The Freedom Tower

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.

NewYorkInjuryNews.com says New York City has taken the position that the City and the contractors who were in charge of the clean-up are immune to lawsuits filed by workers that claimed that they’ve contracted respiratory illnesses during the cleanup at the World Trade Center site. Leading New York fire fighter litigation attorney, Michael Block, says that New York City’s position is an insult to the men and women who got the job done during the time when we all needed them most. They claim that laws enacted during the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union give them absolute protection against liability claims, amongst other claims of immunity.That position is an insult to the men and women who got the job done during the time when we all needed them most.
Although the United States District Court assigned to this case wanted to let pre-trial proceedings get underway, the City and the contractors obtained a stay of all litigation from an appeals court until it rules on their claim that they have absolute governmental immunity.
What is most frustrating is that the City is holding captive a $1 billion insurance fund that was established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as liability protection for the city. Amazingly, the city has not settled any claims for any of the workers. Instead, this money is being used to pay attorney fees to lawyers for the city and its contractors who still deny that there might be a connection between the lung damage and the other diseases that so many of the workers are now suffering from after having been exposed to so many toxins while working at ground zero.
The City continues to talk out of two sides of its mouth: In the courtroom, it argues that the Fund was not intended to be a pile of money waiting to be distributed to the workers. In front of the media, the City spins things to create an impression that it has only the victims and the health of our citizens in mind.

WWW.shacknews.com reports that a knock off version of the Space Invaders video game in which the aliens destroy the World Trade Center towers has now caught the attention of Space Invaders developer Taito.
The Japanese company is threatening legal action over the game, which it calls an “unauthorized and impermissible misuse” of its franchise content.

The motion-controlled game in question, created by Douglas Stanley and presented at the Leipzig Games Convention, portrays a slow-moving alien attack on the Twin Towers. No matter how fast players attack the aliens, the towers inevitably fall.
Alongside the installation, pictures of George W. Bush in a flight suit and a gun-toting John Wayne are interspersed between scenes from films such as Independence Day and Die Hard, according to Kotaku. A press release for the game calls it an “articulated and critical commentary about the current war strategy.”

Developer Taito, which released the original Space Invaders in 1978, was not happy to see its famous intellectual property being used for artistic or political purposes.

“Taito is seriously considering all available options–including legal actions against the infringer and, if necessary, the Games Convention exhibitor involved,” said the company in a press release.

Meanwhile, disturbed family members of World Trade Center victims–who appear to have not played the game–were quoted in a New York Daily News piece titled “Disgrace Invaders.”

“It’s very, very distasteful,” said Zachary Fletcher, a fan of the original Space Invaders whose twin brother was killed in the attacks on September 11.

United Press International reports that steel from the World Trade Center in New York, fashioned into a cross, was escorted across New Jersey Saturday to Shanksville, Pa.
The cross is to be set up at the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department.

One of the four airplanes hijacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, crashed in Shanksville after the passengers tried to retake it. The hijackers apparently planned to fly the plane into the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

In New Jersey, hundreds of people waited on highway overpasses on I-78 for the flatbed truck carrying the cross and its escort of motorcyclists and New York Fire Department vehicles, the New Brunswick Home-News-Tribune reported.

At one overpass in western New Jersey, the crowd included firefighters and emergency workers from three nearby towns as well as civilians. Many had U.S. flags.

The cross was scheduled to be dedicated Sunday morning.