Three companies have been awarded a $542 million contract to construct portions of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey named Skanska USA Civil Northeast, Granite Construction Northeast and Skanska USA Building as the recipients of the multimillion dollar contract yesterday, according to Globe St. The project will include the construction of the PATH train hall, four railway platforms and basic building systems like heating and cooling, plumbing and ventilation. This contract is, so far, the largest in the $3.2 billion transit center, which, according to city officials is likely to be completed in 2015.

Renderings of the utility structure planned for outside the 96th Street station of the under-construction Second Avenue subway

From the December issue: Those sticky summers languishing on the platform will be obsolete for future riders of the Second Avenue subway. Unlike most city subway stations, where air is sucked through sidewalk grates by passing trains, the new stations will be chilled by a modern ventilation system.

But much to the dismay of some Upper East Siders, that ventilation system will be housed in permanent aboveground utility structures situated at each end of the stations, many as large as midsize apartment buildings, rising up to nine stories tall.

As part of its first phase of Second Avenue subway construction, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning eight of these structures along a 34-block stretch of the Upper East Side. [more]