Port Authority Confessional: Audit Reveals Dysfunction
An early model for Frank Gehry's WTC performing arts center. (Courtesy Gehry Partners)
The long-expected audit of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is available, and—apart from the opaque bureaucratese—it reads just like the dysfunctional family memoir you might expect. In fact, the word dysfunctional is at the top of the summary letter sent to Governors Chris Christie of NJ and Andrew Cuomo of NY. To wit, the Navigant Consulting assessment concluded that the PA is “a challenged and dysfunctional organization suffering from lack of consistent leadership, a siloed underlying bureaucracy, poorly coordinated capital planning processes, insufficient cost controls, and a lack of transparent and effective oversight of the World Trade Center program.”
WTC Update: Venting
The vertical vents on the south face Maki's 4 World Trade.
It’s been several weeks since our last visit to the World Trade Center site. On our return today we were taken with the manner in which different architects handle ventilation at the site. The most obvious example are the two large vent structures that protrude from the west side of the Memorial Plaza. The concrete buildings are a necessary solution to a complicated infrastructure problem. Davis Brody Bond (now Aedas) designed a mesh mask for the concrete structures and workers were putting the finishing touches on south building today.
World Trade Weekly: Last of the Deutsche Bank
[ As the World Trade Center continues its ascent, AN stops by the massive construction site for a weekly update. ]
From behind a blue tarp shielding the remains of the Deutsche Bank building, the sound of groaning metal being bent into submission has stopped. Debris sits separated in two neat piles, one for crushed cement and the other for metal. A polished Peterbilt mack truck with an empty container made its way through gate to take away yet another load. There were no formalities, but by this time next week the last of the World Trade Center ruins will be gone.
Calatrava PATH Station Takes Flight
It’ll be at least 4 years before Santiago Calatrava’s scaled-back, over-budget World Trade Center PATH station is completed (though as our upcoming feature on Lower Manhattan showcases, everything’s been a long time coming, but it seems to have finally arrived). Still, from the start of the interminable process, we’ve had some of the flashiest renderings around to tuck us in at night. Now comes an illustrated video courtesy the Journal‘s Metropolis blog that gives us our clearest view yet of just what’s planned, as well as what Calatrava meant when he told the New Yorker a while back that he was striving for something akin to Grand Central—a truly great room where the interiors, not the exteriors, would be what truly matters. If this video is any indication, despite all the cutbacks, he’s succeeded grandly.
The Public-Private Pit
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If you build it... Well, will ya? (D-Box/Courtesy Silverstein Properties)
The most recent deal to get the final pieces of the World Trade Center site off the ground was supposed to be, or so the players involved made it seem, the final one. No more handouts, no more delays. But as our colleague Eliot Brown over at the Observer points out, this is far from the first deal that has been brokered between the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties. It is in fact the fourth, and it quite possibly has brought the public’s total investment in the private portion of the site—to say nothing of such public expenditures as the $3.2 billion (formerly $2 billion) PATH station—to possibly $2 billion. “While the ultimate public tab may never come to be that high, what is clear is that the amount of public assistance for what is now to be two private World Trade Center towers with 4 million square feet is exceptional, and far more than ever advertised or anticipated when the rebuilding plan was sold to the public,” Brown writes. Read More
Ground Zip, Zero, Zilch
A photo of the World Trade Center site from January 12 shows progress on the memorial (center), 1 WTC (top left) and Tower 4 (bottom right) but not Tower 2 or Tower 3 (top right). (WTCProgress/Flickr)
That’s how much the Port Authority owes developer Larry Silverstein, after an arbitration panel’s ruling yesterday, which Silverstein Properties announced in a press release today. The developer had been seeking monetary damages and reduced rents because, Silverstein argued, the PA had delayed in turning over the sites of Tower 2 and Tower 3, also known as 200 and 175 Greenwich, designed, respectively, by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. The arbitrators, who Silverstein tapped in July, found this not to be the case, though it is not entirely clear why as their decision has not been publicly released. Read More
Back on the Map
Two versions of the MTA subway map found on the authority's website. One represents the Cortlandt Street R/W as closed with a gray dot. In another version, it appears to be in operation. (Courtesy MTA).
It may not have a marquee name attached to it, but work on the Cortlandt Street R/W subway station is another sign of the slow but increasingly steady progress at the World Trade Center site. Closed since 9/11, the heavily damaged station has stood as an eerie reminder of that day, visible to the thousands of riders that pass by it everyday as the trains creak and twist toward Rector Street. Read More
Freedom for Pataki
George Pataki, back in his gubernatorial days, walks through the temporary PATH station. (DTE)
And here we thought they’d dropped the name Freedom Tower awhile ago, around the time Freedom Fries went out of fashion. But according to the reports seemingly everywhere today (it was front page news in both the News and the Post), now it’s official–the Port Authority has dropped the name. The man who came up with it, however, has quite a few things to say to that. According to the Observer, Pataki was none too pleased about the decision: Read More
Up, Up, & Away
Up she goes. (TOKEN FYP./Flickr)
No, we’re not talking about the progress on Tower 1, though that is impressive. We’re talking about news of the building’s new, fastest-in-the-hemisphere elevators. Call it jealousy: We’ve been having horrible problems lately at A/N HQ with the elevator. First, it was grinding and creaking. Then it was getting stuck between floors. They say it’s fixed but we’re still taking the stairs. Can we be blamed for looking longingly to the south from 21 Murray Street after this ecstatic report from tomorrow’s Times: Read More
WTC Model to NYC
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum has just announced that it has been given Minoru Yamasaki’s final presentation model (he built 108 different prototypes) of the World Trade Center Tower Project. It has been donated by the American Architectural Foundation in Washington, D.C., where the model is currently on view until January 15. Read More
Columntrava
courtesy Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
This week, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PA) and Santiago Calatrava released renderings of the scaled back World Trade Center Transportation Hub. Read More
The Real McCoy
Courtesy Snohetta
During an unrelated call earlier today, Craig Dykers, head of Snohetta’s New York office and the man behind the 9/11 memorial pavilion, divulged that he was rather disappointed with the renderings that the city released last week to widespread fanfare. It’s bad enough that the design has been scaled back–like everything else on the site–but Dykers said that officials also went behind the firm’s back to have the renderings done. He was then kind enough to send along some model shots he greatly prefers. Check ‘em out after the jump.
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