The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 9

Westfield Group, one of the largest mall operators in the United States, will be coming back to Ground Zero to operate retail space there.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is expected to approve a deal Tuesday that would bring an international shopping center operator back to ground zero to help build retail space in the buildings and tunnels under construction on the 16-acre site.

Under the terms of the deal, the operator, the Westfield Group, would buy a 50 percent stake in about 490,000 square feet of retail development and invest more than $600 million in creating the shopping areas, said government officials and real estate executives familiar with the agreement.

Stores would be located at street level and above in three planned office towers along Church Street, as well as in the two-story concourses linking the site with subway lines and the PATH commuter rail station.

This good news, however, doesn't hide the fact that the troubled Deutsche Bank building continues to loom over development at Ground Zero. The deconstruction of the heavily damaged building appears to be further delayed according to the New York Sun because a regularly scheduled meeting that would have discussed contracts relating to the site was cancelled.

UPDATE:
USA Today is now reporting that the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero will not be completed until 2011, 10 years after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. That's pushing the completion of the memorial back two years and is said to reflect more realistic construction schedules.

Well, what it suggests is that construction on Ground Zero is being affected by the Deutsche Bank mess, and also watch for construction costs to spiral on the memorial despite attempts to cap costs, which had spiralled to more than $1 billion before designers went back and looked for ways to reduce the costs for the project.