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Agency wants new World Trade plan

The World Trade Center’s owner on Monday proposed scrapping the schedule and budget for the rebuilding of the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying nearly every project is delayed and over budget and that previous estimates “are not realistic.”

Christopher Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, didn’t set new goals for the multibillion-dollar redevelopment.

He proposed that a committee of developers and government agencies involved in the project meet to set new, “clear and achievable timelines” by the end of September.

“The schedule and cost estimates of the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic,” Ward wrote on Monday to New York Governor David Paterson, who asked earlier last month for a progress report on the site.

Under current plans, the earliest opening date for any project at the site — the memorial — is 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attack. The Freedom Tower and other skyscrapers planned for “ground zero” aren’t expected to open until 2013 at the earliest.

The deadlines for building the office towers, memorial and museum, a transit hub and a performing arts center have been changing almost since planning began. At one point, the plan called for the 542.3m Freedom Tower to be ready for occupancy this year.

Paterson demanded a quicker pace for a project that has been slowed by political wrangling, passionate arguments about the site’s symbolism, rising construction costs and the logistics of building so much at once on such a small space.

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.

A transit hub, featuring a winged dome designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, presents some of the greatest rebuilding obstacles because it affects office towers, the memorial and space for an arts center that surrounds it.

Once budgeted at US$2.2 billion, estimates have soared as high as US$3.4 billion.

Ward said the Port Authority was working on several options to cut costs, including redesigning the dome so that its roof does not open and close as once designed.

Other issues include part of a city subway line that runs in the middle of several of the projects, and the protracted dismantling of a condemned tower nearby.

“To forecast completion dates and costs before these fundamental issues have been resolved — and before engineering and construction professionals have validated the schedule and cost impacts of those decisions — would only create a new set of commitments and expectations that are unrealistic,” Ward said.
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