The Freedom Tower

Displaying the motto “Strength forged through sacrifice” and “Never forget,” the USS New York contains seven and a half tons of steel recovered from the World Trade Center. Christened the USS New York, it is the latest ship in the Navy’s LPD (Landing Platform Dock) 17 amphibious assault ship class, which has been designed and manufactured using Intergraph(R) marine design and data management technologies.

The LPD 17 was one of the first ship programs to design and build ships using an integrated data environment (IDE). Intergraph implemented the LPD 17 IDE by combining Intergraph products for computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) with enterprise-wide data management and life cycle support. The resulting collaborative computing environment is expected to contribute to more than $4 billion in estimated savings over the life of the ship class through decreased manufacturing rework and increased collaboration and innovation.

Intergraph’s latest marine design and engineering data management software, SmartMarine Enterprise, is used by commercial ship and offshore builders worldwide to speed design, facilitate global workshare and increase productivity.

“Intergraph has a nearly 40-year tradition of successfully providing key technologies to aid in the defense and public safety of our nation,” said Reid French, Intergraph executive vice president and COO. “We are proud to have played a role in the design and production of the USS New York, which embodies the best spirit of innovation and determination that make our country great.”

The New York, christened on March 1, 2008, is the newest of ten San Antonio-class ships developed by the LPD Avondale Alliance that was created to design, build, and maintain the configuration of the Navy’s next generation of powerful amphibious assault platforms while reducing total ownership cost for the program. Alliance partners include Intergraph, Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding and Raytheon. The last ship in the class is expected to be delivered after 2012.

EarthTimes.org reports that Mirage Networks, developer of full-cycle Network Access Control (NAC) solutions, today announced that Silverstein Properties, lessee and developer of New York City’s World Trade Center (WTC), has selected Mirage Networks’ NAC solution for its office headquarters, located at 7 World Trade Center. The 7 World Trade Center is the first building to be built, opened and leased at the site since September 11, 2001, and is one of five towers planned for the WTC site.“Mirage Networks offers the most effective NAC solution for organizations securing unmanaged endpoints,” said Sylvain Ardiet, partner and director of commercial markets for Exenet, Mirage Networks’ partner in the region. “Mirage’s full-cycle NAC capabilities assure network uptime and availability regardless of the type of devices connecting to the protected network.”

Mirage safeguards networks from threats by providing full-cycle Network Access Control. Its technology effectively enables maximum network performance by controlling network access, monitoring network behavior, isolating non-compliant endpoints, and providing self-remediation capabilities. Mirage’s network-based solution requires no agent software, deploys “virtually inline,” and works in any environment.

“Silverstein Properties’ selection of the Mirage NAC solution is an extremely strong vote of confidence,” said Greg Stock, president and CEO for Mirage Networks. “Silverstein is leading the way in revitalizing Lower Manhattan after the tragic events of 9/11. Mirage Networks is deeply honored and proud to be a part of this mission.”

About Silverstein Properties

Silverstein Properties is a Manhattan-based real estate development and investment firm that has developed, owned and managed more than twenty million square feet of office, residential and retail space. In July 2001, Silverstein completed the largest real estate transaction in New York history by acquiring the 10 million sq. ft. World Trade Center, only to see it destroyed by terrorist attacks six weeks later on September 11, 2001. Silverstein is committed to the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. On May 23, 2006, Silverstein Properties opened 7 World Trade Center, a 52-story, 1.7 million square foot office tower, at 250 Greenwich Street, just north of the World Trade Center site. 7 WTC is now almost 75% leased to a diverse group of tenants. In September, 2006, designs were unveiled for three new office towers on the WTC site – 200, 175 and 150 Greenwich Street – that will be developed by Silverstein Properties. Construction on the three towers began in February 2008. For more information, visit www.wtc.com.

About EXENET

A banking giant that announced plans to move its investiment operations to Ground Zero just a few months ago is now pulling out for a midtown location, according to various press reports.
The AP reports that “JPMorgan Chase & Co. abandoned plans to move its investment banking operations to the World Trade Center site, instead moving into the midtown skyscraper owned by Bear Stearns as part of this week’s takeover. The announcement belies claims by spokesmen that the banking giant is still committed to participating in the reconstruction of Ground Zero.

JPMorgan spokesman Joe Evangelisti said the company may still build in lower Manhattan and talks were continuing about the WTC site.

“We have every indication that JPMorgan continues to see the building downtown as an attractive location and look forward to the company’s role in rebuilding the World Trade Center site,” said Candace McAdams, spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the site’s landlord.

The bank has a 90-year lease with the Port Authority for the spot where the former Deutsche Bank building now stands. That building is being demolished after it was heavily damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks.”

A banking giant that announced plans to move its investiment operations to Ground Zero just a few months ago is now pulling out for a midtown location, according to various press reports.
The AP reports that “JPMorgan Chase & Co. abandoned plans to move its investment banking operations to the World Trade Center site, instead moving into the midtown skyscraper owned by Bear Stearns as part of this week’s takeover. The announcement belies claims by spokesmen that the banking giant is still committed to participating in the reconstruction of Ground Zero.

JPMorgan spokesman Joe Evangelisti said the company may still build in lower Manhattan and talks were continuing about the WTC site.

“We have every indication that JPMorgan continues to see the building downtown as an attractive location and look forward to the company’s role in rebuilding the World Trade Center site,” said Candace McAdams, spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the site’s landlord.

The bank has a 90-year lease with the Port Authority for the spot where the former Deutsche Bank building now stands. That building is being demolished after it was heavily damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks.”

The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI is set on April 20 to visit New York’s “Ground Zero” site where the city’s World Trade Center stood before it was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Vatican announced Monday.

The visit is part of a papal trip to the United States from April 15 through April 20, details of which the Vatican announced in a news release. President George W Bush is scheduled to greet Benedict when the pontiff arrives at Washington’s Andrews Air Force Base on April 15. The two are also set to meet at the White House the next day. Benedict will leave Washington for New York on April 18 where he is slated to address the United Nations’ General Assembly. The pontiff is set to celebrate Sunday mass at New York’s Yankee Stadium on April 20 before flying back to Rome later that day.

A website called APP.com reports that “Sal Tieri would have been 47 on March 2.It was, as it is every year, a somber day for Maureen Tieri, whose husband was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But this year, she has newfound inspiration.

Tieri, 45, of Shrewsbury, has opened a youth development center that hosts after-school programs for children and teens, ages 7 to 18. It is her way, she says, of contributing to the community that gave so much to her after her husband’s death.

“It’s given me a sense of focus and purpose,” said Tieri, president and founder of Summit Youth Development. “It’s about wanting to give back.”

Summit, which is located in a shopping center at Route 35 and Shrewsbury Avenue, has become Tieri’s home away from home. Since classes began earlier this year, she has been busy, running the facility and spending time with her two children, Austen, 11, and Jonathan, 13, who often participate in the programs themselves or just help out around the center.

About a year of planning and development went into Summit, which offers children’s fitness and homework-help programs, Tieri said. An education consultant, Judith Baer, supervises and helps children with schoolwork. A certified personal trainer and coach, Greg Carbone, keeps kids moving with strength, endurance and agility exercises on the 60-yard indoor turf field. Nutrition counseling is also available.

The center also hosts a Fun Night on Fridays, when children can come for three hours to play dodge ball and other games, as well as socialize.

“I’m not doing this for financial reasons,” Tieri, a former regional underwriting manager for AIG turned stay-at-home-mom, said of her reasons behind opening Summit. “I didn’t have to do this. I did it because I have a passion for children and the needs of kids.”

Sal Tieri, a managing director at the insurance brokerage firm of Marsh & McLennan, did not work at the World Trade Center — his office was in midtown Manhattan — but he was in the trade center the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, for a meeting. His wife didn’t know that at the time, which made it even more painful when she discovered that he had died.

After his death, Tieri was heartbroken. But tenacious and strong-willed, she decided to pursue life as a single mom, not just to her own children, but as sort of a surrogate to others’ children — by helping them stay healthy.

“I thought, “There absolutely has to be a way to get kids moving while they’re having fun,’ ” she said.

Her daily life is speckled with words of encouragement, thoughts of inspiration.

She routinely gets inspirational text messages on her Blackberry, and can recite many from memory. Her favorite: “Use what talents you possess: The woods would be very silent if the only birds who sang were those who sang best.”

On her office wall at Summit hangs a framed, autographed photograph of the U.S.A. Olympic Ice Hockey team that against all odds won the gold medal in 1980. Given to her as a gift by a friend, she displays it proudly for encouragement.

Tieri also has used her own children for inspiration and to craft programs at Summit.

Commercial Property News says “The $20 billion World Trade Center rebuilding is well on its way, as physical work on the site ramps up and the ball is passed to the design and construction industry, site executives announced at the New York Building Congress Luncheon Forum, held today at the Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park, Manhattan.

“We have accomplished a great deal since September 11, 2001, but more still has to be done,” said Richard Anderson, president of the Building Congress, who opened up the discussion.

The World Trade Center site has arrived at a pivotal and exciting moment in the rebuilding effort, as the project moves from the mostly design phase to the construction phase, pointed out Larry Silverstein, president & CEO of Silverstein Properties. Over the past year and a half, 120 architects, designers, engineers and consultants have been working in the World Trade Center Design Studio, which is now being renamed the World Trade Construction Center. “There has not been this much going on at the site since the clean-up concluded close to six years ago,” he said.

The site is beginning foundation work for Towers 3 and 4 at 175 and 150 Greenwich St., and will be constructed by Tishman Construction, which is also building the Freedom Tower, the Goldman Sachs towers and 99 Church St.

The 1,147-foot Tower 3, designed by Richard Rogers, will contain 2.5 million square feet of office space 150,000 square feet of retail, a 60-foot-tall lobby and direct access to mass transit. Tower 4, designed by Fumihiko Maki, will contain 2.3 million rentable square feet of office space, anchored by the 600,000-square-foot Port Authority lease, and 140,000 square feet of retail space. And Turner Construction will build Tower 2, designed by Norman Foster. The 1,278-foot-tall building will contain 2.8 million square feet of space, which includes office and retail.

In the past year alone, the developers have moved over 320,000 cubic yards of rock and dirt off the site, as well as 20,000 cubic yards of concrete, added Anthony Shorris, the Port Authority’s executive director. And over $2 billion in contract bids have been awarded.

The buildings are expected to reach street level approximately one year after the start of construction, with Towers 3 and 4 topping out in mid-2010 and Tower 2 following in 2011. “Can you count on the schedule? You bet,” Silverstein said, noting that disputes over insurance coverage have been settled, breaking a logjam. The insurance proceeds, as well as the $2.6 billion of Liberty Bonds assigned to the project, will assure there will be enough money to get the projects finished, he asserted.

All the buildings will contain over half a million square feet of destination retail, big box stores, little box stores, restaurants and bars, and will be developed by a joint venture of the Port Authority and Westfield America. And all buildings will be connected to the PATH system and New York City Subway system, as well as surround the centerpiece memorial.

The developers were asked how this morning’s resignation of New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who will be succeeded by lieutenant governor David Paterson effective Monday, would affect the project. “All agreements have been signed, everything has been negotiated, and it is time to get on with it,” Shorris said. “(All I can say to Patterson is) Godspeed, and let him join the process.” Silverstein added that whomever is governor would realize the implications of the site on the city, the state and the overall region.

The developers also noted that fluctuations in construction prices, which have affected projects such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Fulton Street Transit Center, have moderated, and will not affect the elements of the World Trade Center project.”

GlobeSt.com, a real estate website says the “steel for the Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site is now 70 feet in the air and should rise above street level in the next few months. Observers in the area will only see more of the same from the long-anticipated project if predictions by speakers Downtown at a New York Building Congress luncheon come true.
The Freedom Tower, also called 1 WTC, as well as Towers 2, 3 and 4 are all scheduled for completion by 2012. “Can you count on this schedule?” asked Larry Silverstein, president and CEO of Silverstein Properties which is developing the site. “You bet you can.”
The future of WTC, and the state of Downtown as a whole, will be spotlighted on May 13 at RealShare Downtown New York.
The project, which will is targeted to cost $20 billion with the inclusion of public works and transit improvements, will be the result of an “incredible construction-coordination machine,” said Anthony Shorris, executive director of the Port Authority of NY and NJ, which owns the site and is leasing it to Silverstein. Inflating construction costs are “a constant source of pressure,” he said, and “we’re wrestling with it as much as anyone else.” But Silverstein said those costs have “begun to moderate to some degree.”
The 488,000 sf of multi- and street-level retail at the project will be “dramatically higher quality” than the mall that was in the former World Trade Center before it was destroyed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Shorris asserted. That $1.5-billion aspect of the project, which is being developed by Westfield Group, will provide additional residential demand in the area.
The 75,000 to 100,000 workers at the 10.6-million-sf World Trade Center will also fuel demand for more residential, Silverstein said, pointing out that many of the office buildings on Wall Street are getting converted into apartments and condominiums. “It’s going to be manifest all over this Lower Manhattan area,” he said. “

The New York Post reports that “After more than two years of delays, federal officials have finally approved plans to decontaminate and demolish City University’s toxin-filled Fitterman Hall at Ground Zero, which has served as a grim reminder of the 9/11 terror attacks.
The US Environmental Protection Agency approved the complex plan to clear the building of asbestos, mercury, dioxin and other toxins, setting the stage for decontamination crews to begin work inside Fitterman Hall yesterday.
“We cleared the last regulatory hurdle,” said Mark Violette, a spokesman for the New York State Dormitory Authority, which is in charge of the demolition and replacement of the former academic building at 30 West Broadway.
The letter from the EPA arrived Friday, and Violette said the authority had its contractor, PAL Environmental, begin work as soon as possible. The cost of getting rid of the terror-scarred building is $16.3 million.
Violette said a crew of 30 was inside Fitterman Hall yesterday, installing decontamination units at all the building’s entrances, showers for workers and plastic sheathing over windows to keep toxins inside.
The decontamination work will take four to six months.
“As soon as the decontamination work is done, we’ll roll out the deconstruction phase. which will take another four to six months,” Violette said.
The most recent delay in the project came after a fire at the Deutsche Bank building over the summer killed two firefighters. That building, south of the World Trade Center, was also undergoing a complex decontamination and deconstruction.
“We were ready to go back in July or August, the Deutsche Bank fire happened, and reasonably, everyone stepped back,” Violette said.
FDNY spokesman Jim Long said the department was closely involved with all the recent planning to take down Fitterman Hall.
“We don’t have any concerns right now,” he said of the prospect of work going forward.”

First responders to the World Trade Center in 2001 included fireman, police officers and rescue workers. Journalists also responded to the scene in order to report on the events there, reports personal injury lawyer Paul Napoli. “There is a new report out now that journalists and photographers are also suffering from World Trade Center Illness. They were exposed to the same toxic fumes and materials believed to be responsible for a host of health problems.

First responders and construction workers who toiled in the toxic aftermath of 9/11 have been the subject of news reports, political speeches and prize-winning newspaper editorials. But little has been said about the journalists who were exposed to the same conditions.

Daryl Lang, reporting from a blog called Photo District News says that one potential victim was New York Times staff photographer Keith Meyers. “On September 11, 2001, Meyers cut short a vacation and raced to New York to help with coverage at Ground Zero. Four days later, Meyers climbed aboard a Coast Guard helicopter to shoot a series of historic pictures, the first aerial news photos of the still-burning World Trade Center site.

As he leaned out of the helicopter, Meyers could feel the rising smoke.

“It was like breathing fire, and I could feel my skin tingling and burning,” he says. A doctor later told him he probably had been exposed to chemicals as caustic as Drano.

Over the next two years, Meyers’s health deteriorated. While covering the New York City blackout in 2003, he suffered several asthma attacks. His energy level diminished, and twice he nodded off behind the wheel while waiting at tollbooths.

Now 59, Meyers suffers from serious breathing problems. Treatment keeps many of his symptoms in check, but he can no longer do his job. He went on indefinite medical leave from The Times last year.

His diagnoses are like a catalogue of the illnesses that afflict 9/11 workers: asthma, rhinitis, sinusitis, gastroesophageal reflux disorder, paradoxical voice box disorder. On top of all that is a feeling of lost identity now that he has given up photojournalism.

“Not working is harder than being sick,” he says. “And that’s the battle I’ve got to fight, because I’ve got to be sure not to do anything to make myself sicker.”

Meyers is not alone. Five other journalists have told PDN they suffer persistent health effects after working at the World Trade Center site, and a sixth has died of cancer. Two of them were unwilling to be named in this article, one for privacy reasons and another because of an ongoing lawsuit.

David Handschuh, a photographer for the New York Daily News, has been working with The New York Press Photographers Association (NYPPA) to make sure these journalists aren’t forgotten.

Handschuh, 48, broke his leg covering the World Trade Center attack and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “It’s not a New York problem. It’s a nationwide problem,” Handschuh says when discussing 9/11 health concerns, emphasizing that many out-of-town journalists were part of the coverage.

First responders and construction workers who toiled in the toxic aftermath of 9/11 have been the subject of news reports, political speeches and prize-winning newspaper editorials. But little has been said about the journalists who were exposed to the same conditions.

Handschuh and the NYPPA are advocating for legislation in New York State to extend the deadline for journalists to file 9/11-related workers compensation claims. Last year state lawmakers extended the filing deadline for rescue and recovery workers to August 14, but there is no similar extension for journalists.”