New WTC dates announced, Greenwich Street to be completed in 2012

 
The reconstruction of Greenwich Street, a part of the World Trade Center site that is of particular importance to real estate in Lower Manhattan, now has a target completion date — the second quarter of 2012 — but accounting for potential delays, the more likely date is the fourth quarter of that year, according to a report released today by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

“The establishment of Greenwich Street, which is meeting the needs of Lower Manhattan for the real estate industry, will be achieved,” Port Authority Executive Director Christopher Ward said at a press conference with Governor David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg this afternoon. Greenwich Street will be the access point for Towers 2, 3, and 4 at the site and for the memorial, and the No. 1 subway line will run underneath it.

All elements of the World Trade Center site are now slated for completion between 2010 and 2013, but construction could extend into 2014 if there are delays, according to the report, which includes both target completion dates and “probabilistic” dates generated by a computer program that took possible problems into account. The report also revises the estimated budget for the project, to about $1.7 billion more than the original $8.4 billion.

Developer Larry Silverstein, whose three World Trade Center Towers comprise another significant real estate project at the site with a 2012 completion date, said in a statement today that he is considering the report and whether he will need to change his construction schedule. “We are now going to study the Port Authority’s report and back-up materials so that our construction professionals can evaluate the new dates they have identified. This will allow us to gauge the impact on our part of the World Trade Center rebuilding effort,” he said.

Bloomberg stressed the importance of other downtown development — there are twice as many people living downtown today as there were on 9/11, he noted — in making the area ready for the new World Trade Center site.

“Nobody builds a building in a vacuum, you build it in a neighborhood,” Bloomberg said at this afternoon’s press conference with Paterson and Port Authority officials. “Downtown will be a phenomenal place for lots of businesses.”

Parts of the memorial at the site will be ready by September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attacks, the Port Authority report said.