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A year after ground zero stalemate, steel rising at WTC site
By AMY WESTFELDT
April 26, 2007T
NEW YORK -- Cranes were idle. A cornerstone for the skyscraper to replace the World Trade Center sat in the dirt, packed in plywood. A nasty, headline-trading battle with charges of greed and inefficiency swirled around the rebuilding of ground zero.
But
a year ago Thursday, an agreement was hammered out that ended a months-long stalemate about how to divide power and money to rebuild. And since then, the hole in the middle of downtown has finally turned into a construction site.
"The gratifying thing, of course, is the visual. And the visual now is really there," said David Childs, architect of the Freedom Tower, the tallest of five skyscrapers being built to replace the twin towers. "The believability factor now is real."
The visuals at the trade center site _ where rebuilding of most projects starts 70 feet below ground _ include several steel columns for Childs' Freedom Tower now peeking above street level. More than 4,000 cubic yards of concrete has been poured to make up the 1,776-foot tower's foundation. Over 200 workers are on the site, building a transit hub, the 9/11 memorial and digging up land where three more office towers will be built.
A year ago, a handful of workers populated the site, while the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey battled with trade center developer Larry Silverstein over the lease he signed weeks before the towers were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Silverstein had the right to build five office towers to replace the destroyed complex. The Port Authority, which owned the buildings, and state and city politicians said he couldn't afford to build them all quickly enough. Silverstein was called greedy for haggling over details of the lease; state officials were labeled hapless bureaucrats most responsible for delays.
The new deal divided billions of dollars in insurance proceeds and bonds to rebuild, as well as responsibility for the five towers.
The Port Authority took over building and leasing the Freedom Tower and another skyscraper and said it would excavate land for Silverstein to build three other towers on the site.
A day later, heavy equipment rolled in to work on the Freedom Tower, which had several false starts. A cornerstone was first laid in 2004, then encased in plywood and taken off the site after the tower was moved and redesigned.
"A year ago, that thing was nothing but a political statement, a symbol of government frustration and inaction," said Port Authority executive director Anthony Shorris, pointing at the Freedom Tower this week.
Today, "the politics are over. Now it's about business."
That's also true at Silverstein's offices over ground zero, where architects for his three towers work together on one floor, looking at a digital clock ticking off the days, minutes and seconds until the next planning deadline.
More detailed drawings were completed this month; they include ideas like sleek fins on the outside of Norman Foster's tower to control the light, a black marble wall inside Fumihiko Maki's tower and a huge, airy lobby with a video installation inside Richard Rogers' tower.
Janno Lieber, who heads the trade center project for Silverstein, said his team will be ready to build by January, when the Port Authority must deliver buildable land at ground zero or pay penalties of $300,000 a day.
"The agreement struck a year ago has worked out very, very well. All of the stakeholders are still pulling in the same direction," Lieber said. "Before that, we'd been waiting for four-plus years."
The builders are still in the middle of litigation with several insurers who haven't said whether they would honor the new deal by paying Silverstein and the Port Authority their shares. Lieber said so far, the talks haven't kept them from meeting schedules.
The complete rebuilding of ground zero is still years away; the Freedom Tower is scheduled to open in 2011, the memorial and a transit hub two years earlier, and the other office buildings are to be finished by 2013. A fifth tower and a performing arts center are not yet designed.
At the site, workers are performing "the most elegant dance in construction" to get out of each other's way and coordinate many projects in a small space, said Shorris. A search for human remains at the site has diverted construction traffic at times; a staircase that is the last above-ground remnant of the complex is surrounded by bulldozers and dirt piles while officials figure out what to do with it.
Those unforeseen problems will always be unique to the site of the nation's worst terrorist attack, and can't be helped, said Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia.
"I completely recognize that in our construction process ... you're going to have to take a second seat to issues that arise. We're sensitive to that," he said. "It's both unrealistic and inappropriate to ignore even for one day what happened at that site."
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