News
9/11 MUSEUM: WHO'S PICKING UP THE CHECK
September 12, 2012
| The 9/11 museum didn't deliver yesterday as once scheduled. But, determined to mark the occasion publicly, the powers behind the facility's development reached an agreement that construction would pick up at an accelerated pace starting Oct. 1, with the memorial and museum foundation contributing more funds to site development. |
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| Yesterday afternoon, we spoke with Port Authority exec director Pat Foye, who says he doesn't actually know where the Sept. 11, 2012 goal came from, but the new one is "ASAP." The idea that the museum halted construction in November and is now restarting is a misperception. Every day since the project began, he says, 50 to 70 construction workers have been working on the museum and pavilion.Monday night's agreement— among the Port Authority, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum board (Mayor Bloomberg is chair and Joe Daniels is CEO)—sets parameters to keep construction moving (when's the last time that many politicians agreed on anything?). One is a moratorium on building change orders, which Pat says are both expensive and time consuming and have played a part in the museum's construction going off course. |
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| Pardon our reflection; we took this of the two reflecting pools flanking the under-construction museum from the 14th floor of 4 WTC. A source tells us the construction delay owes not to the $700M budget for the memorial and museum but to a dispute about who was obligated to pay what for infrastructure on the 16-acre site shared by the transit hub, performance center, and office/retail towers. |
