Memorial Mess
Escalating Costs, Budget Cap Could Force Design Changes;Dwarfing Other Tributes
By ALEX FRANGOSMay 5, 2006;
Soaring cost estimates for the World Trade Center memorial -- already expected to be one of the most expensive architectural tributes ever built -- coupled with uncertainties about funding may force planners to return to the drawing board to scale back some of the pricier portions of the massive project.
The latest cost study puts the price tag at $1 billion for the design as currently envisioned -- plus an estimated $40 million to $60 million a year to operate and serve the seven million visitors expected when it opens and provide security for the site.
With the source of such funding still in doubt, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with New York Gov. George E. Pataki and New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine, yesterday agreed to cap building expenses at no more than $500 million. "There's just not an unlimited amount of money that we can spend on a memorial," Mr. Bloomberg says. "The two governors and I think that this is the amount and let's get on with it."
Those new financial realities will likely force the memorial's architects, including lead designer Michael Arad and associate architects Davis Brody Bond, to consider major design changes, including moving some of the memorial's signature below-ground functions above ground.
Even at $500 million, the memorial would dwarf the costs of similar tributes around the world. The World War II memorial, completed in 2004 on the National Mall in Washington, cost $182 million, including an endowment to pay its continuing operation. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe that opened in Berlin in 2005 had a price tag of $35 million. The Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, scheduled to be completed this fall, is expected to cost $11.6 million.
Renderings of the proposed World Trade Center memorial envision two pools covering the towers' footprints
Costs at the World Trade Center memorial are so high largely because of the elaborate design that includes a park with two square openings that approximately cover the footprints of the Twin Towers. Water would fall from the openings into underground chambers with victims' names etched in granite. Visitors would walk down a ramp to an underground plaza where they could view the etched names along with a slurry wall that survived the attacks. Also planned is an ossuary containing the bones of unidentified victims and a museum documenting Sept 11, 2001, and its aftermath.
Adding to the costs, the memorial will have to share a yet-unbuilt underground infrastructure with five skyscrapers, a performing-arts center, a train station and a mall-size collection of shops. What's more, it would be built in what is the most expensive construction market in the U.S.
"If you are doing this out in a field, this would be very, very different, probably a fifth the cost," says James E. Young, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the original jury that selected the memorial design.
The seeds for the memorial's current troubles seem to have been sowed early on. The jury that selected the design "came up with a beautiful design for a memorial without regard to cost....It's kind of a backward way of doing it," says Debra Burlingame, a board member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, a publicly chartered organization responsible for the project. Her brother, Charles F. Burlingame, was the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
The foundation, formed in 2005 by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp, a state-city agency, is charged with raising the money and building and operating the memorial. Funds are meant to come from both private donations and the government.
So far, fund raising has been modest. About $130 million in private donations has been gathered, mostly from Wall Street banks that have an interest in seeing the dusty pit that is Ground Zero transformed as quickly as possible. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. has promised $200 million. A $100 million donation by the site's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is meant for infrastructure that the memorial will share with the other buildings -- and isn't included in the $500 million cap discussed by Mr. Bloomberg.
The foundation says it plans to start a national advertising campaign this month with commercials and print ads. Another tactic is to have individuals pay $500 for cobblestones that will be installed on the memorial's plaza. So far, the foundation has sold 36 cobblestones. The goal is to sell 5,000 by Sept. 11 this year.
Waterfalls cascade to an underground walkway with victims' names etched in granite.
The source of the annual operating money remains unclear, but the foundation is considering several options, including an admission fee to the museum, licensing the memorial's image and requesting federal-government support.
The foundation is scheduled on Monday to review the latest cost estimate -- which puts the price tag for the entire memorial at $1 billion, according to rebuilding officials. The new report will show the memorial and an attached museum costing $700 million. An additional $300 million would be needed to pay for site-preparation work and underground facilities the memorial will share with the Trade Center's other buildings.
A foundation committee headed by Roland Betts, a businessman and close friend of President Bush, is investigating the cost overruns and could recommend doing away with much of the memorial's below-ground elements to save money, according to people familiar with the project.
According to several people involved in the memorial planning, Monday's board discussion will center on how to preserve Mr. Arad's design with the new budget realities. Mr. Arad couldn't be reached for comment yesterday. A spokeswoman for Davis Brody Bond declined to comment.
"We are trying to do something extensive and spectacular and dignified in a very complicated environment," says Gretchen Dykstra, president of the memorial foundation. "But I'm not justifying costs that are too high. There's a tipping point here, and the board will have to talk about that."
The board includes some of the biggest titans of Wall Street and real estate -- including John C. Whitehead, former head of Goldman Sachs & Co.; Kenneth I. Chenault, chief executive of American Express Co.; Maurice R. Greenberg, chief executive of CV Starr & Co. and former American International Group head; and Jerry Speyer, chief executive of Tishman-Speyer Properties, a privately held real-estate company. Actor Robert DeNiro and several victims' family members also serve.
The foundation's hope to complete work by Sept. 11, 2009, now seems in jeopardy. Construction on the memorial officially began in March without a finalized plan or budget. Several problems have dogged the design, including the concern that its underground sections could be terrorist targets. One vocal group of family members object that much of the memorial will be housed underground and have filed a lawsuit alleging that the design violates historic-preservation rules protecting the remnants of the Twin Towers' foundation. "We'd support an aboveground memorial with access to the footprint remnants," says Anthony Gardner, executive director of World Trade Center United Family Group.
Also dogging the memorial is a protracted disagreement with the Port Authority over who should pay for the several hundred million dollars of underground infrastructure, including a heating and cooling system, electrical power supply system and a central command center to oversee security.
In an agreement among New York-area leaders two weeks ago, the Port Authority said it would contribute $100 million toward the memorial. A person close to those negotiations said New Jersey officials agreed on the $100 million as a cap against the agency having to pay more in the future.
The National Park Service, which operates 28 memorials but isn't involved at Ground Zero, says the cost of operating memorials, more than building them, is the big challenge. "As these things come in the system, we ask Congress to not just have money to build them, but some sort of endowment for funds for operating," says Park Service spokesman David Barna. The Park Service spends $20 million a year to operate the National Mall complex in general, plus $2.4 million to run the Washington Monument, $2 million for the Jefferson Memorial and $2.1 million for the Lincoln Memorial. It spends $14 million a year on the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, including security costs.
Foundation board member Ms. Burlingame says she is confident that the foundation will raise money to meet a reasonable estimate. "We can go out and say we have this beautiful design, but we have to have a realistic figure," she says. "I don't think these board members should be fund-raising when they are 100 years old."
By ALEX FRANGOSMay 5, 2006;
Soaring cost estimates for the World Trade Center memorial -- already expected to be one of the most expensive architectural tributes ever built -- coupled with uncertainties about funding may force planners to return to the drawing board to scale back some of the pricier portions of the massive project.
The latest cost study puts the price tag at $1 billion for the design as currently envisioned -- plus an estimated $40 million to $60 million a year to operate and serve the seven million visitors expected when it opens and provide security for the site.
With the source of such funding still in doubt, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with New York Gov. George E. Pataki and New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine, yesterday agreed to cap building expenses at no more than $500 million. "There's just not an unlimited amount of money that we can spend on a memorial," Mr. Bloomberg says. "The two governors and I think that this is the amount and let's get on with it."
Those new financial realities will likely force the memorial's architects, including lead designer Michael Arad and associate architects Davis Brody Bond, to consider major design changes, including moving some of the memorial's signature below-ground functions above ground.
Even at $500 million, the memorial would dwarf the costs of similar tributes around the world. The World War II memorial, completed in 2004 on the National Mall in Washington, cost $182 million, including an endowment to pay its continuing operation. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe that opened in Berlin in 2005 had a price tag of $35 million. The Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, scheduled to be completed this fall, is expected to cost $11.6 million.
Renderings of the proposed World Trade Center memorial envision two pools covering the towers' footprints
Costs at the World Trade Center memorial are so high largely because of the elaborate design that includes a park with two square openings that approximately cover the footprints of the Twin Towers. Water would fall from the openings into underground chambers with victims' names etched in granite. Visitors would walk down a ramp to an underground plaza where they could view the etched names along with a slurry wall that survived the attacks. Also planned is an ossuary containing the bones of unidentified victims and a museum documenting Sept 11, 2001, and its aftermath.
Adding to the costs, the memorial will have to share a yet-unbuilt underground infrastructure with five skyscrapers, a performing-arts center, a train station and a mall-size collection of shops. What's more, it would be built in what is the most expensive construction market in the U.S.
"If you are doing this out in a field, this would be very, very different, probably a fifth the cost," says James E. Young, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the original jury that selected the memorial design.
The seeds for the memorial's current troubles seem to have been sowed early on. The jury that selected the design "came up with a beautiful design for a memorial without regard to cost....It's kind of a backward way of doing it," says Debra Burlingame, a board member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, a publicly chartered organization responsible for the project. Her brother, Charles F. Burlingame, was the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
The foundation, formed in 2005 by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp, a state-city agency, is charged with raising the money and building and operating the memorial. Funds are meant to come from both private donations and the government.
So far, fund raising has been modest. About $130 million in private donations has been gathered, mostly from Wall Street banks that have an interest in seeing the dusty pit that is Ground Zero transformed as quickly as possible. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. has promised $200 million. A $100 million donation by the site's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is meant for infrastructure that the memorial will share with the other buildings -- and isn't included in the $500 million cap discussed by Mr. Bloomberg.
The foundation says it plans to start a national advertising campaign this month with commercials and print ads. Another tactic is to have individuals pay $500 for cobblestones that will be installed on the memorial's plaza. So far, the foundation has sold 36 cobblestones. The goal is to sell 5,000 by Sept. 11 this year.
Waterfalls cascade to an underground walkway with victims' names etched in granite.
The source of the annual operating money remains unclear, but the foundation is considering several options, including an admission fee to the museum, licensing the memorial's image and requesting federal-government support.
The foundation is scheduled on Monday to review the latest cost estimate -- which puts the price tag for the entire memorial at $1 billion, according to rebuilding officials. The new report will show the memorial and an attached museum costing $700 million. An additional $300 million would be needed to pay for site-preparation work and underground facilities the memorial will share with the Trade Center's other buildings.
A foundation committee headed by Roland Betts, a businessman and close friend of President Bush, is investigating the cost overruns and could recommend doing away with much of the memorial's below-ground elements to save money, according to people familiar with the project.
According to several people involved in the memorial planning, Monday's board discussion will center on how to preserve Mr. Arad's design with the new budget realities. Mr. Arad couldn't be reached for comment yesterday. A spokeswoman for Davis Brody Bond declined to comment.
"We are trying to do something extensive and spectacular and dignified in a very complicated environment," says Gretchen Dykstra, president of the memorial foundation. "But I'm not justifying costs that are too high. There's a tipping point here, and the board will have to talk about that."
The board includes some of the biggest titans of Wall Street and real estate -- including John C. Whitehead, former head of Goldman Sachs & Co.; Kenneth I. Chenault, chief executive of American Express Co.; Maurice R. Greenberg, chief executive of CV Starr & Co. and former American International Group head; and Jerry Speyer, chief executive of Tishman-Speyer Properties, a privately held real-estate company. Actor Robert DeNiro and several victims' family members also serve.
The foundation's hope to complete work by Sept. 11, 2009, now seems in jeopardy. Construction on the memorial officially began in March without a finalized plan or budget. Several problems have dogged the design, including the concern that its underground sections could be terrorist targets. One vocal group of family members object that much of the memorial will be housed underground and have filed a lawsuit alleging that the design violates historic-preservation rules protecting the remnants of the Twin Towers' foundation. "We'd support an aboveground memorial with access to the footprint remnants," says Anthony Gardner, executive director of World Trade Center United Family Group.
Also dogging the memorial is a protracted disagreement with the Port Authority over who should pay for the several hundred million dollars of underground infrastructure, including a heating and cooling system, electrical power supply system and a central command center to oversee security.
In an agreement among New York-area leaders two weeks ago, the Port Authority said it would contribute $100 million toward the memorial. A person close to those negotiations said New Jersey officials agreed on the $100 million as a cap against the agency having to pay more in the future.
The National Park Service, which operates 28 memorials but isn't involved at Ground Zero, says the cost of operating memorials, more than building them, is the big challenge. "As these things come in the system, we ask Congress to not just have money to build them, but some sort of endowment for funds for operating," says Park Service spokesman David Barna. The Park Service spends $20 million a year to operate the National Mall complex in general, plus $2.4 million to run the Washington Monument, $2 million for the Jefferson Memorial and $2.1 million for the Lincoln Memorial. It spends $14 million a year on the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, including security costs.
Foundation board member Ms. Burlingame says she is confident that the foundation will raise money to meet a reasonable estimate. "We can go out and say we have this beautiful design, but we have to have a realistic figure," she says. "I don't think these board members should be fund-raising when they are 100 years old."
posted by "Faces of the Brave" at 11:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home