Yesterday, the Observer alerted us to the LMDC’s monthly progress report, which abashedly admits that Deutsche Bank deconstruction won’t be complete until January of next year. And to think, we’d been promised just this January it would be gone by Halloween. To wit:

That job is nearly finished, city and construction officials said Friday during a city council hearing on progress at the site. Facade removal, in addition to the remediation, should be complete by April, at which point the building’s structure can resume its disappearing act. Barring unforeseen setbacks, the building, long a bitter reminder of the area’s tragic past, will be gone by October.

“Halloween ’09, that’s the treat, right?” asked council member Alan Gerson, chair of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Committee, which held the hearing. “It’s not a trick?”

“That’s the goal,” responded Lower Manhattan Development Corporation president Richard Emil, one of a dozen people Gerson grilled about the project over the course of six hours.

And so it goes at Ground Zero.