Former New York Gov. David Paterson, February 8th, 2012
WOR talks to two New York officials, past and present, about the prickly political challenges and ever lengthening construction delays that led to the World Trade Center cost increases.
What was meant to show resilience against terrorism has turned into a historic failure that must be reversed; a common sentiment amongst many New York Politicians.
Nearly eleven years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed its Twin Towers, One World Trade Center is still under construction at the Ground Zero site.
The signature skyscraper, being built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, has faced clashes over financing and designing that has driven up costs by billions of dollars. Auditors say the project cost is up $3.8 billion since 2008, when it was estimated at $11 billion.
Auditors have called the Port Authority a “challenged and dysfunctional organization suffering from a lack of consistent leadership.”
Scott Rechler, vice chairman of the Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners, said costs went up after the Port Authority stepped in to manage delayed projects that were being built by third parties, including the 9/11 memorial and a performing arts center. The number one priority for all parties involved was opening the memorial by its 10-year anniversary, something Rechler says turned out very well.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg chairs the World Trade Center Foundation, which raises money for the museum and the memorial. He tells WOR that they are on time and on budget, but he doesn’t negate the fact that government bureaucracy is part of the problem.
Bloomberg goes on to list the contributing factors that prolonged the development of the World Trade Center including: lawsuits involving insurance companies, designing a building consistent with real world safety requirements, disagreements with a church, 4-5 different governors from New Jersey and New York, an economic recession, and taking into consideration the interests of victim’s families and other parties. Not to mention the underground museum that has halted work and instigated a divergence of financing between the foundation and the Port Authority.
“The Port Authority has come back saying we owe them some money we think we’re on firm ground,” Bloomberg explains. “We have written documentation that they agreed to do those things at their costs but in fact we think they owe us money because they have been late on delivering us promises.”
Bloomberg says the documents are so complex that he’s not sure what the truce of the matter is. Regardless, the museum and memorial are only two parts of the nine prong redevelopment. The World Trade Center plan calls for five office towers, a 9/11 museum, the 9/11 memorial, a large subway station and a performing arts center.
Former New York governor David Paterson says the reconstruction has been beyond the capacity of the builders, architects and construction managers.
“I don’t want to assess blame but the results are horrific. Instead of putting some buildings right back up to show resilience against terrorism, what we chose instead was to construct the most elaborate system that is so co-dependent…it’s almost a three dimensional jig saw puzzle.”
Paterson explains every piece of project is dependent on the other. Condé Nast can’t move equipment into the site because of a temporary train station, so a temporary loading dock will have to be build. The temporary train station cannot be dismantled until the huge transportation hub is completed, scheduled to be done in March of 2015. Even after the temporary train station is disassembled the Port Authority can’t build an underground road from Greenwich Street into One World Trade Center until a foundation is installed for the performing arts center (scheduled to be built where the train station stands now).
“When you put all of this together it’s just a mammoth collapse of policy impinging on the concept of rebuilding the World Trade Center and showing America’s greatness, rather we’re seeing the flaws of our society,” Paterson added.
There was no way to calculate all the unexpected, unfortunate and intervening causes that made this project so expensive. These architects were predicting a price for a site that nobody has ever done before. And, the costs for the overall contruction has largely been borne by the Port Authority, which is funded by both airports and toll payers of the region’s bridges and tunnels. The Port Authority has been forced to divert resources away from transportation projects that have been long been planned, including redevelopment of aging and crowded airport terminals.
Navigant Consulting, Inc. included in its audit, “[The Port Authority is] a siloed underlying bureaucracy, with poorly coordinated capital planning processes, insufficient cost controls, and a lack of transparent and effective oversight of the World Trade Center program that has obscured full awareness of billions of dollars in exposure to the Port Authority.”
Auditors say the project has reached an “out of control” $14.8 billion. By comparison, other-high profile buildings around the world have been less expensive. The world’s tallest tower in Dubai has put its cost at $1.5 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The authority’s new director, Patrick Foye, said Tuesday the agency was taking the findings seriously and would begin an overhaul of the agency’s structure. Administrators were already considering one of the auditors’ recommendations, putting capital spending decisions in the hands of one person, he said.
“In the end it’s really kind of embarrassing that there wasn’t even building on the site for 6 ½ years. What we should have done is drawn together quick plans, not cheap, but workable sensible and achievable goals that we could put up by 2005 a series of structures that would let terrorists and anybody know that wanted to attack this country that we are resilient,” Paterson said.
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