The World Trade Center Transportation Hub is near-certain to bust its $3.2 billion budget - and there's a chance it will cost more than $4.3 billion to build, the Daily News has learned.There's a 90% chance that the transit hub will run $4.4 billion, and a 10% chance that it will go over $5 billion.
That's a spike of as much as $1.1 billion from the Port Authority's "clear-eyed" estimate of only eight months ago, a review of Hub costs obtained by The News under the Freedom of Information Act reveals.
The December report by the Federal Transit Administration says it's 90% certain the Port Authority will blow a June 2014 deadline for opening the Santiago Calatrava-designed megaterminal.
The FTA study also estimated there's a 50-50 chance the Hub could cost $3.8 billion, shattering its budget by $600 million - with no funding for the extra costs.
"Project costs significantly exceed available FTA and local funding," the 61-page consultant's study said.
The original WTC, including the PATH station, was built for $1.5 billion. The PATH transit hub allows New Jersey residents to access Lower Manhattan where they work. It will be connected to the similarly overbudget and overdue Fulton Street Transit Hub, which isn't expected to be completed until 2014 at the earliest. That project was originally expected to be completed this year, but anyone looking out at the work site can see only a hole in the ground, and no sign that it will be completed anytime soon.
At the same time, a revised WTC now includes stumps where towers were to be built, and this is a travesty and sign that the Port Authority has no interest in building for the future.
Renderings of the proposal have been quietly circulating among some downtown officials and were obtained by The Post yesterday.Silverstein is the only optimist among the bunch, and he wants to rebuild office space that he knows will fill up as the economy recovers, and will encourage business to flock to Lower Manhattan. The fact is that if the stumps are built, it will mean that Ground Zero will remain a work site indefinitely as construction looms over the site for decades- rather than the much shorter timeframe if the work is started and completed in one shot.
The retail podiums would anchor as much as 600,000 square feet of shopping space that would extend below street level into every WTC building and through the massive Calatrava transit hub.
By building podiums in place of towers, PA officials expect to increase the amount of retail space from the currently planned 500,000 square feet -- roughly what existed in the World Trade Center before 9/11.
Silverstein has opposed building two podiums, and has asked the PA to act as a backstop in his bid to finance two of his three WTC towers. He recently offered to delay construction of his third tower.
PA officials have not budged, and have agreed to back him on only one tower, WTC 4, at the corner of Liberty and Greenwich streets.
The Ground Zero developer has insisted that by the time he completes two towers between 2013 and 2015, the economy will have turned around and the demand for high-end office space will have returned.
Silverstein is pushing to get office towers built, and needs a credit line extended because the credit markets are still woozy. This would be a prime opportunity for the Obama Administration to step in and provide that credit since it would provide the shovel ready project that Obama so desperately craves, and which would bolster local Democrats who support construction and rebuilding at Ground Zero.
It's time for the President to step up to the plate and make this happen. The memories of the fallen, and the City, State, and the nation deserve as much.
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