The World Trade Center site's owner is proposing to redesign part of its over-budget transit hub to save money and ensure the nearby Sept. 11 memorial would open before the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, The Associated Press learned Thursday.
The multibillion-dollar transit hub, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, would not open until 2014, five years behind its original schedule, an official familiar with the plan told the AP.
Officials involved in the talks said Thursday that the agency proposed adding four to six columns to an underground mezzanine that Calatrava had designed as an airy concourse. The change could shave hundreds of millions of dollars from the hub, which has had budgets ranging from $2.5 billion to $3.6 billion, officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decisions had not been finalized before a report scheduled to be released next month.
The officials also said the agency pledged to finish building a tree-covered plaza and two waterfall-filled pools over the Trade Center towers' footprints by the attacks' 10-year anniversary on Sept. 11, 2011.
A plan under discussion would change the order in which certain overlapping parts of the project would be built, particularly the memorial and adjacent transit hub.
In June, Gov. David Paterson said the redevelopment of the 16-acre site was over budget and behind schedule, and he ordered the Port Authority to come up with a realistic plan to rebuild it.
Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg had urged the agency to pledge to build the memorial by 2011 after Port Authority officials said this summer that that wouldn't be possible.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the lower Manhattan site, spent the summer evaluating the budgets and construction schedules for skyscrapers, the transit hub and a memorial under construction at ground zero. The report is coming out next week.
The plan in talks is likely to delay the completion dates of three office towers planned by developer Larry Silverstein, depending on the commercial real estate market, the officials said.
Real estate experts have speculated that the office space being rebuilt at the Trade Center site may not be rentable if it comes onto the market together, particularly after the Wall Street crisis that closed two of the city's major investment banking institutions.
Officials involved in the rebuilding heard of the plans at a meeting Thursday and were reviewing them to see whether they were feasible.
A Port Authority spokeswoman said the final decisions for ground zero, including budget estimates, would be released next week.
We are working around the clock until Oct. 2 on a report that brings certainty to the schedule and budget for the whole site, including the memorial, and a path forward to completing each project as quickly as possible, Candace McAdams said.
Calatrava's office declined to comment.
