Quote from an article in the Downtown Express
http://downtownexpress.com/de_259/postreports.html
Port reports on World Trade Center progress
By Julie Shapiro
APRIL 19 - 26, 2008
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.