The Freedom Tower

New York City released its annual report Thursday on the health of rescue workers at the World Trade Center site and nearby residents, according to Chinaview.com says.

For the past seven years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the city has been monitoring the physical and mental health of recovery workers, first responders, and those living and working in Lower Manhattan, according to a report available on www.ny1.com.

The World Trade Center Medical Working Group reportedly reviewed more than 100 scientific articles published since 2001 and found that people continue to suffer from a range of issues.

The study’s key findings include respiratory system have persisted for 25 percent of firefighters, two to four years after 9/11.

Asthma is a common issue for many Lower Manhattan residents, as are mental health problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder. The illness was persistent two to three years after 9/11. Substance abuse and depression have not been fully examined by the report.

The report advocates for long-term federal funding for treatment and expanding research.

Along with the report, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is reportedly announcing a new 5-million-dollar campaign, which attempts to reach more people exposed to the attacks, who may not have sought treatment for 9/11-related health problems.

Steel is rising in another corner of ground zero.

Construction workers on Tuesday installed the first steel column for the Sept. 11 memorial, reports Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. The 7,700-pound column was erected by the footprint of the World Trade Center’s north tower.

The “Reflecting Absence” memorial will set two giant pools over the twin towers’ footprints. Construction began in 2006; the opening date is uncertain.

Steel has reached street level in another corner of the site for the Freedom Tower, one of five skyscrapers being built to replace the trade center.

What is ground zero today?, Theweekdaily.com asks.
“It’s a massive, rectangular pit crammed with construction crews, blasting and drilling equipment, and the skeletal beginnings of a handful of buildings. But the enterprise was supposed to be much further along by now. The centerpiece of the 16-acre site in lower Manhattan, the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, originally was scheduled to be completed in 2006, but that building just rose above ground level this past spring. Of the six office buildings planned for the area, one 52-story building across the street from the main site has been completed, but five other buildings are not even close. “At least 15 fundamental issues critical to the overall project”—including basic transportation and security needs—remain unresolved, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, said in a recent report. Officials admit that they’re chagrined at the lack of progress. “It’s time for this international embarrassment to end,” says Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

What’s taking so long?
The project has become a multibillion-dollar political football, pitting numerous agencies and interest groups against one another—each with its own agenda. Many critics say the blame begins with former New York Gov. George Pataki, who in the aftermath of 9/11 made big promises—and demanded tight design schedules—that proved wildly unrealistic. But the creation of “Pataki’s Pit,” as it has been dubbed, had no shortage of helpers. Among those involved are the Port Authority; 19 local, state, and federal agencies; two developers; 33 designers, architects, and consultants; and more than 100 building contractors. Efforts to respect the wishes of victims’ families, including their desire to retain the footprints of the original towers, have also contributed to delays. Then there are the extraordinary construction challenges posed by the site, which Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward calls “as complex as any in the world.”

What makes the project so challenging?
To begin with, its sheer size and ambition. The completed project will contain as much high-end office space as now exists in all of downtown Atlanta. The steel used to reinforce the foundations alone would stretch from New York to Washington, D.C. The site is already home to one of the densest mass transit hubs in the U.S., moving 150,000 commuters each day on subways, trains, and buses under and around ground zero; erecting a small city on top of that is a daunting engineering challenge. To further complicate matters, the perimeter of each foundation must be supported by what engineers call a “bathtub,” to hold back subterranean flow from the nearby Hudson River. There are also unique security issues, given that the project grew out of the deadliest attack ever committed on American soil.

How does security influence the design?
Political leaders, vowing “Never again,” have paid particular attention to the project’s ability to withstand a major bombing or kamikaze airplane attack. No building can be terror-proof, but experts are taking secretive precautions to ensure that the new buildings do not implode and crumble, as the World Trade Center towers did. In March, an architect from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the firm that redesigned the Freedom Tower (after the original design by two feuding architects was shelved), accompanied demolition experts to the New Mexico desert, where they detonated explosives inside a three-story model of the tower. Results of that test were not released. Security concerns persist, however. In April, a New Yorker named Mike Fleming who was rummaging through some garbage discovered confidential blueprints of the Freedom Tower that contained floor plans with details on air ducts, elevator shafts, and more. Fleming gave the blueprints to the New York Post, which did not publish them but did publicize the embarrassing breach. They “could have ended up on eBay,” Fleming says.

So when will construction be finished?
It’s anyone’s guess. The latest version of the Freedom Tower is now scheduled to be completed by 2012, but earlier predictions for virtually every phase of the site’s construction have been way off. Foundation work has begun throughout the site, including on Tower 2, which promises to be the city’s second tallest building after the Freedom Tower. Having been burned in the past, officials have stopped making firm promises. In the meantime, plans for a memorial, museum, and underground transit hub are still in doubt (see below). “We’re not going to give any phony dates or timetables at this point and then follow it up with phony ribbon-cuttings,” says New York Gov. David Paterson.

What will it all cost?
The Port Authority’s most recent estimate is $15 billion. But with construction costs in the city rising at a rate of 1 percent a month, few expect that estimate to hold. Some experts say overruns could add another $3 billion to the tab. One casualty of the cost crunch will be the enormous underground transit hub designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. His original design called for a winged roof with a large skylight. Officials say a much more modest transit hub is now likely. But after so many broken promises, the new mood of retrenchment is widely considered progress. “After seven years of Alice in Wonderland fantasy plans,” says New York Sen. Charles Schumer, “it’s refreshing to finally be presented with a no-nonsense, realistic look at the challenges to progress at ground zero.”

Rebuilding the WTC from the Ground Up

The east bathtub now descends about 85 feet below grade
Now is the phase of construction that seems invisible — at least from street level. Although more than a half-million tons of soil, rock, and debris have been excavated, with thousands more to go, the World Trade Center (WTC) site’s “east bathtub” sometimes seems like a slow-changing void instead of the bustling construction site it is.

Excavation and foundations is the work at hand — the phase that Sean Johnson calls “the least understood part of building.” Johnson is vice president of construction at Silverstein Properties, the developer of WTC Towers 2, 3, and 4. After his work building the Time Warner Center in midtown, Johnson was hired by Silverstein to help erect the equivalent of three Empire State Buildings within a four-block area.

“It’s unfortunate that no one can see everything that goes on below grade, because it’s so very intricate,” says Johnson. “What we’re doing is not mass excavation, where you just blast or hoe ram large areas of earth and rock, layer by layer. It’s more precise site excavation that has to be surveyed and carefully planned, so it takes a little bit more time.”

The east bathtub pit that now descends about 85 feet below Church Street is the result of nearly two years of heavy excavation the Port Authority that began in late 2006. The work followed a formal agreement with Silverstein that required the Port to turn over fully excavated east-bathtub sites in 2008. The turnover deadline of January 1st, 2008 for “T3” and “T4” slipped to mid-February, while the “T2” site, scheduled for a June 30th handoff, is slated for late August.

The delays say a lot about the nature of such a massive excavation project. To reach its deadlines, the Port extended work hours to 20-hour days and maximized its trucking capacity to up to 100 36-ton dump trucks daily. But removing nearly seven acres of earth as deep as 120 feet down to bedrock is a job that couldn’t be rushed, and could only occur once the slurry wall was installed to encase the bathtub that keeps out the Hudson River.

For months now, Silverstein’s crews have been working at the T3

Sean Johnson is vice president of construction at Silverstein Properties and T4 sites in the east bathtub’s southern half, between Dey and Liberty Streets. On a recent tour, Johnson explained that while the site is mostly excavated, crews still have plenty of foundation work to do. At the southernmost end, crews are dewatering a deep pool left by an ancient glacial swirl. They are carving out the gorge and filling it with concrete so that a T4 footing can be planted there. (The gorge is so deep that excavation for the original, low-rise 4 WTC, which rose to just nine stories, did not reveal it.)
Elsewhere at the T3/T4 site, Johnson says that crews are blasting for underground fuel-cell sites, as well as the trenches where the towers’ footings are installed. The footings process involves drilling several narrow holes down to various depths, inserting explosives in each, covering the holes with multiple 3,000-pound blast mats, and signaling before detonating the charge. The loose rock is then excavated and lifted out by crane, and the process repeated until the bedrock below is exposed.

The T4 site is furthest along, with concrete installation underway since July to seal the footings’ bases. They vary in size, but can be as large as 450 feet square depending on the building design. That foundation work will gain speed in the coming months, while blasting at the T3 site is expected to continue through fall 2008.

At the bathtub’s north end, Port Authority crews are in the final weeks of T2 excavation near Vesey Street. More than 240,000 tons of fill have been removed, as has the trucking ramp that once helped speed the process. Now the Port, like Silverstein’s crews in the southern half, are using cranes at the edge of the pit to lift out the material.

“It’s a lot quicker if you can drive a truck in and ramp it out,” says Johnson, pointing out that work is active in every corner of the site. “We don’t have that luxury.”

As most New Yorkers know, the clock is ticking on the WTC site’s redevelopment, and Silverstein is working with the Port to help the agency expedite construction. This means overlapping foundation and superstructure work for the east-side towers, and closely coordinating adjacent WTC projects such as infrastructure, vehicular security center, and WTC Transportation Hub construction.

With the Port Authority at work on a more realistic WTC rebuilding schedule, Johnson and the Silverstein team, including contractor Tishman Construction, are continuing east bathtub excavation with some design alterations possible. But even though the Port’s announcement won’t be made until late September, Johnson says they won’t be waiting around.

As Labor Day nears, Commercial Property News says the effort to revitalize the World Trade Center has experienced significant forward motion as well as a few hitches. In the months to come, the massive rebuilding project is likely to show signs of progress as well as facing a series of difficult choices. Public agencies and private-sector interests swiftly addressed some of the 15 major challenges detailed June 30 by Christopher Ward, the recently appointed executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Ward, who addressed the New York Building Congress about the agency’s regional capital plans, warned that the World Trade Center’s projects face major delays and cost increases. The Port Authority is due to present follow-up assessment at the end of September.

Ward immediately addressed one of the big challenges on July 1, announcing a redesign that will clip millions of dollars from the $2 billion transit hub designed by the renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Wrapping up another item on Ward’s to-do list, the Port Authority and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church struck a deal last month that will allow the construction of the World Trade Center’s vehicle security center. The church will receive $20 million to relinquish the parcel at 155 Cedar Street where its building was located before it was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

That parcel is one of three necessary to build the underground structure nicknamed the “South Bathtub,” which will contain the vehicle security center. The church will be rebuilt nearby at 130 Liberty St. Authorities checked off yet another task Ward’s list last month when the Port Authority and New York City established a joint policing and security plan for the World Trade Center.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reports, steel columns will be erected in the northeast corner of the footprint where the North Tower of the World Trade Center once stood. These pieces of steel mark the start of the creation of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Each column — standing approximately 25 feet tall and weighing nearly four tons — is a reason to be hopeful that the Memorial can finally progress with a real sense of urgency.

Back in June of this year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey released an assessment of all the construction projects planned for the World Trade Center site, and every construction timetable was thrown out the window. The Port Authority promised to take the next few months to tackle the challenges of rebuilding the site and to issue “realistic” schedules on the projects by the end of September.

The New York Daily News reports a former state correction officer who fell gravely ill after volunteering at Ground Zero has died at age 54, his family said.
Gregory Quibell of North Babylon, L.I., who was stricken with leukemia and pulmonary fibrosis after logging in hundreds of hours at Ground Zero, died Wednesday night, his family said.
“He stepped in and he did what he had to do,” said Quibell’s sister, Susan Zava. “He always told us he’d do it again without even thinking - in a heartbeat.”
“He truly died a hero,” she said. “He loved his country.”
Quibell worked at Ground Zero for 22 days after the terror attacks, shuttling firefighters to and from the World Trade Center while the smoldering debris spewed toxins into the air.
According to state Correction Department records, he logged 242 hours at the site between Sept. 12 and Nov. 22, 2001.
The 24-year veteran of the department died at Good Samaritan Hospital on Long Island, his family said.
No autopsy will be performed, but Quibell’s doctors confirmed he was sickened by toxic dust at Ground Zero, Zava said.

The New York Times says that when one architectural ambition after another was given up at ground zero for economy, security and politics, it seemed that the architect Santiago Calatrava’s vision of a luminous, cavernous World Trade Center Transportation Hub would be immune from major change.

No more.

With the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey seeking significant savings in the budget and the timetable of the trade center reconstruction, a key element of Mr. Calatrava’s design —a vast underground mezzanine free of columns — may be in jeopardy.

Estimates vary on how much the projected cost of the transportation hub currently exceeds its $2.5 billion budget, but it could be at least several hundred million dollars.

Spanning great spaces without the interruption of columns is certainly possible and, all else being equal, aesthetically desirable. But it also adds to the complexity of construction.

Two alternatives under consideration call for standard column-and-beam construction instead of the long spans and cantilevers proposed by Mr. Calatrava.

For his part, Mr. Calatrava says his design can be constructed on budget and on time, noting that there had already been revisions made to it without abandoning the columnless approach.

“It has always been my goal to deliver a beautiful, practical transportation hub for Lower Manhattan,” he said in a statement released by his office. “In its revised state, the project retains all of its fundamental beauty, and the adjustments make it an ever-more-functional and coherent facility that will serve New York well in the years to come.”

No version would eliminate the ribbed and winged roof over the hub’s arrival hall, east of Greenwich Street, which Mr. Calatrava has likened to a bird in flight. Keeping it would permit officials to assert that they had been faithful to the original architectural concept.

But it is the underground mezzanine, west of Greenwich Street, that will be the functional heart of the hub, occupying the level between the arrival hall and the PATH platforms. How it is treated depends in part on whether it is seen as a passageway through which commuters hurry or as a ceremonial gateway on the scale of the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal.

At the tightly squeezed trade center site, how the mezzanine is constructed has an effect on all the buildings around it. Directly above it would be one corner of the 9/11 memorial plaza. Adjoining it would be the lower level of Tower 3, a 71-story office tower being developed by Silverstein Properties. Running through it would be the tracks and station of the No. 1 subway.

New York Magazine and the Daily News brings us our first glimpse of what the new, reassessed costs of the World Trade Center rebuilding might be. The September 11 memorial and museum, originally priced at $610 million, is now estimated at over $1 billion — a 65 percent increase. It also won’t be ready until 2013 or 2014, well after the tenth anniversary of the attacks, as had orginally been promised.
Some aging survivors and relatives are worried they won’t live to see the day they can celebrate the opening of the memorial. But the worst part is that there’s likely to be a lot more bad news coming from the Port Authority going into the fall, as they reevaluate their schedules and budgets. This is just the beginning.

New York1 reports that city residents are being given the chance to make their mark on the World Trade Center Memorial.
On the eve of the seventh anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, two 37-foot steel beams that will be used to build the museum at the site will be put on display in Battery Park City.

New Yorkers will then have two days to write messages on them in memory of the victims of the attack.

Sport team fans of the Giants and Jets will also be able to sign the beams at their first home games.