At WTC Site, Work Progresses Even As Officials Clash
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As battle lines in the fight over the future of the World Trade Center site were drawn this week at a high-stakes summit, NY1's Josh Robin visited the construction site and filed the following exclusive progress report.Step behind the gates and Ground Zero is alive. The rumbling yet still-solemn virtual city offers both New York capitalism and national remembrance.
"You go down to that site today and you can see it's humming," says Port Authority director Christopher Ward.
There's activity at the vast memorial, now located at street level. But the memorial's opening, which was once slated to occur this August, has been pushed back to the ten-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
At the transportation center – also pushed back and over budget – crews are bending rebar and fitting steel for the corridor, which will eventually rise like wings.
But on the other side, it's still a dirt plot – the markings of a souring economy and the continuing dispute between the Port Authority, which owns the site, and developer Larry Silverstein.
On Thursday Mayor Michael Bloomberg brought them together and announced that a deal has to be reached by around June 11.
"Further delay of the World Trade Center is simply not acceptable," Bloomberg said.
But in an exclusive interview on Friday, the Port Authority's director showed no signs of budging.
"The market has fundamentally changed," Ward says. "And we need to understand that."
Ward says the Port Authority can't financially guarantee three buildings that Silverstein plans on the east side, as the developer has asked. Instead, the Port Authority is suggesting pedestals for two of the buildings, as a base for future growth.
"And when the market's back, Mr. Silverstein can go into the capital markets, get equity, get tenants and then he can build on top of them," Ward says.
Silverstein declined to comment for this story.
The shortest of his buildings, the 64-story Four World Trade Center, is climbing. And further west there are hints of what will be Greenwich Street. Now dead-ending on either side of the site, it will soon run through it, along with Fulton Street, east to west.
All the while, the construction zone is an active train yard – another complication to building.
And what of the Freedom Tower, the site's signature building? The name wasn't selling, so now it's simply known as One World Trade Center.
Eventually it's going to rise to the symbolic height of 1,776 feet in the air. But right now, it's 105 feet tall.