The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 236

The search for remains at Ground Zero will continue well into the future, as each additional excavation around the site has turned up additional remains:

World Trade Center rebuilding and an ongoing search for human remains have continued to unearth debris from the fallen twin towers under nearby roads and possibly under ground where families gather each year to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary, a city official said Tuesday.

Hundreds of human bones, ranging from fragments to full arm and leg bones, have been found since October and continue to be recovered daily in a massive city-led search for the remains of Sept. 11 victims missed in the cleanup right after the 2001 terrorist attacks. City officials have searched manholes, rooftops, sewer lines, a service road at ground zero and under a state highway, sometimes finding steel and debris from the destroyed towers mixed in with the remains.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the lower Manhattan site's owner, recently found material that "could be trade center debris" under a road in front of the World Financial Center, the skyscrapers west of ground zero, deputy mayor Ed Skyler said Tuesday in a memo to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The agency was digging in the area to build an underground tunnel as part of a transit hub.

In recent weeks there have been a number of construction related accidents, including one that has left a man in a coma for more than a month.

Construction costs around the City continue to rise as the real estate market is experiencing quite a bit of growth. You have a number of high profile projects underway or in the pipeline, and with the dramatic rise in material costs, everyone is looking for ways to reduce the costs without sacrificing the integrity of projects. One area where they're able to hold costs down is the unionized construction worker deals:

Developers that consider union work more reliable and of higher quality are willing to pay more for it. But the premium has grown so large that BTEA contractors--which use union labor exclusively--have seen their share of market-rate housing construction drop to 50% from 80%, Mr. Coletti estimates. Their share of affordable-housing construction, a fast-growing market, is a meager 10%, he says.

Though the commercial building boom has kept unionized contractors busy, the agreements are designed to protect them if that activity declines. "What we're trying to do is ensure that New York City remains a high-density union construction market, even during times when the market is slow," Mr. Coletti says.

Union labor is more expensive because of more generous wages and benefits, and also because work schedules vary. For example, workers from one union may show up at 7:30 in the morning but not be able to begin work until another union arrives at 9. Uniform schedules would increase productivity and cut costs; a reduction of $12 per square foot would yield savings of just under 3%.

Not only would this deal make the unions more competitive, but it enables the developers to move forward on projects.