WTC owner scraps retractable roof design
Change may trim millions from transit hub cost
NEW YORK - The World Trade Center's owner announced a major design change to its multibillion-dollar transit hub yesterday, a day after concluding that most projects at ground zero are behind schedule and overbudget.
The winged dome designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava will no longer open and close when it is built, said Christopher Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The change is expected to shave hundreds of millions of dollars from the hub's budget, which has fluctuated between $2.2 billion and $3.4 billion.
Calatrava had designed the retractable roof so that it would open each Sept. 11 at the time of the terrorist attacks that destroyed the trade center towers, shining a sliver of light down into the atrium. The architect's office declined comment yesterday.
"This is a tough choice, but it is the right choice," Ward said at a business breakfast downtown.
The transit hub is one of more than a dozen issues Ward has said were slowing the rebuilding at the 16-acre site, including the behind-schedule dismantling of a condemned ground zero tower where another is planned and the construction of several projects around a city subway line.
"The schedule and cost estimates for the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic," Ward wrote in a report to Governor David Paterson.
The memorial to the 2001 terrorist attack will not open by the 10th anniversary, Ward said Monday. Other projects on the site were scheduled to open by 2013, although the performing arts center never had a construction plan.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who chairs the foundation overseeing the Sept. 11 memorial, said yesterday that he had hoped the memorial could open sooner. Bloomberg spearheaded its fund-raising, while the Port Authority is in charge of building it.
"I've pushed the Port Authority as much as I can," the mayor said. "I'm not so sure they aren't doing a good job. I think it's easy to go and criticize them. I'm just pointing out that they set the priorities."
Ward didn't set a new schedule, but said a committee of developers and agencies would establish "clear and achievable" timelines by September. He said plans to build five office towers, the $2 billion-plus transit hub, memorial, and arts center would be completed, although "the question is when and for how much."
But Paterson said the Port Authority "will come back and alert us if [it feels] that perhaps the project is planned beyond our ability to perform."
The report ordered by Paterson - the third governor to push for speedy development of a 16-acre site where a temporary train station is the only completed project in seven years - suggested that the earliest projections just after the attacks for rebuilding ground zero were not truthful.
Ward called the estimates, issued during Governor George Pataki's administration, "emotional dates," and Paterson promised that in the future, "we will tell the truth every step of the way" about the project.
Pataki once predicted that steel for the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, the tallest skyscraper planned for the site, would be up by 2006. Steel has risen just above street level for the tower, last estimated to open in 2013.
"Did we set aggressive timetables? Absolutely," David Catalfamo, Pataki spokesman, said Monday, adding that they were based on engineers' estimates at the time. "All the same people who are there now were there then."
Ward listed 15 issues affecting the rebuilding, which he said didn't become clear until full-scale construction began on most projects over the past three years.
The transit hub, featuring Calatrava's elaborate winged dome, presents some of the greatest rebuilding obstacles because it affects office towers, the memorial, and space for an arts center that surrounds it. Completion estimates have gone from 2009 to 2013 over the past year.
Other issues include part of a city subway line that runs in the middle of several of the projects, a land deal that hasn't been completed to relocate a Greek Orthodox church near the site, and the protracted dismantling of a condemned ground zero tower where one of the skyscrapers is slated to be built, he said.
