, a once-active block that's now a rat-infested vacant lot - a Son of Ground Zero two blocks from the real thing.

It also means the whole Fulton project is in play - subject to political whims and power plays on top of its existing chaos.

The arts center was long regarded as an integral part of WTC reconstruction; for an official of Schick's stature even to suggest yanking it entirely off-site means Ground Zero itself is not safe from further political interference.

* The Daily News reports that the NYPD wants to take over Ground Zero security from the Port Authority - a power play "driven," the paper said, by the NYPD's "growing concerns" about "security flaws" in the three office towers Silverstein is to build along Church Street.

That should sound familiar. Belated NYPD "security" concerns scuttled the original Freedom Tower in May 2005 and resulted in a year-long delay to redesign the building, which is now - finally - under construction by the Port Authority.

The NYPD's sudden qualms about Silverstein's towers raise exactly the same unavoidable (but never properly answered) questions that came up in 2005: Since the tower designs were made public two years ago, why did the NYPD wait until now - just as work is actually starting - to butt in?

Conspiracy-mongering is the last thing we need at Ground Zero, a place that's already fostered far too many wacky theories about what "really" happened on 9/11. But a PA-NYPD scrimmage over security sure sounds like a threat to getting the buildings out of the ground, just days after we were given assurances they'd be up in no time at all.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04012008/news/regionalnews/freedom_rattled_104483.htm
'FREEDOM' RATTLED

By TOM TOPOUSIS

April 1, 2008 -- The Freedom Tower is being put to the test.

A 40-foot-tall section of the tower's glass outer wall at a California testing lab is being pelted with rain, hammered with sustained winds of 74 mph, exposed to extreme heat and cold, and shaken by ground-shaking vibrations.

The mock-up of a corner section of three upper floors of the tower includes 24 glass panels like those that will one day make up the tower's outer skin - 1 million square feet of glass that will rise 1,368 feet when completed in 2011. An antenna will make the total height a symbolic 1,776 feet.


Technicians at Construction Consulting Laboratory West in Ontario, Calif., are putting the mock-up through two weeks of testing that covers 26 structural and meteorological conditions.

An enormous Curtiss-Wright airplane engine churns up the wind power aimed at the glass wall, which will face the whipping winds off New York Harbor when it is constructed at Ground Zero.

The Freedom Tower, designed by architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will have a skin made of 4-inch-thick glass panels that will stretch panel to panel, with no structural elements between the 13-foot-tall panes of glass.

The testing will take about two weeks.

tom.touposis@nypost.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/04/06/2008-04-06_security_plan_for_wtc_means_army_of_cops.html
Security plan for WTC means army of cops, barriers and traffic hell

BY ALISON GENDAR and DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Sunday, April 6th 2008, 4:00 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/04/06/graf_sallyport-wtc.jpg

Secret NYPD anti-terror plans would turn Ground Zero into Fort WTC - a bulked-up, battened-down, barricaded Ring of Steel, the Daily News has learned.

Some 25 impregnable barriers and 13 guard booths would encircle the World Trade Center footprint under a draft plan circulated in late February.

At least 24 blocks on eight major streets would be closed or restricted to traffic under the proposal, which has been reviewed in City Hall and at 1 Police Plaza and is still being revised.

Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne wouldn't address any specifics in the draft plan.

"No decision has been made on staffing or other security arrangements," he said.

He called the number of checkpoints and guard booths "outdated," saying they "provide an exaggerated picture of security plans.

"The NYPD is working closely with the Port Authority to provide for a safe, inviting and commercially viable World Trade Center site, not the fortress-like environment you describe," Browne said.

The draft plan is modeled after London's Ring of Steel, a maze of narrowed roads in the city's financial district with limited entry points that force vehicles into chokepoints that cops can easily cordon off.

It represents a breathtaking about-face from the work of post-9/11 planners, who called for restoring the original street grid on the site, reconnecting Greenwich and Fulton streets, and breaking up the superblock where the Trade Center once stood.

If the plan goes through, getting into the Trade Center won't be easy: Tenants, chauffeurs, livery cabbies and tour-bus drivers who need regular access to the complex would have to register with cops and win approval as "trusted drivers," sources familiar with the plan say.

Electronic transponders would be attached to their vehicles to allow constant monitoring - and they'd have access to "trusted vehicle lanes" on Church St. separated from other traffic by "raised island dividers," the draft shows.

Even then, screeners would examine the trunk, interior and undercarriage of all northbound vehicles on Church St. in a bomb-detection effort as surveillance cameras that scan license plates rake the scene, say officials briefed on the plan.

Mayor Bloomberg's spokesman, Stu Loeser, insisted City Hall was working to "make the entire area accessible, open and secure."

Community leaders, who have yet to see the hush-hush plan, were more guarded.

"Safety is the No. 1 concern, but it's got to be managed sensitively. If there are security checkpoints all over lower Manhattan, and residents, workers and visitors can't move about freely, it's a real problem," said Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1.

Added Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who hasn't been briefed on specifics, "Effective security measures are essential.... However, these measures can - and must - be implemented in a way that supports and enhances our vibrant 24-hour community."

Expect a traffic nightmare if the plan is enacted: Every northbound vehicle on Church St. would first have to clear a "credentialing zone" at Cedar St., then pass through a barrier into a "screening zone" called a "sally port," a secure corral that can be sealed off on both ends. All this simply to drive past the site.

That would play havoc at rush hour because one-way Church St. has historically been the companion to southbound Broadway in moving vehicles in and out of downtown, said Daily News traffic columnist Sam (Gridlock Sam) Schwartz.

"I don't want to second-guess the NYPD, but if you block Church St., you might as well make all of lower Manhattan into a pedestrian mall," he said.

Schwartz said 1,336 northbound vehicles per hour cross the intersection of Church and Dey Sts. during the morning rush hour. In the evening rush, it's 1,154 vehicles per hour.

Coming from the north, buses taking tourists to the Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum and drivers taking passengers to the office towers would experience the same obstacles to reach the inner perimeter.

First they'd have IDs and transponders verified at the "credential checkpoint" north of Barclay St., then they'd enter the sally port for comprehensive vehicle screening.

One more barricade would await on West Broadway before trusted drivers could crawl south on Greenwich St., finally entering the "secure zone," which would be dotted with raised island dividers.

Officials at the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., agencies responsible for the rebirth of the Trade Center, declined to discuss specifics of the NYPD plan, but both said the Trade Center would be secure.

The emergence of a detailed NYPD draft plan to protect the most vulnerable 16 acres in America comes after The News disclosed March 26 that the NYPD was scrambling to wrest control of all Ground Zero security from the Port Authority.

NYPD officials first called for 1,475 cops on the site, but sources said that number may have been floated as a bargaining chip in talks with the Port Authority over site control.

Police staffing levels have since been scaled back to about 600, sources say.

Under the draft plan, 12 lieutenants, 32 traffic agents, 44 sergeants and 280 police officers would handle screening and checkpoints. About 250 other cops would monitor surveillance cameras and on-site security operations.

The News on Feb. 24 also revealed police concerns about security flaws at the site, including an underground Vehicle Security Center that hasn't been fully designed and three Church St. office towers that have too much glass and are too close to city streets.

agendar@nydailynews.com

Discounted earlier today as being out of date and over reactive by the NYPD itself.

...ya know, Tal, I can't help but notice you overwhelmingly post NEGATIVE stories... sometimes it seems like any one you can find.

I wonder what we might have to go through when we want to visit the obs deck. Or the restaurant.

And for someone who truly hates the tower, he seems to be finding and posting a ton of news about it.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/04/10/2008-04-10_freedom_tower_to_open_observation_deck_o.html
Freedom Tower to open observation deck on 102nd floor

BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, April 10th 2008, 4:00 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/04/10/amd_freedomtowerview.jpg
Click photo for an aerial tour of the view from the proposed new Freedom Tower observation deck

Get ready to return to the Top of the World.

A new version of the observation deck atop the World Trade Center that beguiled lovers and tourists - and even jaded New Yorkers - will soon rise at the Freedom Tower.

The Port Authority said Wednesday it is seeking a world-class operator to design, build and manage the indoor deck on the 102nd floor of the 1,776-foot icon at Ground Zero.

Boasting eye-popping, heart-stopping, 360-degree panoramic views that stretch forever - or at least 50 miles on a clear day - the deck will be perched 1,300 feet above West St. on the tower's highest occupied floor.

The rebirth of New York's signature rooftop was announced as another key element of post-9/11 rebuilding fell into place: The Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum said yesterday it had reached its goal of raising $350million in funds from private donors.

A record $10 million corporate gift from Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that lost 658 workers in the terror attacks, put the museum over the top. It's now flush with donations from 60,000 people in all 50 states and 31 nations.

"We reached our fund-raising goal because of support from people across the country and around the world," said Mayor Bloomberg, who doubles as museum chairman.

The project, which will cost a total of $610 million, will also receive state and federal grants.

The twin announcements provided fresh momentum for a rebuilding drive that has been haunted by years of delays, funding shortfalls and interagency squabbling. Officials now say the museum will open in 2011 and the Freedom Tower in 2012.

Occupying 18,000 square feet, the tower'snew observation deck will be smaller than the 44,000-square-foot original on the 107th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. Along with an open-air deck on the 110th floor, it drew 2 million visitors a year.

"It was a can't-miss stop," said PA Chairman Anthony Coscia. "We intend to recreate the same experience for future generations."

The bistate agency will issue a request for qualified developers early next month.

By June next year, an operator will be tapped, and the deck will open to the public three years later.

dfeiden@nydailynews.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/nyregion/09freedom.html?ref=realestate
Replicas of New Tower Endure Nature’s Fury and a Test Blast

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: April 9, 2008

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/09/nyregion/09freedom-650.jpg
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

A mock-up of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center, in Ontario, Calif., was built to be exposed to extreme conditions.

One World Trade Center has not yet emerged from below ground, but its facade has already survived earthquakes, hurricanes and an explosion that shook the earth a quarter-mile away.

In recent months, two full-size mock-ups of a few floors of the glass and aluminum facade have been built and tested. One is outside Los Angeles, in Ontario, Calif. The other was at a site in central New Mexico that can be reached only over dirt roads in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

At 1,368 feet, with 23 acres of glass-clad surface area, 1 World Trade Center will be subject to tremendous natural forces. The building, also known as the Freedom Tower (at a symbolic 1,776 feet, when its mast is counted), will be the tallest in New York City and as the skyscraping phoenix on the site of ground zero, it may be the target of terrorist attacks, too.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is building 1 World Trade Center, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which designed it, said both mock-ups performed well. The facade, called a curtain wall, is being made by Benson Industries of Portland, Ore. The engineering firm Weidlinger Associates is the consultant in blast-resistant design.

“Physical testing is a confirmation that curtain-wall contractors are in fact meeting performance requirements,” said Carl Galioto, a Skidmore partner. “Full fabrication of the curtain wall cannot begin until the mock-up specimen passes these tests.”

Almost invisible to passers-by, the foundations of 1 World Trade Center are rising every day toward street level.

The first mock-up was subjected to a blast test in Socorro, N.M., at the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Because details might arm a prospective attacker — providing information like how much force the curtain wall is designed to withstand — officials would say almost nothing about the test of this mock-up.

“The simple answer is, yes, it passed,” said John McCullough, the project executive for the Port Authority.

He was more forthcoming about the tests last month at Construction Consulting Laboratory West in California. There, a $537,000 mock-up was built to represent a corner of three typical tower floors, with laminated glass panes one and a half inches thick. The largest are 5 feet by 13 feet and weigh half a ton. An enclosed steel chamber was constructed behind the glass and aluminum cladding.

The goal was to find out how much air and water leakage could be expected under storm conditions that could be expected at least once in 50 years.

Water jets simulating winds of 74 miles per hour were sprayed at the facade. During the 15-minute test cycle, each square foot of glass was hit with more than a gallon of water.

In another test, a dismounted airplane propeller was switched on to simulate even-stronger and more-scattered winds. “It’s pretty colorful,” said Mr. Galioto, who witnessed the test. “It’s very noisy. Water is blowing in every direction and smoke is blowing from the engine.”

Air infiltration is measured by gauges. Water infiltration is measured by witnesses who are inside the chamber.

“Water is coming into the face of the curtain wall with such intensity that you can’t see,” said Bruce Fox, the deputy project executive for the Port Authority. “Then you’re looking into and opening up all the different pieces to see if there’s any evidence of leakage.” There was none.

Hydraulic jacks were used to simulate the different horizontal sway of various floors, both fully occupied and empty. The surface was also chilled to 10 degrees (refrigerated piping was applied to the glass) and baked at 100 degrees (by heat lamps).

Gusts up to 167 m.p.h. were simulated by using pumps to pull air out of the chamber, creating a condition in which the external air pressure was far greater than the internal pressure. The process was reversed, too, by pumping air into the chamber, simulating conditions on the side of the tower away from the wind.

An earthquake was simulated by jacks pulling the mock-up in different directions. Finally, a much stronger earthquake was simulated. At this point, the designers no longer expected the mock-up to remain airtight and watertight. But the criteria required that no glass could crack and no panes could be dislodged.

Mr. McCullough of the Port Authority said the mock-up met all the performance criteria.

And Mr. Fox marveled: “Sometimes on these tests, you have to do forensics and do corrections. Here, we had no failure at all.”

TalB, someone already posted these two articles here. I read them both.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04172008/news/regionalnews/cement_fixers_106865.htm
CEMENT FIXERS

AP

April 17, 2008 -- Builders of the Freedom Tower poured a bad batch of concrete into the foundation of the skyscraper replacing the World Trade Center and spent the last few weeks removing it after tests showed it wasn't strong enough, officials said.

About 50 cubic yards of concrete was jackhammered away from the core foundation of the 1,776-foot tower under construction at Ground Zero.

Copyright Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Someone has already posted this one also.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04192008/news/regionalnews/pa_probers_trash_towering_blueprint_idio_107162.htm
PA PROBERS TRASH TOWERING BLUEPRINT IDIOTS

By LUKAS I. ALPERT

April 19, 2008 --

The Port Authority took it on the chin yesterday, with officials inside the agency blaming overwhelming bureaucracy for the major security lapse that allowed confidential blueprints of the planned Freedom Tower to be tossed out on the street to be found by a homeless man.

"Maybe we should hire the homeless man to clean up the messes that the Port Authority bureaucracy makes," quipped one high-ranking source within the agency.

The discovery has led to an investigation by the agency's inspector general, who is trying to determine who is responsible for carelessly dumping the plans.

One set of the plans had pages missing.

Three investigators visited The Post newsroom yesterday to go over and photograph the blueprints.

They declined to discuss what leads they had developed.

After garbage-diver Mike Fleming discovered two sets of the sensitive floor-by-floor schematics laying in a city trash can, he turned the detailed documents over to The Post.

Experts say there was enough detail in the blueprints to lead to a devastating terrorist attack.

Port Authority chief spokeswoman Candace McAdams would only say, "Our inspector general is still investigating, and we will take whatever action is necessary."

Copies of the building's plans were distributed to PA officials, architects and contractors.

This one was also posted earlier.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04202008/news/regionalnews/p_a__dump_bells_107227.htm
P.A. DUMP-BELLS

300 LBS. OF KEY PAPERS TURN UP

By KEVIN FASICK and LUKAS I. ALPERT

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04202008/photos/news011a.jpg
WHAT GARBAGE! After The Post reported the discovery of thrown-away WTC blueprints, two scavengers turned in 300 pounds of discarded PA papers, all marked "SECURE DOCUMENT — CONFIDENTIAL".

April 20, 2008 -- Just days after a homeless man found sensitive blueprints of the planned Freedom Tower in a trash can, a much larger trove of confidential World Trade Center documents emerged yesterday - also found in the garbage, but this time right behind the Port Authority office where the rebuilding is being overseen.

A pair of self-described "salvage experts" said they have twice found massive piles of sensitive blueprints, schematics and e-mails detailing several of the buildings at the site, the temporary PATH train station, and a proposed PA Police headquarters in a trash bin behind 115 Broadway.

The building overlooks the trade center site, and is where the PA has rented out an entire floor for engineers who run the redevelopment.

The first of the pair's finds came about a year and a half ago, and the second on March 13.

The two men, who asked that they be identified only as Tony B. and Fox, said they didn't know what to do with the documents but feared they could get into the wrong hands, so they held onto them at their lower Manhattan warehouse.

"We knew what we had. I thought the information was important and potentially dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands, and we weren't going to let that happen," Fox said. "We were protecting the trade center. We were protecting the country."

When asked about the discarded documents, the PA did not explain how the detailed plans ended up in the trash intact.

"This is a $16 billion project that produces literally tons of building plans and documents that are not privileged and confidential," said PA spokesperson Candace McAdams.

"If our security professionals determine a document to be privileged and confidential, we have very strict protocols in place for discarding that document, including, sealing and shredding."

But the documents found by Tony B. and Fox and reviewed by The Post do in fact read, "SECURE DOCUMENT - CONFIDENTIAL FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY," on every page.

Fox said when he and his partner read the story in Friday's Post about a homeless man finding detailed blueprints for the Freedom Tower in a city trash can, they immediately knew who to call.

"As soon as I saw The Post, I said, 'This is the perfect opportunity to get rid of it safely,' " said Tony B. "This is dangerous stuff they're throwing away.

"I worry about the stuff I didn't get. What could be out there? What if it hadn't been us, what if it was terrorists instead?"

In all, the boxes of papers and rolls of blueprints weigh about 300 pounds.

Among the documents were blueprints for building 4 WTC and the temporary PATH station, preliminary plans for the police headquarters, and a detailed construction plan for building 7.

They also found a large box filled with printed e-mails between Thomas J. O'Connor, a chief construction engineer for the PA, and several contractors laying out construction timetables and the materials to be used.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_259/postreports.html
Volume 20, Number 49 | THE NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | APRIL 19 - 26, 2008

Port reports on World Trade Center progress

By Julie Shapiro

The Port Authority updated the community on a slew of Lower Manhattan construction projects this week — and at times the board members seemed unable to believe the good news.

The R/W station at Cortlandt St., closed since 2005, will reopen this fall, said Quentin Brathwaite, assistant director of World Trade Center construction for the Port Authority.

“That would be unbelievable,” replied Catherine McVay Hughes, chairperson of Community Board 1’s W.T.C. Redevelopment Committee.

“You’re talking about fall of ’08, right?” board member Barry Skolnick asked. Brathwaite nodded.

To reopen the station, the Port Authority and Metropolitan Transportation Authority may refurbish a pre-9/11 concourse connecting the platforms to 1 Liberty Plaza, Brathwaite said.

Brathwaite also told the board that he is working with the M.T.A. to put an elevator into the World Trade Center stop on the E train. Passengers previously used an elevator at the PATH station to access the E train, but when the temporary PATH entrance on Church St. closed last week, subway passengers lost the connection to the elevator. Skolnick and other board members have been pressing the M.T.A. and Port Authority for months to add a new elevator.

“You are listening to us!” Hughes said, beaming at Brathwaite.

“Well, they’re delayed on everything else,” Skolnick muttered, referring to the M.T.A.

The closure of the Church St. temporary PATH entrance meant that commuters had to use the new temporary entrance on Vesey St. Monday morning was the first test of how the new entrance would fare during rush hour by itself, and there was a lot of pedestrian congestion, especially between 8:30 a.m. and 9:15 a.m., Brathwaite said.

To ease the passage of walkers, the city Department of Transportation is lengthening the green light on Vesey St. at Church St., allowing more people to cross Church St. from west to east. Depending on the results, the D.O.T. may also change light times at two other intersections: Barclay St. at West Broadway and Vesey St. at West Broadway and Greenwich St.

* * *

Brathwaite also gave updates on Towers 2, 3 and 4, which Silverstein Properties is building. Silverstein recently finished doing test blasts at the sites for Towers 3 and 4 and is now preparing to do production blasting, to ready the bathtub for the foundations of the towers, designed by Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki. Workers will blow warning whistles before blasts to advise residents, workers and pedestrians, Brathwaite said.

Just to the north, the Port Authority is excavating the Tower 2 site, which it must turn over to Silverstein Properties by June 30 or else face a $300,000-a-day penalty. The Port faced a similar deadline for Towers 3 and 4 and ultimately paid Silverstein $14.4 million after missing the Dec. 31, 2007 deadline by nearly seven weeks.

But Brathwaite said things look better at Tower 2 and the Port expects to meet the June 30 deadline. There is less dense rock at Tower 2, meaning that the Port likely will not have to use hoe rams, large jackhammers, to finish excavating. The density of the rock is what delayed the excavation at Towers 3 and 4, and the pounding of the hoe rams kept residents up all night long late last fall into the winter.

Glenn Guzi, a Port Authority program manager, said the Port would try not to work between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. But Bill Love, a board member who lives in Gateway Plaza, said he recently looked out his window at 1 a.m. and saw two machines digging at the Tower 2 site.

After resident complaints during the excavation for Towers 3 and 4, the Port Authority agreed to pay for soundproof windows in three residential buildings: 110 Liberty St., 125 Cedar St. and 90 West St. The Port is working with building owners but no windows have been installed yet, Guzi said. He added that the Port has no plans to extend the program to additional buildings, like Gateway Plaza.

Work is also moving ahead at the Freedom Tower, where passersby will begin to see steel rising past street level in the late summer or early fall, Brathwaite said.

* * *

Two separate projects are happening right now at the Memorial Museum. First, workers are completing the foundations for the steel superstructure. By the summer, steel will begin to rise, though it will be far below street level and out of sight.

Also, Port Authority is building a new slurry wall on the west side of the site to hold back the Hudson River. The new wall will reinforce the existing slurry wall, which will remain in place and exposed as an exhibit in the museum.

* * *

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation sent two representatives to the C.B. 1 meeting to update the board on abatement work at 130 Liberty St., the former Deutsche Bank building where a fire killed two firefighters last August. The building needs to be decontaminated before it can be demolished.

The L.M.D.C. recently moved to double shifts at Deutsche, and now 150 to 200 workers are in the building each day, spokesperson Mike Murphy said. Eventually, 300 to 400 workers a day will be in the building.

The workers are finishing up preliminary abatement work and will soon start formal abatement, doing two floors at a time. The decontamination chambers on floors 18 and 19 are nearly complete — workers just have to line the chambers with plastic. Abatement on 18 and 19 will start by the end of this week, Murphy said. In the meantime, workers will build a decontamination chamber for floors 16 and 17. The building is still on schedule to be abated and demolished by the end of the year, he said.

After demolishing the building, the Port is planning to build a vehicle security center there, which might go beneath new headquarters for JPMorgan Chase. Last month Chase moved to buy Bear Stearns and acquire the Stearns headquarters in Midtown, throwing Chase’s plans for the Tower 5 site into question.

Hughes, of C.B. 1, recently attended a meeting at Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office where a lawyer for JPMorgan said the firm still plans to build at 130 Liberty St., but that they may eliminate the trading floors, reducing the “beer belly” in the building’s original design or eliminating it entirely.

“There seemed to be a commitment to move employees to Tower 5,” Hughes said.

* * *

Joe Schwed, the Port Authority’s new site safety manager for the World Trade Center, attended the meeting to explain the safety procedures at the site, including weekly safety meetings. Schwed is also charged with addressing two of the community’s most common complaints: noise and dust.

To deal with noise, the Port Authority is extending the sound barrier on Church St. around the entire site, Schwed said. To deal with dust tracked out of the site by construction vehicles, the Port recently bought a heavy-duty street sweeper. The machine throws down water, uses bristles to scrub the street and then vacuums up the dirt and water. Several community members said the new machine is helping, but dust still escapes from the site.

Several C.B. 1 members recently got a preview of the street sweeper in action, and a select few got a turn behind the wheel. As the Port Authority representatives clicked through PowerPoint slides at the meeting, a photo of the sweeper popped up with none other than Catherine McVay Hughes behind the wheel, grinning at the camera.

“I didn’t drive it!” Hughes said, laughing.

Julie@DowntownExpress.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04252008/news/regionalnews/pa_honcho_is_blue_cross_108026.htm
PA HONCHO IS BLUE-CROSS

By PATRICK GALLAHUE

April 25, 2008 -- The head of the Port Authority yesterday slammed the outrageous trashing of confidential Freedom Tower blueprints.

"There is a construction protocol as to how you get rid of blueprints and plans you no longer need," said Chairman Anthony Coscia.

"It was not followed in this instance . . . We are looking into the issue. We are investigating how it occurred."

Last week, The Post reported that a homeless man found the blueprints - detailing floor plans, air ducts, elevators, electrical systems and support columns - in a SoHo trash can.

Days later, two self-proclaimed "salvage experts" recovered from a Dumpster 300 pounds of documents containing the personal information of Ground Zero workers and blueprints for World Trade Center 4, the temporary PATH station, construction specifications for World Trade Center 7, and plans for the PA Police Headquarters.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/05/12/2008-05-12_failure_to_rebuild_wtc_site_quickly_will.html
Failure to rebuild WTC site quickly will cost taxpayers

BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Updated Monday, May 12th 2008, 11:09 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/05/12/amd_goldman-graphic.jpg
Photos by Zuma and AP

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein got (c.) sweet deal from Mayor Bloomberg (l.) and George Pataki.

New Yorkers are on the hook to hand over $321 million to Goldman Sachs, America's richest investment bank, because reconstruction of the World Trade Center has fallen way behind schedule.

Under the hidden terms of a deal that then-Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg approved in 2005, the city and state agreed to pay huge penalties to the firm if major portions of Ground Zero redevelopment weren't complete by next year, a target now considered impossible to meet.

Goldman wanted speedy construction because the Wall Street giant is building its own $2.4 billion tower across from the site on West St.

Now, Goldman could snare 64 years of free rent worth $161 million that it's supposed to pay for leasing the state land. Goldman could also recoup an additional $160 million in sales tax payments.

The sweetheart deal okayed by Bloomberg and Pataki also provided $1.65 billion in tax-free

Liberty Bonds and a $115 million incentive package. At the time, the bank was threatening to decamp to New Jersey.

In return for constructing its 43-story office building for 9,000 employees, Goldman. was allowed to put $161 million it owed in rent and $160 million in sales taxes into escrow accounts, documents show. Albany and City Hall agreed that Goldman could keep its cash if two conditions were not met:

* Specific blockbuster transit-and-security projects on the Trade Center footprint had to be finished by the end of next year, when Goldman's tower will be finished. Officials concede that's not going to happen - and that the projects are years behind schedule.

* A comprehensive security plan for downtown had to be "implemented" before 2010. That counterterrorist plan can't be fully "implemented," as the deal requires, until the structures at Ground Zero are in place.

The bottom line: The $321 million bonanza in tax and lease payments could soon revert to the Wall Street powerhouse, which piled up $11.6 billion in profits last year.

Goldman spokeswoman Andrea Raphael declined to comment, but in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing four months ago, the firm made note of the escrow deal and implied it could be pocketing the ground-lease payments.

"Under the terms of the ground lease, we made a lump-sum ground rent payment in June 2007 of $161 million, which was paid into escrow, to be released to the Battery Park City Authority pending performance of specified state and city obligations," it said.

State officials wouldn't discuss specifics - even though the document they refused to discuss can be found on the SEC Web site. City officials think they're off the hook.

"The city is on track to provide a comprehensive security plan for lower Manhattan by the end of 2009 as required by the agreement, and we are working with the Port Authority and Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to help them meet the other deadlines," said Deputy Mayor for Economic. Development Robert. Lieber.

Lawyers are likely to argue this point: How can a security plan for Ground Zero. be "implemented" by 2010 if none of the iconic buildings at the site are wrapped up by that time?

Sources close to the deal said only that the state and city are in preliminary talks with Goldman to win a bit of flexibility.

"The state and Goldman Sachs have and continue to have productive conversations on ensuring that downtown is rebuilt in a manner that is fair to both workers and residents and, of course, all taxpayers," said Avi Schick, chairman of the LMDC.

Among the projects supposed to see ribbon cuttings by 2010:

* The Transportation Hub: With its soaring wings designed to resemble a bird in flight, the PATH terminal was originally planned to open in 2006. A new report says there's less than a 5% chance of the hub being complete before July 2012.

* The Vehicular Security Center under Liberty St.: A centerpiece of security operations, this is the planned $478 million subterranean complex through which delivery trucks and buses will access the 16-acre site. Construction of the high-tech security checkpoint can't even start until the toxic former Deutsche Bank tower above it is finally demolished. The latest estimated opening date is 2011 or 2012.

dfeiden@nydailynews.com

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/not-yet-on-the-skyline-but-above-street-level/
May 19, 2008, 5:50 pm

Not Yet on the Skyline, but Above Street Level

By David W. Dunlap

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/19/nyregion/wtc-650.jpg
Two perimeter columns of the 1 World Trade Center tower rose above street level for the first time over the weekend. The 1,776-foot structure will now be climbing upward within public view. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

Only 1,761 feet to go.

Another tangible and fanfare-free milestone occurred over the weekend at ground zero, where two steel columns of 1 World Trade Center rose above street level for the first time. That means the 1,776-foot skyscraper, until now an entirely subterranean structure, will be doing the rest of its climbing in the public eye.

In contrast to the heavily orchestrated ceremonies of past years — white doves taking flight (they turned out to be homing pigeons) and a 20-ton cornerstone being set into place (it had to be picked up again and moved off site) — the latest milestone was noted quite modestly by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Rather than staging speeches, the agency simply handed out prepared, two-sentence statements from Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman, and Christopher O. Ward, the new executive director.

One World Trade Center, also called the Freedom Tower, broke through the street-level barrier on Saturday when workers for DCM Erectors attached new sections atop two of the 24 jumbo columns that form the building’s perimeter. The additional steel brought the columns to a height of about 15 feet above grade. The authority said the 22 other columns were expected to sprout through May, June and July. Tishman Construction Corporation is the construction manager for the project, which is to be completed in 2012.

For now, the best vantages of the rising columns are either from the corner of Washington and Vesey Streets (through a chain-link fence) or from within the second-floor gallery of the Winter Garden at Battery Park City. If you wait long enough, however, you won’t have any trouble seeing the structure from almost any nearby vantage. And if you wait longer than that, you won’t be able to avoid seeing it from almost anywhere, since it will be the tallest in New York City.

Not trying to cross thread threads but just looked at other WTC thread and last pic reminded me of this ?
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/2748/img1806ormediumqh9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/nyregion/25hudson.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin
Exposing the Wall Between the River and New York City

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: May 25, 2008

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/25/nyregion/25HUDSON.GR.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/25/nyregion/25hudson.span.jpg
David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

Parts of the river wall are visible north of Chambers Street, but the excavation at the trade center will show it at greater depth.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/25/nyregion/25hudsonEARTH.190.jpg
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Newly exposed granite blocks from the historic river wall that lies just west of the World Trade Center site.

To the builders of the 21st-century World Trade Center it is both an obstacle and an engineering marvel of 19th-century New York: the massive granite river wall that opened Manhattan’s edges to a world of seagoing commerce.

The river wall near the trade center was long ago cut off from the Hudson River by the landfill on which Battery Park City stands. But the wall’s granite and concrete blocks are very much in place under the western edge of West Street and have posed an engineering and archaeological challenge to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

That is because part of the river wall must be removed to allow construction of an underground passageway between the new World Trade Center and the World Financial Center in Battery Park City. But at the same time, by agreement with state preservation officials, the river wall must also be treated as the historical resource it is. The New York State Office of Historic Preservation has deemed it eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

As a result, archaeologists will be given the chance to monitor, inspect and document the river wall as it is being dismantled. And for a week or two early next year, before it is removed, the section of wall will be visible from the Winter Garden, its rough-hewn but handsomely coursed granite blocks exposed to a depth of perhaps 15 feet below street level.

The top of the wall, which runs from the Battery to 59th Street, can currently be seen from many places along the shoreline. Just walk out on a pier and look back. But the chance to see a whole section of the wall — dry — will be exceptional.

“The beauty of it is that they’re going to be able to view an entire length,” said Clarelle DeGraffe, the project manager for the Port Authority. “About 80 feet of granite wall section will be exposed. It’s awesome.”

Awesome, but little known.

By restraining the land mass behind it, a bulkhead allows large vessels to dock at the island’s edge, rather than at the end of piers or wharves hundreds of feet off shore.

The depth and sturdiness of the shoreline is taken for granted now, but in 1873, the waterfront was so dilapidated and unnavigable as to “awake the amazement and indeed scorn of the foreigner,” The New York Times said. “What is wanted is a broad thoroughfare clear round the City, stone-faced, with all necessary piers, solid and imperishable.”

The river wall, formally known as the Hudson River bulkhead, was built under an improvement plan proposed in 1870 by Gen. George B. McClellan, the chief engineer of the city’s Department of Docks, who was far better known as a Union leader during the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s Democratic challenger for the presidency in 1864.

McClellan’s plan was “as ambitious, in its way, as the Brooklyn Bridge” and “the greatest public-works project of its period,” Phillip Lopate wrote in “Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan.”

It took six decades to complete.

According to an archaeological report prepared in 2006 by the Louis Berger Group, the bulkhead nearest the trade center was built with granite blocks atop concrete blocks atop vertical piles and lateral braces. The method suggests it was installed between 1899 and 1915.

But only physical inspection can determine the dimensions of the wall for certain, and only exploration can uncover artifacts behind the bulkhead or evidence of an earlier river wall or piers. Among materials that might be found, the Berger report said, are “historic ceramics, curved glass (bottle, table and furniture glass), pipes, small finds/architectural, bone, floral, shell and aboriginal (prehistoric).”

Ultimately, demolition of part of the river wall is needed to permit a clear path under West Street between the trade center and Battery Park City. One day, a commuter getting off the subway along William Street will be able to walk underground as far as the World Financial Center.

To prevent flooding during construction — the water table is only about 10 feet below street level — the passageway under West Street will be built in three phases, with barrier walls between each segment. It is the second barrier wall that will displace the bulkhead.

“No matter what, we’ve got a dam between us and the river,” said Raymond E. Sandiford, chief geotechnical engineer at the Port Authority.

While Mr. Sandiford’s enthusiasm is obvious for the passageway project, so is his admiration for the engineering feats of an earlier age. He noted that a preliminary excavation had disclosed the possibility of coming across timber structures from the early 19th century that were used in cribworks that functioned like a bulkhead.

“We may be uncovering even more of the historic waterfront,” Mr. Sandiford said, sounding hopeful that he would.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05252008/news/columnists/ground_zero_is_beckoning_112505.htm
GROUND ZERO IS BECKONING

May 25, 2008 -- WHAT hath Mike wrought?

More than is immediately apparent, but much less than he would have liked.

But all is not lost.

His mayoralty maintains for 585 more days, enough time (though barely) to forge a legacy worthy of the intelligence, energy and imagination of Michael R. Bloomberg.

As it stands, he'll be remembered for rezoning reform (huh?), the congestion-pricing debacle and a naive reliance on Albany to keep its word regarding mayoral control of the public schools.

And, yes, he's been a competent keeper of the city's books.

But they don't build monuments to accountants - and, besides, posterity is beckoning from Ground Zero.

Chaos has morphed into toxic stasis downtown.

No one seriously believes that the current schedule of construction deadlines is remotely achievable, and things are only getting worse.

Just last week, the Port Authority (the bi-state blob responsible for rebuilding on the World Trade Center site) pushed back projected completion dates for two of developer Larry Silverstein's Ground Zero office buildings - allegedly to give Merrill Lynch time to consider moving into one of them.

Here's hoping.

Much more likely, though, is that Merrill is on a subsidy-scrounging expedition; it lost billions last year, it needs desperately to recapitalize - and some believe it barely can afford its current Battery Park City digs.

Bottom line?

On Friday, Silverstein had six months longer - and likely longer than that - to complete his buildings, penalty-free, than he did on Wednesday.

Oh, and don't be looking for a 9/11 memorial dedication until well into the second term of Mayor Mike's successor.

Bloomberg can do something about this.

Yes, he's been deaf, dumb and blind on Ground Zero almost since he took office. It has essentially been his position that the heavy reconstruction lifting is properly to be done in Trenton and Albany - which technically is correct. But so what?

Mayors have no real power - absent their ability to inspire, cajole or bully.

Lawyers in Washington and Albany saved New York from the fiscal crises of the '70s - but Ed Koch's ebullient optimism convinced Gotham that the bitter medicine was worth swallowing. And so it was.

And Rudy Giuliani, through sheer force of will, saved the day two decades later.

Mike needs to focus on Ground Zero. He needs to poke and prod and holler and scold - to mount the world's bulliest pulpit and forge his legacy with, yes, intelligence, energy and imagination.

If not him, who?

If not now, when?

History looms, Mr. Mayor.

mcmanus@nypost.com

I dedicate this post to the "late" TalB, who never doubted the success of the new complex.

Trade Center to Get Tenant From China

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: June 3, 2008

A Chinese real estate company has signed a nonbinding deal to lease space in the Freedom Tower, making it the first private company to agree to occupy the 102-story skyscraper now under construction at the former World Trade Center site.

The Beijing Vantone Real Estate Company plans to build the China Center, a combination chamber of commerce and cultural center, on floors 64 through 69 of the Freedom Tower, at the southeast corner of West and Vesey Streets. Although Vantone has been close to deals at two other sites downtown in recent years, a company executive and officials from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expressed confidence that it had finally found a home.

“The China Center will be a gateway for Chinese corporations doing business in the U.S. or U.S. companies that want to understand the Chinese culture and do business there,” said Xue Ya, project director for the China Center.

The Freedom Tower, which will rise 1,776 feet when its antenna mast is included, is the first of four towers to be built at the 16-acre site. The federal and state governments have agreed to lease a total of one million square feet, although neither one has signed a formal lease yet.

“We’re working hard to get this tower built, and we’re also looking to attract world-class tenants to occupy it,” said Christopher O. Ward, the Port Authority’s chief executive. “This interest from Vantone will help us build excitement as we aggressively market this building to other prospective public- and private-sector tenants.”

The Partnership for New York City, a business policy and advocacy group, has long supported the creation of the 189,000-square-foot China Center and has agreed to invest up to $5 million in what will be a $90 million project.

“Establishing the China Center is probably the most important action we can take in support of our international trade relations for the city and the state,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the partnership. “We see this as a way of assuring that New York City businesses develop a primary relationship with the emerging economy of China. This has been an area of competition with other world cities. We want to nail it down for New York.”

More than two years ago, Vantone announced its intention to lease space at the top of 7 World Trade Center, with the support of state and city officials. But the deal unraveled when Vantone was a few days late in posting a $45 million letter of credit.

In any event, Vantone moved on to 195 Broadway, but backed out at the last minute. The company said that it had always wanted to move to the Freedom Tower, and that given the cost of the project, it was unwise to build a temporary home at 195 Broadway. Vantone’s annual rent will start at about $80 per square foot, about $30 more than what it had negotiated at 7 World Trade Center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/nyregion/03tower.html