NEW YORK | World Trade Center Memorial & Transit Hub

[NYC4Life]

Memorial & Museum



The World Trade Center (WTC) Memorial design, Reflecting Absence, will consist of two voids on the footprints of the original Twin Towers. Surrounded by a landscaped plaza filled with oak trees, each void will feature rings of cascading water falling into illuminated reflecting pools. The names of the 2,979 who perished in the September 11th attacks in New York City, Washington, DC; and Pennsylvania and the February 1993 WTC bombing will be inscribed around the edge of the memorial waterfalls.

Reflecting Absence was created by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker and selected from a design competition that drew more than 5,200 entrants from 63 nations.

Complementing the memorial, a state-of-the art museum designed by Davis Brody Bond will offer visitors an opportunity to deepen their experience at the site. Accessed through an entry pavilion designed by Snøhetta, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum will help facilitate an encounter with both the enormity of the loss and the triumph of the human spirit that are at the heart of 9/11. Visitors also will be able to view a section of the massive slurry wall that held back the Hudson River during the attacks.

Construction to build the National September 11 Memorial & Museum began in March 2006.


The National September 11 Memorial & Museum

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum, formerly known as the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, is the not-for-profit corporation that began operations in 2005 to realize the memorial quadrant at the WTC site. As owner of the memorial and museum, the Foundation is responsible for capital and annual fundraising, finalizing and maintaining the integrity of project design, programming of the memorial and museum, and ongoing operations.

To date, the foundation has raised more than $300 million towards its $350 million fundraising goal to support capital and planning costs and start an endowment. The foundation has received more than 33,800 contributions from all 50 states and 25 countries. The foundation is receiving $250 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC). To contribute to the construction of the memorial, please click here.



Transportation Hub



With its spectacular soaring design, the new World Trade Center (WTC) Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) Transportation Hub promises not only to bring architectural beauty to downtown Manhattan but also to significantly improve mass-transit connections throughout the region. Designed by celebrated architect Santiago Calatrava, the transportation hub will feature pedestrian concourses to existing and future transportation services. Construction on the project began in September 2005, and according the Port Authority, it will be operational by 2011.

Located close to the northeast corner of the WTC site at Church and Fulton Streets (between Towers 2 and 3), the transportation hub is designed to accommodate 250,000 pedestrians per day - which corresponds to projected ridership numbers for 2025. (The temporary station can accommodate up to 50,000 daily pedestrians.) The transportation hub's innovative design features retractable 150-foot-high, glass-and-steel "wings" that will allow natural light to pass through to the rail platforms 60 feet below street level.

The new WTC Transportation Hub will include

A multi-story central transit hall designed in the style of Grand Central Terminal, incorporating a lower concourse, an upper (balcony) concourse, a public waiting area, and first-class retail amenities.

Enhanced permanent PATH facilities and services incorporating three full-service extended 10-car platforms, as well as an additional platform to accommodate service needs and five tracks.

An integrated network of underground pedestrian connections from the lower and upper concourses, which will lead to adjoining New York City Transit subway stations and the proposed MTA Fulton Street Transit Center through the Dey Street Corridor. Pedestrians also will be able to access locations on and around the WTC site, including the five WTC office towers, the Memorial and Museum, Hudson River ferry terminals, the World Financial Center, PATH trains, 13 subway lines, and the proposed JFK rail link.

Retail facilities of approximately 200,000 square feet within the transit hub and the pedestrian concourses to accommodate a wide variety of restaurants and stores.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Transportation through the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), is building the 800,000-square-foot hub. The FTA has committed approximately $1.92 billion toward the more than $2 billion project, with the Port Authority investing the difference. The full-service, regional transportation hub will replace the temporary WTC PATH station currently in place. A slurry wall currently being built around the PATH station will provide the foundation for the transportation hub's below-grade levels.

In 2003, the Port Authority opened its first temporary entrance to restore service to the WTC site. In June 2007, a second temporary entrance opened on Church Street, replacing the initial entrance. This entrance will be in place until early 2008, when it in turn will be replaced by a third temporary entrance on Vesey Street near West Broadway. The shifting of the entrances allows the Port Authority to maintain consistent service to the WTC site during construction of the permanent transportation hub's main, ground-level structure.

[NYC4Life]

New York Post

MEMORIAL PLAZA WILL BE OPEN BY 10TH ANNIVERSARY

By TOM TOPOUSIS
Last updated: 9:57 am
September 26, 2008
Posted: 3:42 am
September 26, 2008

The World Trade Center's memorial plaza will be opened to the public in time for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 - despite earlier warnings that the project would miss the mark, say sources familiar with the Port Authority's latest rebuilding plans.

Port officials, who have until Oct. 2 to give Gov. Paterson a new timetable for the reconstruction project, have worked out a way to complete the 6-acre memorial plaza at street level before a transit hub beneath it is finished.

"The engineering logistics involve building a roof first, then building underneath it down to the floor," said the source. At a key section at the center of the World Trade Center site, the sprawling memorial plaza extends over the massive transit hub.

Officials had believed that delays in completing the hub meant that the opening of the memorial would also be delayed, possibly by another year to two years.

An announcement several months ago that Port officials believed they wouldn't be able to complete the memorial by the 10th anniversary angered 9/11 family members and prompted Mayor Bloomberg to demand a renewed effort to speed up work.

Bloomberg is president of the memorial foundation, which has raised $350 million toward the cost of the project. Officials at the foundation have warned that delays would significantly drive up the cost of constructing the memorial.

"There are issues and details still to be worked through. We expect a plan that will complete the Memorial by 2011 and provide real assurances to the public that this date can be met," said Lynn Rasic, a spokeswoman for the memorial foundation.

The transit hub for PATH trains from New Jersey has proven to be the most difficult project at the site, with projected costs rising more than $1 billion over the initial estimate of $2.2 billion for the bird-shaped structure designed by Santiago Calatrava.

The 2011 opening of the memorial plaza would happen while most of the World Trade Center remains under construction. Sources said visitors would enter the plaza from West Street, rather than the main entry point which will eventually be on Greenwich Street.

The hub itself will include several structural changes on the lower levels, including some columns to help support the mezzanine level, which was designed by Calatrava to be an enormous open and unobstructed subterranean plaza.

Construction of the hub could take as long as mid-2013 to complete, sources said. When it was first proposed, the opening was slated for 2009 to 2010.

While the memorial plaza will be open by 2011, the below-ground features, including a museum and galleries will not be ready by the decade anniversary.

Many of the updated details of the reconstruction effort were presented to the Port Authority's board of commissioners during a closed-door executive session yesterday morning.

While hard costs have yet to be finalized, sources say the transit hub may wind up costing $2.8 billion. That would include $1.9 billion of federal transit funding.

The transit hub is the key project at the World Trade Center because it connects beneath street level with the three office towers being built by Larry Silverstein, the memorial and the Freedom Tower.


Copyright 2008 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

[NYC4Life]

New York Observer

Agreement Near on Modestly Simplified Calatrava WTC Hub

Also: Port Authority says memorial can open by 2011

by Eliot Brown | September 25, 2008



Rendering of the non-simplified Calatrava PATH hub.


With a report due in just one week that sets new timetables for the World Trade Center redevelopment, a decision is near on one of the most complex--and controversial--elements at the site, the multibillion dollar PATH hub.

The Santiago Calatrava-designed station has been a massive headache for officials and engineers since at least early 2007, when it became clear that the design was too costly given its $2.1 billion budget and could delay multiple other elements, including the memorial, at the interconnected site given the central placement of the station. In recent months, as the Port Authority has sought to bring in new timetables, a decision on what to do with the PATH station has been at the center of discussion.

Now, multiple parties seem near to an agreement on a plan pushed by the Port Authority, which would modestly simplify the Calatrava design, adding a few columns in the giant, open underground mezzanine, but keeping the structure relatively close to its original design, according to multiple people familiar with discussions.

Up until recent days, other parties involved in the steering committee formed to make decisions prior to the report's issuance had resisted the Port Authority's plan given the complication of the design. The city, the memorial foundation and Silverstein Properties had all been pushing for a much more scaled-back design that would have retained the Calatrava oculus structure but greatly simplified the below-grade part in the name of cost and timing.

The major concern for the memorial foundation and the city had been the dates: The Port Authority said just two weeks ago that a similar design to the one now favored would not have allowed the memorial plaza to be open to the public by the 10th anniversary of the attacks in 2011, and may not have been ready until some time in 2013.

Now, with some more simplifications, the Port Authority says it can deliver the memorial for the public by 2011, but other parties involved, including the city and the memorial foundation, want to install some sort of benchmarks that the agency must meet if it is to build the modestly simplified Calatrava hub design, too. The design is considered by engineers to be highly complex, and many involved in discussions have expressed concern that more delays will crop up given the difficult building process.

The Port Authority set up the steering committee--which contains representatives from the city, the governors of New York and New Jersey, site landlord Silverstein Properties, the memorial foundation and others--in order to make decisions on more than a dozen key issues. The steering committee met Thursday morning, but did not make a final endorsement of the Port Authority's plan for the hub.


© 2008 Observer Media Group, All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

[NYC4Life]

New York Observer

$1.7 B. in Overruns at World Trade Center Site


by Eliot Brown | September 30, 2008



Joe Woolhead / Courtesy of Silverstein Properties.


As the Port Authority gears up for its big bare-all report Thursday on World Trade Center dates and costs, the price tag of the site stands to rise significantly.

According to numerous people familiar with discussions, the Port Authority is planning to announce the total amount in overruns is about $1.7 billion for the whole site. The amount presents the public sector with a large gap to fill in a time of strained budgets; however, the dollar figure is not quite as cataclysmic as early reports suggested, which put the gap at as much as $3 billion.

The overruns apply to the public sector portion of the site, which includes the Freedom Tower, the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH hub, the common infrastructure, the vehicle screening center, the memorial, and the museum (but not the three Larry Silverstein-built towers). The amount budgeted for those components is $8.4 billion, which comes from a variety of sources.

Of the $1.7 billion in overruns, about $500 million is due to excess costs at the PATH hub, which has a design considered to be extraordinarily complex. The station currently has $2.5 billion available in funds, including contingencies, most of which comes from the Federal Transit Administration.

The Freedom Tower, which is gradually rising above street level, is likely to be more than $100 million over its $2.9 billion budget. Other components of the site, including common infrastructure and security, also require hundreds of millions more in contributions.


© 2008 Observer Media Group, All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

[NYC4Life]

Keep in mind the progress report that is scheduled to be released today by the Port Authority. Early indications suggests many of the elements on the site could be built on schedule, but also indicates the transit hub may miss its current completion deadline of 2011. The memorial itself is still scheduled to be completed in time for the 10th Anniversary. However; certain parts of it may not be ready in time.

[NYC4Life]

Photo By: ZenSteelDude - Wired New York

[NYC4Life]

Full Report on the WTC Progress from the Port Authority of NY / NJ (Adobe Reader Required).

http://www.panynj.gov/pdf/WTC_Report_Oct_08.pdf

[wchua24]

that footing surely could handle a huge load.

[Nowhereman1280]

^^^ Assuming they weren't stressed, cracked, or damaged during the extreme conditions created during the collapse...

[NYC4Life]

Today at 4:45 PM - From EarthCam

[NYC4Life]

NY Daily News

Port Authority says 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero will open in 2012

BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, October 7th 2008, 1:51 AM

The World Trade Center Memorial will not be fully open to the public in time for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It won't even be finished.

Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward made that admission Tuesday at a City Council hearing on the status of the much-delayed Ground Zero rebirth.

Ward admitted the memorial plaza will open briefly for the historic observance - then be mostly shut down for construction for "about a year."
EARLIER: P.A. SAYS EXTRA $75M NEEDED TO FINISH MEMORIAL BY 9/11/11

It won't be until late in 2012, 11 years after the attacks, that visitors will at last gain full access to the heart and soul of Ground Zero.

"It would be wrong to have open access throughout the site" in the period between Sept. 11, 2011, and completion of the complex construction project, Ward said.

City Councilman Alan Gerson (D-Manhattan) pressed Ward to say when visitors could expect unimpeded access, asking, "Will any part of the site be generally open to the public to simply walk into without any prescheduling?"

Ward said that would be "unlikely."

The PA boss said the memorial plaza would open for the 10-year commemoration, which would be an epic event lasting days or weeks and drawing presidents and world leaders.

Twin waterfalls would thunder into two reflecting pools, the plaza floor would be finished and the parapets around the site would be inscribed with the names of the honored dead.

After the anniversary, below-grade construction would continue, the entrance pavilion would have to be built out, and plaza landscaping would be finalized.

Efforts would be made "to get some people onto the site," assuming safety and security issues could be addressed, Ward said. But he added, "You have to remember, it is going to be a construction site."

Joe Daniels, the president of the National September 11th Memorial & Museum, was more optimistic. "It is possible to have the entire memorial finished by the 10th anniversary, but if we can't get 100%, we'll get as close as we possibly can," Daniels said.

Meanwhile, there was a glimmer of good news as the PA said it had finally finished excavating the Church St. site of Larry Silverstein's Tower 2 and would turn it over to the developer later this week.

The agency has been paying fines of $300,000 a day since July 1, when it was supposed to hand off the site, meaning it has paid Silverstein some $29.4 million.


© Copyright 2008 NYDailyNews.com. All rights reserved.

[NYC4Life]

NY Times

A Twisted Path for a Curve-Filled Terminal

By David W. Dunlap
October 7, 2008


(Renderings: Santiago Calatrava/Port Authority of New York and New Jersey)
The latest design shows conical columns added to support the roof — a measure that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said would make the structure easier and more economical to build.


The architect Santiago Calatrava has likened his design for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub to a bird.

If so, it has been molting before our eyes.

But it is all for the best, Mr. Calatrava insisted last week, after the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey outlined the design revisions that would make it easier and faster to build the hub. The changes principally affect the enormous underground mezzanine, the completion of which bears directly on the opening of the plaza at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. “I think it is a good solution,” he said.

But as this series of renderings makes plain, it is a substantially — if subtly — different solution than the one he proposed in 2004, when the mezzanine was to have been flooded in natural light coming through glass paving blocks in the plaza above.

“It will be a lamp of hope in the middle of Lower Manhattan,” he said at the time, “creating an unbroken line of natural light from the platforms to the sky.”

Mr. Calatrava’s “lamp of hope” was anything but that to the designers of the memorial. They envisioned a grove of trees, laid out congruently with the rest of the plaza. “We have to protect the sanctity of the area around the memorial voids,'’ Joseph C. Daniels, the president and chief executive of the memorial foundation, said in 2006. The installation of skylights would have required a bare open area on the plaza, without trees and with its own distinctive paving patterns.

By early 2007, the budget for the transportation hub was evidently well out of control, with the contractor estimating that what was supposed to be a $2.2 billion project might cost as much as $3.4 billion. The Port Authority asked Mr. Calatrava to find ways to save money while salvaging as much of his distinctive design as possible.


The second design removes the structure’s skylights.


first design for the underground mezzanine of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub showed daylight flooding the space through glass paving blocks above the ribbed vaults.

Among the first elements to go — without fanfare or public announcement — were the skylights over the mezzanine. Opposition to them ran up the chain of command at the memorial foundation to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who serves as its chairman. He brought considerable weight to the bargaining table where precious square inches at ground zero are meted out among the many competing projects.

More recently, both the budgetary and scheduling cross hairs fell on the column-free expanse that Mr. Calatrava envisioned for the mezzanine, the central transitional space between the streets above and the PATH passenger platforms below. To create 150-foot clear spans, he had proposed using two enormous rigid trusses (called Vierendeel trusses), on either side of the mezzanine, to support the arched roof structure.

There was growing concern that such complex engineering would jeopardize the ability of the Port Authority to complete the mezzanine in time to turn over the rooftop to the memorial and guarantee that the plaza would be open by Sept. 11, 2011. Once again, Mayor Bloomberg seemed to lead the charge, at least publicly. “The PATH station’s design, including the underground hall, is too complicated to build and threatens to delay the memorial and the entire project,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal last month. “It must be scaled back.”

In one of the most important revisions by the authority, the trusses were eliminated in favor of more conventional steel plate girders, supported by four columns that would be bolted together rather than welded together. Christopher O. Ward, the executive director of the authority, said the change would eliminate the “substantial risk associated with the original design,” reduce the amount of steel needed by 15 percent, hasten fabrication and erection, and make it easier to construct the roof over the mezzanine. All the same, Mr. Ward said, it preserved the architect’s “iconic vision.”

Mr. Calatrava has designed the columns to taper. “Once we did the renderings, the columns — seen from a certain distance — disappeared,” he said.

It is hard, on the basis of a single rendering, to say whether the new design is a successful accommodation or an unhappy compromise. But it may be hard even for the celebrated Mr. Calatrava to make three-foot-wide columns disappear. This may be a case in modern architecture where more is more.



Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Nei!l]

Photos taken Oct 5th

[NYC4Life]

Excellent photos Neil!. The steel for the Memorial is coming along.

[NYC4Life]

Memorial Update:

By: GreenwichBoy - Wired New York

[Nei!l]

I do believe that fourth photo shows what will someday be a completed Greenwich street.

[NYC4Life]

11/15/08

By: GreenwichBoy - Wired New York

[NYC4Life]

NY Times

Where Two Towers Once Stood, a Memorial Begins to Materialize


By DAVID W. DUNLAP
November 17, 2008

Of all the right angles that have been built at ground zero in the last three years, of all the places where steel meets steel at 90 degrees, there is no more meaningful angle right now than the one poised high over the PATH tracks near Fulton Street.

It visibly defines one corner of the north pool of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and, therefore, one corner of the outline of 1 World Trade Center — a void left in the city fabric after the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Sculptors talk about how the sculpture is already in the stone and all they’re doing is chipping away at it,” said Michael Arad, the architect who won the memorial design competition in 2004, with the landscape architect Peter Walker. “This is the opposite. Our void is already there. It’s there in the sky. And we’re building around it.”

“It’s great to see the faintest contours beginning to emerge,” he said.

As is currently the practice at the trade center project, construction milestones pass quietly, with little public notice or fanfare. But they are no less important to those involved.

“To see the actual framing of the void is a major step in filling in the wound,” said Joseph C. Daniels, the president and chief executive of the memorial and museum, as he looked across ground zero on Oct. 31, toward the embryonic north pool and the pale-green steel framework that has begun to define the south pool, the site of 2 World Trade Center.

“This is the basic structure of the memorial,” Mr. Daniels said. “So it’s a big deal.”

The pools will eventually be at the bottom of two 28-foot-deep depressions in a landscaped and tree-filled plaza, marking the location of the twin towers, though not their exact outlines. (The pools will be 194 by 194 feet, or 13 feet shorter on each side than the trade center buildings.) The insides of these voids will be lined with waterfalls cascading into the pools at the bottom.

At plaza level, the names of all the victims of 9/11 and of the Feb. 26, 1993, trade center bombing will be inscribed on parapets around the perimeter of the pools.

It is not easy at first to make out the shape of the north pool’s corner against a backdrop of heavy construction, but once spotted, it is impossible to overlook. The best public viewing place is the Liberty Street pedestrian bridge, where large windows offer a commanding view of the site.

The corner of the north pool is composed chiefly of two great beams arranged perpendicularly atop a more slender steel framework. One is 52 feet long and 44 inches deep and weighs 13,104 pounds. The other is 72 feet long and 40 inches deep and weighs 42,696 pounds.

The framework below this enormous angle is set back a bit, aligning with the PATH tracks that run alongside. The uppermost corner of the north pool projects about 20 feet over the tracks.

A far larger area of the south pool, about 50 percent, will be constructed over the PATH tracks. That steel underpinning differs from the north pool and is not as instantly recognizable as part of a giant square. But steel erection goes quickly.

“The icing on the cake is the steel coming up,” said Lou Mendes, the vice president of the memorial for design and construction. “People will look at it and say, ‘Oh, my God — construction’s started.’ ”

No one wants the pace to flag, since the goal is to open the memorial plaza by Sept. 11, 2011. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the chairman of the memorial, said through a spokesman, “The progress we’ve made is heartening, but it’s as important as ever that we continue to push to ensure the target dates are met and, where possible, moved up.”

With the prospect of a long recession, questions will be raised about the feasibility of five enormous office towers around ground zero, including the two tallest in the city.

The commissioners of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spent almost two stormy hours behind closed doors on Nov. 6 talking about contracts at the site.

“The only consensus that came out,” said Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman, “is that the memorial and the transportation hub are public amenities that ought to receive a priority in terms of getting built.”

Meanwhile, the designers can relish the sight of the life-size, three-dimensional realization of plans that they have been battling over for years.

“Despite all the public negativity, great things have been accomplished, and we’re beginning to see the fruits of that work,” said Steven M. Davis of Davis Brody Bond Aedas, the architects of the museum. “The drawings and concepts are transforming into the built project, and it will continue to develop and materialize before our eyes.

“And isn’t that exciting?”


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[NYC4Life]

Memorial on 11/27/08

By: GreenwichBoy - Wired New York

[sask1982]

This is December 2008; it boggles my mind that in almost 3 years, in Sept. 2011, this project won't be done. It seems the pace is moving fairly steady as of late. 3 years should make it very close to completion, no?