By Julie Shapiro
Pat Moore didn’t need the Port Authority to tell her that work at the World Trade Center site is going to take longer than anyone predicted. She can see and hear the progress — or lack of progress — from the windows of her apartment at 125 Cedar St., which overlook the site.
So when Moore heard this week that the Port dumped the timeline for the project, calling it unrealistic, she had just three words for them:
“Surprise, surprise, surprise,” Moore said in the style of Gomer Pyle. “I never expected them to meet the deadlines they set.”
Moore and other community activists responded with everything from resignation to hope this week when Christopher Ward, the Port’s recently appointed executive director, said the W.T.C. timeline set and adjusted by two previous governors was based on emotions, not facts.
“This is the first time we’ve had candor in the last seven years,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, chairperson of Community Board 1’s W.T.C. Redevelopment Committee. “I think this report is actually optimistic. It sheds light on the situation. It’s really a good step forward.”
But at the same time, Hughes and Julie Menin, chairperson of C.B. 1, said the Port Authority’s inability to meet deadlines means yet another set of broken promises to the community.
“It seemed like people were more interested in holding press conferences touting that Lower Manhattan is being rebuilt better and stronger than ever than in setting realistic deadlines,” Menin said. “What the public deserves is the truth and realistic deadlines, not this kind of rah-rah rebuilding effort that is not realistic.”
Ward released a 36-page update on the World Trade Center site Monday. Gov. David Paterson had asked Ward for a revised schedule and budget for the project earlier in June.
Instead, Ward’s update lists 15 issues that must be resolved before he will have answers. He promised to give a new timeline by the end of September.
“It’s not a question of if [the World Trade Center projects] will be built, but rather when and how much it will cost,” Ward told the Port Authority’s board Monday. “The planning and politics are over. It’s a construction job now.”
But the World Trade Center site is a construction job like no other, a 16-acre puzzle where the pieces overlap and sometimes conflict. And despite Ward’s words, the planning — of the design, of the chain of command — is far from over.
Plenty of uncertainties remain, including the site’s police and security plans, which have not been developed because no one knows who will have jurisdiction over the site. A map of the site shows that the security center has not been located. Other pieces that are up in the air include the redesign of Tower 3 to accommodate Merrill Lynch and the land rights negotiation between St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and Port Authority.
Ward took the first step toward resolving part of one of the 15 uncertainties on the site Tuesday when he announced that the “wings” of Santiago Calatrava’s PATH Transportation Hub will no longer open and close.
“That allows us to build it sooner and also will save us money,” Ward said, although he does not know how much.
The soaring white wings would have come too close to Silverstein Properties’ towers if they opened, Ward said. Other changes could be on the way for the hub, including reuse of the current temporary belowground PATH hall.
When asked why it has taken so long to start redesigning a train station whose cost has reportedly risen by half, Ward bristled.
“Making sure we build it and build it right is not taking too long,” he said.
Anthony Shorris, Ward’s predecessor, acknowledged last September that the station’s costs had risen by an unspecified amount and promised a new plan and cost estimate would be ready in a few months.
Another change Ward announced this week is that the Memorial Plaza and 9/11 Museum will not be finished for the 10th anniversary of the attacks, as had been planned. Ward expects part of the plaza to open for a gathering on the day of the anniversary, hopefully including the reflecting pools in the tower footprints.
Joe Daniels, president of the Memorial Museum, was more optimistic about making the 10th anniversary deadline.
“While aggressive, we believe it is both possible and essential that the memorial be open to the public by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,” Daniels said in a statement. He wants to see the memorial open permanently starting on the 10th anniversary.
Sally Regenhard, whose son was killed in the attacks, said she was disappointed the memorial will not be open on time, but she is more concerned about the design and structure of the memorial and museum. Regenhard and her organization, the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, have long contended that sticking the museum underground is dangerous. Building the museum above ground would save time and money, she said.
Regenhard did not see the Port Authority’s recent openness as an indication of a more hopeful future.
“They are masters of deceit,” she said. “They are masters of spin doctoring…. They are above the law. They don’t answer to anyone…. We have the wrong people there implementing the wrong plan.”
One reason for everyone’s lack of surprise about the Port Authority’s announcement is that Avi Schick, chairperson of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said many of the same things last year. In September, Downtown Express reported Schick said all of the Downtown deadlines were based on P.R. statements, not engineering reports, and he said a realistic timetable was coming soon. At that time, the Port and Metropolitan Transportation Authority insisted their transit hubs would open in 2009.
Another project that has fallen far behind schedule is the Vehicle Security Center. During a speech to the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association Tuesday morning, Ward called the Vehicle Security Center “the heart of the site.” But the center still has to be designed, a tricky process both because of the technology involved and the fact that the land above the center must support a church and a park.
Also, work on the center cannot proceed until 130 Liberty St., the former Deutsche Bank building damaged on 9/11, is demolished. The L.M.D.C. has not yet given up trying to get the building down by the end of the year, but Ward’s report states that the first half of 2009 is a more likely deadline.
The W.T.C. performing arts center often seems to round out the bottom of the Port Authority’s list of priorities — its construction cannot start until the Calatrava station opens sometime next decade — but Ward’s new plan offers a glimmer of hope for PAC supporters. The Port Authority is considering moving the temporary PATH entrance, which opened earlier this year, out of the way of the PAC and other projects.
In addition to getting the PAC moving, demolishing the PATH entrance on Vesey St. would speed up work on the memorial, Freedom Tower, Greenwich St. and Towers 2, 3 and 4. But first the Port would have to find somewhere to put another temporary PATH entrance.
To streamline decision-making on these and other issues, Ward suggested setting up a steering committee for the site with representatives from the Port Authority, the mayor’s office, the L.M.D.C., the M.T.A., Silverstein Properties and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum Foundation.
While Ward told the Port Authority board Monday that this command structure “places the Port Authority at the top of the decision-making hierarchy,” he later said the steering committee would be more about consensus. The committee will not vote on issues of disagreement and the Port Authority will not have a final say, Ward told reporters.
“The steering committee will make the decision,” he said without being more specific.
Robert Lieber, deputy mayor for economic development, told Downtown Express the steering committee is a “good approach” and “I think it’s important the city have a role.”
Lieber was not concerned that the city’s place at the table was too limited. He agreed the city would take some ownership of the site when the new streets are opened, but he said that was not a significant factor in terms of leverage with the Port.
He said the city feels the “memorial and commercial uses” are the top priorities, implying the Calatrava station is less important.
September is enough time to resolve the 15 issues, Lieber said. “Some of them contradict each other so you have to resolve them in order to develop the site,” he said.
Because of these contradictions and the interdependency of the work, the Port Authority may have to halt some projects so that others can move forward.
The Port Authority report’s language is general — referring to “the best interest of the overall project” — but some suspect that Silverstein Properties will be the major player who the Port will ask to make a sacrifice. Silverstein is building Towers 2, 3 and 4, which will contain office space and retail run by The Westfield Group.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver advocated for Silverstein Tuesday morning before Ward’s speech to the D-L.M.A.
“Larry Silverstein is moving ahead as fast as he gets the property,” Silver told Downtown Express. “We should stay out of his way and let him build.”
In contrast to Ward’s refusal to set deadlines, Larry Silverstein released a statement this week proclaiming his towers “fully designed and on schedule” to be completed by the end of 2012.
The Port Authority report also contained veiled criticism of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center.
“There is a great need for a stronger Site Logistics authority that has command and control over the many moving parts of the site (L.M.C.C.C.’s current roll),” the report states. A review of L.M.C.C.C. is underway and the Port Authority will make recommendations soon.
By itself, the report would have read like it was a call to marginalize the construction center, but Ward also committed millions to the state-city agency. At last week’s L.M.D.C. meeting, Schick said the Port Authority agreed within 10 days to write a check of $5 million to fund the L.M.C.C.C. The funds will cover all of the money the Port Authority owed the agency for last year and almost all the money they are obligated to pay this year. At a previous L.M.D.C. meeting, the Port Authority had not even signed an agreement acknowledging these obligations, so their recent commitment of funds could be a sign of support.
Liz Berger, head of the Downtown Alliance, said this week that she was happy to hear Ward’s update, even if it didn’t paint a rosy picture.
“We’re glad Chris is telling it like it is,” Berger said. “It’s tough news, but it’s important to know.”
Berger would not say which W.T.C. projects are most important and would not comment on some of the Port Authority’s specific suggestions.
Speaker Silver thinks the top priority for the site should be the Fulton St. Transit Center just to the east, which will have underground connections to the PATH hub. The M.T.A. is redesigning the Fulton St. station, which is over budget by several hundred million dollars.
The private projects on the site should be all set in terms of funding, but “It’s the memorial and the PATH station that now require hard choices,” Silver said.
Menin, chairperson of C.B. 1, said the priorities, in order, are the memorial and museum, performing arts center and retail.
“Whether the office buildings open one year or another — that’s a slightly different subject,” she said.
Menin also wants the community board to have a seat on the advisory panel that will oversee the site.
Menin and Hughes both contrasted the Port Authority’s lack of accountability to private corporations’ accountability to shareholders.
In the private sector, a developer who missed a building deadline by five years would be out of a job, Menin said. While shareholders might forgive delays of weeks or months, a company that consistently fell years behind schedule would lose money.
“The public sector needs to take a lesson in accountability and transparency from the private sector,” Menin said.
Moore, whose apartment overlooks ground zero, said she was more concerned about the impact of the construction on quality of life than she was about the missed deadlines. She would rather see the Port set more realistic deadlines than work 21 hours a day to keep to unrealistic timetables, as they did this winter while rushing to finish excavating the sites for Towers 3 and 4.
“The rest of the country and the world can’t understand why it’s taking so long, but they don’t live here,” Moore said. “We do want it developed. We don’t want a 16-acre hole in the ground. But the reality is that we have to somehow balance the need to get it completed with the fact that many people now live around the site…and they need time to sleep.”
While Ward acknowledged that reports of the delays and cost overruns at the World Trade Center have struck a downtrodden note, he unsurprisingly kept an optimistic outlook at the Tuesday breakfast meeting.
“Will it take time?” he asked. “Yes. Will we build it? Absolutely.”
With additional reporting by Josh Rogers
