By Julie Shapiro
Far below street level, towering white arches form a tunnel that will one day shepherd commuters beneath the World Trade Center site.
The arches mark a passage that will connect Santiago Calatrava’s W.T.C. PATH station to the World Financial Center. They are the first piece of his design to take shape inside the World Trade Center site, and they recall the white wings he designed to rise above the PATH station.
The steady progression of arches crossing the site from West St. toward Church St. is just one project of many on the 16-acres of construction. Nearly a month after the Port Authority announced that the new World Trade Center is millions over budget and years behind schedule, work pushes forward on many, but not all of the layered and interconnected projects that will eventually deliver five skyscrapers, a train station,a memorial, a museum and a performing arts center.
On Monday, the bathtub for Towers 3 and 4 was filled with Silverstein’s construction equipment, but while some work was going on at Tower 4, very little was happening at Tower 3. An official said he had seen almost no progress at Tower 3 over the past several months. Silverstein received a six-month extension on Tower 3 to redesign it for Merrill Lynch, but those talks reportedly fell through earlier this month. A Silverstein spokesperson declined to comment.
The biggest rush is in the northeast corner of the site, where Tower 2 will rise. The Port Authority is excavating that site and was supposed to turn it over to Silverstein Properties by July 1, but the Port missed the deadline. For 16 to 20 hours a day, giant jackhammers called “hoe rams” pound into the bedrock, breaking it into smaller chunks that bulldozers cart away, clearing space for the foundation of the tower.
The Port is paying Silverstein $300,000 for each day the site is late. By the end of July, the Port will owe Silverstein Properties $9.3 million. If the delay stretches to the end of August, that number will double to $18.6 million.
Steve Coleman, Port Authority spokesperson, said this week that the Port plans to turn the site over sometime in August. Along with the Tower 2 site, the Port also has to finish excavating a wedge of land called the Tower 4 offset, which abuts the No. 1 subway box.
The Port also missed the deadline for turning the site for Towers 3 and 4 over to Silverstein at the end of last year and wound up paying Silverstein $14.4 million for the delay.
One of the Port’s biggest feats this week was to move the Survivors’ Staircase from its perch along Vesey St. down into the southwest bathtub. The staircase will eventually be incorporated into the 9/11 museum because it served as an escape route for some office workers on 9/11. The Port had to move the staircase because it was blocking the gate at Greenwich and Vesey Sts. that trucks will use to bring materials to the Freedom Tower. The stairs also moved earlier this year, again to clear the way for construction.
The staircase now sits beneath what will become the memorial, filling much of the western portion of the site. Wooden markers trace the original footprints of the Twin Towers, with an American flag planted at one edge of Tower 1. When the memorial is complete, reflecting pools will fill the footprints.
To the north of the memorial, steel beams for the Freedom Tower are rising, marking the perimeter of what will be the tallest building in the city, at 1,776 feet. Two tower cranes work from the center of the building, lifting forms into place for concrete pouring. One worker recently perched near the outside of the concrete core, sawed a piece of wood and then lit a cigarette. Smoking on construction sites has come under increased scrutiny since the fatal fire at the former Deutsche Bank building last August, but the Port Authority is not subject to city codes.
In addition to the two tower cranes at the Freedom Tower, 23 other cranes work on the site. As Towers 2, 3 and 4 take shape, more tall tower cranes will arrive.
Over the past several months, the boundary of the construction site has extended west into Church St., encompassing the former temporary PATH station, which is being demolished. The old PATH escalators are now a tangle of steel, and bulldozers plow through the wreckage to scoop the pieces into a dumpster. The temporary station had to be demolished to make way for the final Calatrava station.
Remarkably the thousands of workers have thus far been able to avoid a major accident. But safety remains on their minds. On Downtown Express’s recent visit to the site this week, one young worker mistook a reporter for a safety inspector. The worker said he wanted to sign up for a fall prevention course.
With reporting by Josh Rogers
