World Trade Center memorial photo from July 2011 (credit: Port Authority)
Drew Warshaw, chief of staff of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and the man that Chris Ward bestowed the majority of the credit upon for the progress at the World Trade Center memorial, said the key to finishing the memorial in time for the 10-year anniversary was building the site’s PATH Station backwards.
In an interview with New York Magazine, Warshaw said engineers concluded in 2008 that the only way to complete the memorial — which had been intended to sit atop the PATH station — in time was to build the roof of the station first, rather than build with the traditional ground-up method. He said, with safety concerns in mind, he expects about 1,500 people to visit the site per hour.
Outside the memorial, Warshaw said that 1 WTC has reached 78 stories, and should top out by the end of March 2012, setting it up for a late 2013 opening date. The site will also be less windy than the original one thanks to the return of the street grid to the area. Whereas the previous site was a superblock, the new site will have Greenwich and Fulton streets cutting through it. He also detailed the plans for the transit hub, which will connect 11 subways, the PATH, Battery Park City, the World Financial Center and the Fulton Transit Center on Broadway, and addressed the noise lawsuit filed by the Millennium Hotel lawsuit, which he deemed inevitable considering the amount of ongoing construction at the site. [NY Mag]