The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. expects abatement work on the Deutsche Bank building to resume on Thurs., April 23.
The work was suspended after an electrical fire April 2 in a temporary power shed outside the building. Contractor Bovis Lend Lease had to do a complete review of the building’s electrics before work could restart.
The Dept. of Buildings temporarily lifted the stop-work order last Saturday and on Monday the workers began prepping the building for abatement to resume. But on Tuesday, the D.O.B. found that Bovis’s documents were missing some information and they suspended work again.
Mike Murphy, spokesperson for the L.M.D.C., said Wednesday afternoon that the stop-work order would be lifted the next day.
If that happens, it will mean the electrical fire caused a three-week delay for the troubled project, which was the site of a more serious fire in August 2007 that killed two firefighters.
The L.M.D.C. has not recently updated its schedule for abating the building and then demolishing it, but it looks like demolition could begin around the middle of June, provided the L.M.D.C. gets its plan approved by government regulators. That means the building damaged on 9/11 could finally be down around the end of November or early December. The building is cleaned down through the fourth floor and the facade has been removed down to the 10th floor.
At the time of the recent fire, Bovis was routing power for the building through two temporary sheds, and one of them shorted out. Bovis was using the sheds so they could turn off power to the building’s switch room and decontaminate it.
— Julie Shapiro
