Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

With The Times giving details today on the changes being considered to the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH hub, we caught up with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver out at the Democratic National Convention in Denver to get his reaction to the news that the Port Authority may put columns in the signature main hall of the station, which was to be open.

Mr. Silver did not take a firm position either way, but signaled openness to scaling back the aesthetics of the planned iconic station.

"Obviously, the functional purpose of it is still important, and we ought to watch that we get what's going on there as quickly as possible, get it moving," he said.  read more »

"I would say that this has probably been the greatest planning fiasco in the history of the world."

That's Wall Street Journal architecture critic Ada Louis Huxtable's blistering take on the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site, now about to enter its eighth year. No one is spared in the invective.

"When did all of these infighting factions become benign 'stakeholders,' with equal rights, right or wrong? And when did those stakeholders cease to be recognized as special interests, each with its own self-directed agenda?"

If only there'd been better planning instead of so much self-interested grandstanding. If only there'd been an Edward Logue, the planner behind the South Bronx, New Haven and Boston redevelopments of yore.

"The critical factor that did Ground Zero in was the denial of the professional planning role essential to coordinate and execute an effort of this magnitude."

The Paterson administration has replaced Port Authority board commissioner Christy Ferer with Fred Hochberg, a former Clinton administration official at the Small Business Administration and dean of Milano, the New School's center for management and urban policy.

While the Paterson administration generally announces such nominations beforehand, this one went in quietly and stayed that way until it was done, as the state Senate last night voted to confirm Mr. Hochberg for the unpaid position on the agency's board.

Ms. Ferer, whose term expired last year, was appointed to the board by Governor Pataki in 2004. Her husband was  read more »

With at least eight years left before a set of new rail tunnels under the Hudson River are scheduled to be built and functioning, developer Sam Chang has already begun to reap benefits from the project. That's because the voracious builder of cookie-cutter hotels bought a $24 million West Side parking lot last November—a lot that just happened to be the same site the Port Authority needs in order to build the more than $7 billion project, called Access to the Region's Core (ARC).

Since then, the number of developers and landlords buying any city property has fallen off a cliff amid an impossible financing market, and brokers report that the bulk of sales that do happen have noticeably lower prices.  read more »

"$244.5m + $56m = $300.5 million to design a PATH station - are you kidding me? This is just to design the damn thing, let alone build it. Its no wonder the Port Authority is falling all over itself to cover up the fiasco that is the World Trade Center." ["At WTC, Conflict of Interest Concerns"]

Editor's note: The $56 million is included within the $244.5 million figure.

A major engineering firm retained for numerous jobs at the World Trade Center site is in talks to acquire a company run by the Port Authority commissioner most closely involved with the site’s redevelopment.

The commissioner, Anthony Sartor, chairs the Port Authority’s World Trade Center subcommittee and is president of KeySpan Services, which controls Paulus, Sokolowski & Sartor, an engineering firm that is a subsidiary of National Grid. Engineering and architectural giant STV Incorporated, which has contracts with the Port Authority for the Freedom Tower and the multibillion-dollar PATH hub, is exploring a potential acquisition of Mr. Sartor’s company, known as PS&S.  read more »

The governing board of the Port Authority will increase its oversight of World Trade Center development, as board chairman Anthony Coscia is calling for new monthly meetings devoted to monitoring progress at the site.

Based on a memo he sent to the other board members today, the meetings will allow for monthly updates on cost and schedules, drawing a sharp contrast with years past (the first revision of dates and cost since 2006 is slated to be delivered in September).

The new meetings, to be held near the site, "will create an opportunity for the Board to give staff more policy direction regarding the rebuilding effort," Mr.  read more »

As expected, the Port Authority last week approved the land deal with St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church to allow the Port to use the church's Ground Zero land and build a vehicle security center below.

The bi-state agency agreed to give the church $20 million ($10 million is supposed to come from JPMorgan Chase for its planned adjacent building, though we'll see if that tower ever happens), along with up to $40 million for infrastructure. The church will get a significantly larger lot than it had prior to September 11, 2001, at 8,100 square feet.

Release below.  read more »

The NYPD will oversee security at the new World Trade Center, as the city and the Port Authority have reached an agreement on the structure of a security plan at the 16-acre site.

The agreement, announced today, leaves NYPD in charge of security at the vast majority of the site, a role the Port Authority Police Department currently has (the move has angered members of the Port Authority police). The Port Authority would control security at the PATH hub at the site, but the NYPD would have access to that space, according to a memorandum of understanding between the city and the Port Authority made public today.  read more »

The Port Authority at its board meeting this afternoon is taking a look at three possible designs for the planned tower over its bus terminal, with the firms of Richard Rogers, Cesar Pelli and Kohn Pedersen Fox all submitting plans.

Steve Roth's Vornado, in the hunt for an anchor tenant, is the developer for the tower, which would sit across the street from the Renzo Piano-designed New York Times building.

Pelli Clarke Pelli designed the Bloomberg tower on Lexington Avenue for Vornado; Mr. Rogers' firm designed the planned Tower 3 at the World Trade Center; and KPF was signed on for JPMorgan Chase's now-scuttled new investment banking headquarters (with a notable goiter for trading floors) downtown.

Images below.  read more »

Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steve Roth is considering a design by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Rogers for his planned office tower atop the Port Authority Bus terminal, a Port Authority official confirmed.

The design by Mr. Rogers, along with two other designs (New York-based SHoP was said to be working on a design for the tower at one point), is expected to be presented at today's Port Authority board meeting.

Mr. Rogers, whose works include the planned Tower 3 at the World Trade Center and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, recently withdrew from a nearby project: the now scuttled Javits Center expansion.

We'll (hopefully) have more after the meeting at 1:30.

The Port Authority has reached a tentative land deal with St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at ground zero, removing a hurdle to the construction of a vehicle security center in the new World Trade Center, according to a Port Authority official. The deal is expected to come before the agency's board for approval today.

A dispute over the church's land, which sits south of Liberty Street across from ground zero, was highlighted in a Port Authority report last month as one of more than a dozen potential or impending major hurdles at the World Trade Center site.

In the agreement, the Port Authority would pay $20 million to the church, giving it a more than 8,000-square-foot site on which to build.  read more »

To celebrate the 60th birthday of JFK Airport on July 25, the Port Authority will offer travelers free rides on the airport's monorail system, the AirTrain. A one-way ticket's normally $5.

Release below:

THE PORT AUTHORITY THANKS ITS CUSTOMERS

AS KENNEDY AIRPORT TURNS 60

Travelers Encouraged to Leave Their Cars Home Next Friday

and Take a Free Ride on AirTrain JFK

The Port Authority will provide free AirTrain JFK rides on Friday, July 25, as a thank you to customers who have helped make John F. Kennedy International Airport the country’s premier international gateway, and one of the world’s most venerable aviation facilities.  read more »

The Sun today reported on the high salaries of members of the executive chamber in the Paterson administration, noting that 62 of the 176 staffers in the executive chamber have a salary of at least $100,000.

Well, we have one to add outside the chamber that caught our eye: Drew Warshaw, the 27-year-old new chief of staff to Port Authority executive director Chris Ward, takes in $168,012 annually. The previous Port Authority director, Tony Shorris, didn't have anyone with the title of chief of staff, but his "special executive assistant," Andy Rachlin, took in $99,000 a year.

Mr. Warshaw served as an aide in the Spitzer administration, working with Rich Baum, secretary to the Governor.

With uncertainties abounding since last week’s acknowledgement that the World Trade Center redevelopment is behind schedule and overbudget, much talk at last night’s mega-Lower Manhattan community meeting centered around the site’s 8-acre memorial, referred to repeatedly as “the heart” of the project.

The meeting was designed to give the public a chance to talk with the major stakeholders in the redevelopment; attendees included State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Councilman David Yassky and State Senator Martin Connor. The memorial took center stage.

The memorial and interior museum was once slated for completion in 2009, but now the Port Authority said it will not be finished by the 10th anniversary of the attacks in September 2011.  read more »

Port Authority executive director Chris Ward today presented his candid review of the outstanding challenges at the World Trade Center site, tossing out the existing timetables and listing more than a dozen unresolved issues that could add delays.

Mr. Ward’s announcement, as expected, did not outline any specific dates but rather the new director pledged to come back in September with a revised plan for the site [see a PDF of the report here].

The biggest challenge for the agency is the PATH hub, a project budgeted at $2.5 billion with overruns. The project, which encompasses aspects unrelated to PATH such as retail and costly infrastructure for the broader World Trade Center site, is highly unlikely to fit within that budget.  read more »

The Port Authority is expected to deliver its report about World Trade Center timetables and budgets Monday, and the situation looks so grim that the agency appears as though it will throw out the existing dates without setting a new timetable, at least for now, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The Port Authority’s initial analysis found that the projects under the agency's control—the PATH hub, the memorial, the Freedom Tower—stand to be delivered years behind schedule and substantially over budget. The agency wants more time to do further analysis, and could set dates at a later time, people briefed on the matter said.  read more »

Governor Paterson today announced an audit of the schedules and budgets at the World Trade Center site, with his new Port Authority director Chris Ward due to report back by the end of June.

The review, announced two hours after the Port Authority acknowledged it is facing a two-month delay on the site for Tower 2, is already underway at the bi-state agency, as the Paterson administration seems eager to shed any blame for the unrealistic timetables set in the Pataki era.

From a letter from Mr. Paterson to Mr. Ward:

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site must encompass clear and achievable timelines and budget goals that must be met at every step of the way. Furthermore, the stakeholders and the public must be kept up to date on progress in meeting the timetables and budgets as we move forward.

 read more »

The Port Authority today acknowledged that it will be late in delivering a key portion of the World Trade Center site to developer Larry Silverstein, owing him millions in penalties.

The bi-state agency said it will take until August to turn over the site for Tower 2, a space being excavated that it is obligated to turn over by July 1. The Port Authority will owe Mr. Silverstein $300,000 a day for each day that the site is late, the same penalty it faced when it missed a Jan. 1 deadline for the site for Towers 3 and 4, eventually owing more than $12 million.

In a statement, the Port Authority noted that the agency will now not be paying an incentive of between $8 million and $14 million that it was prepared to pay its contractors had they finished on time.  read more »

Governor Paterson has nominated a former deputy mayor in the Koch administration, Stanley Grayson, to fill a slot on the Port Authority’s governing board.

Mr. Grayson, a onetime city finance commissioner and current president of M.R. Beal & Company, will take the slot of Bruce Blakeman, a Pataki administration appointee and former Republican candidate for state comptroller, according to a Port Authority spokeswoman.

Given his background—as deputy mayor, Mr. Grayson oversaw economic development and M.R. Beal is an investment firm—Mr. Grayson’s appointment seems a telling sign of the Port Authority’s evolving role as a bi-state agency. While its mission is centered around regional transportation, much of its focus recently has been devoted to economic development such as the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site and perhaps assuming control of the Moynihan Station project.  read more »

In 2000, the Port Authority announced it would build a new, $37.4 million Battery Park ferry terminal to replace the “temporary” one installed in 1989, to transport 12,500 weekday commuters between New York and New Jersey, but September 11 thwarted the plan.

A lot of different Battery Park ferry terminal developments have happened in the past eight years, but the five-slip, upgraded terminal had yet to appear—until this weekend. A trio of tugboats will finally bring a permanent, “state-of-the-art,” terminal from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to the Battery Park City promenade on Saturday morning where final installation will begin, the Port Authority announced today.  read more »

The Port Authority has reached an agreement with the Chinese real estate firm Vantone to lease space in the Freedom Tower, a deal that, if completed, will mark the first major private sector lease for the tower.

Vantone agreed to take 190,000 square feet for a 22-year lease to make a “China Center,” starting at $80 a square foot.

However, there’s reason to keep the champagne corked for now. Developer Larry Silverstein broke off a lease deal in 7 World Trade Center with Vantone in 2006 when the firm failed to produce a letter of credit in a timely fashion. The firm then backed out of a lease deal at 195 Broadway.  read more »

After well over a year of below-grade work, the Freedom Tower has reached the street level. Those in the Spitzer administration had often pointed to this milestone as a time at which the public would begin to understand that there was active work going on at Ground Zero.

Picture courtesy of the Port Authority; a few weeks ago we got a look at the construction site and shot our own photos.

Mayor Bloomberg pushed back against a pet initiative of Senator Schumer's today, saying the city “would never agree” to the Port Authority taking over the troubled Moynihan Station project.

Since March, Senator Schumer has been an outspoken proponent of moving the project under the purview of the Port Authority, saying the bi-state agency has the experience and the capability to complete the long-stalled project. Governor Paterson has supported the idea and said the move is likely, though some legislators are against it.

This morning Mr. Schumer tried to push the idea further, saying at a Crain’s New York breakfast that the state’s development agency, which currently has authority over the project, “is not capable of being a major development agency here.”

Shortly after, responding to questions from reporters, Mayor Bloomberg said, effectively, thanks but no thanks.  read more »

Should Governor Paterson indeed move the Moynihan Station project under the control of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as he said he wants to do, at least two members of the State Assembly are poised to resist the action: Richard Gottfried, the district’s representative, and Richard Brodsky, the chairman of the committee that oversees public authorities.

“It’s a New York project; it ought to be run by a New York agency,” Mr. Brodsky said. “As a bi-state authority, they [the Port Authority] have been unresponsive, remote and immune to reform.”

Moving Moynihan from the state-controlled Empire State Development Corporation to the Port Authority would remove the Legislature from any direct control over the project, taking away its ability to pass laws about the plan or have approval power via the Public Authorities Control Board. (The PACB blocked the project from moving forward in a phased plan at the end of the Pataki administration.)  read more »

Governor David Paterson said today that he will likely move Moynihan Station under the purview of the Port Authority, dropping the imbroglio on the plate of soon-to-be-announced executive director Christopher Ward.

From The Observer’s Em Whitney:

David Paterson was on the WFAN "Boomer and Carton" show this morning, expressing frustration over the city’s stalled major development projects.

“What I’m going to do," Paterson told the hosts, "is probably move construction of Moynihan [Station] to the Port Authority, which I think has a better chance of getting it done quickly and I hope that we can start construction quickly enough that we can reverse plans that exist.

 read more »

Governor David Paterson is planning to appoint Christopher Ward as executive director of the Port Authority, with an announcement to come as early as this afternoon, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

Mr. Ward, the former commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection and a onetime Port Authority staffer, would take the slot left vacant by Anthony Shorris, who was asked to resign by Mr. Paterson last month to make way for a commissioner of his choosing.  read more »

The Brooklyn container shipping port operator that was once in the city’s crosshairs saw its lease approved by the Port Authority’s governing board today, finalizing a victory in a long-fought battle with the Bloomberg administration.

Led by former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, the city wanted to replace the port operator, American Stevedoring Inc., with a bustling complex of marine-related industry, a conference center, a hotel, a beer garden, housing and an expanded cruise terminal.

The city argued that the container shipping site, on Piers 7 – 12 in Red Hook, was inefficient in that location—better suited for a place such as Sunset Park.

But as the city prepared to move ahead, American Stevedoring proved a tenacious opponent, lining up elected officials behind their cause and ultimately forcing the city to back down.  read more »

Yesterday morning we took a little jaunt downtown to check out the progress of the Freedom Tower. Accompanied by some folks from the Port Authority, which is developing the tower, we took a few shots from the construction site. Work is slated to rise above street level later this year.

For now, the sub-grade work seems to have a whole lot of workers installing a whole lot of cement and rebar. The site was mostly empty and the vast majority of the work has come within the last year. The Port Authority said they still are on schedule for completion in 2012.  read more »

Governor Paterson seems to be striving to put his signature on development projects around the state, as his decision to jettison the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Anthony Shorris, suggests.

Taken with the top job at the Empire State Development Corporation, the state’s top two posts responsible for economic development are now both free, awaiting appointments of Mr. Paterson’s choosing. Other than those two positions, the governor, now more than a month into his job, has freed up relatively few other top jobs thus far, accepting the resignations of the commissioner of the Division of Human Rights, and the acting state police superintendent.

The forced departure of Mr. Shorris, who oversaw billions of dollars in construction projects including the World Trade Center redevelopment, comes a week after Mr. Paterson declared he would “revisit the issue at Ground Zero” at a breakfast, referencing the potential for delays at the site. It was unclear exactly what he meant at the time, though now the remark seems to make more sense.

Many in and out of government described Mr. Shorris as an intelligent administrator, giving him high marks in his job at the Port Authority. Still, he was said to not have tremendous political acumen, occasionally leaving politicians and officials feeling rebuffed.  read more »

The Port Authority is looking for a firm to run the observation deck at the Freedom Tower, located on the 102nd floor of the building. (The above aerial image simulates what the view would look like.)

The 107th-floor observation deck in the old World Trade Center, named Top of the World, saw a flow of some 2 million visitors annually. That observation deck, handed over to private operator Ogden Entertainment in the mid-1990's, underwent a $6 million renovation in 1997, which included installing exhibits and videos for visitors, who paid an admission fee to the deck of $10 for an adult when it opened, according to a Times article at the time.

The Port Authority is planning to release a request for qualifications for operating the 18,000-square-foot observation deck next month, a document intended to survey the private sector for interest, according to a Port Authority spokeswoman. The agency plans to put the operating contract out to bid in the final three months of 2008.

The search comes after the Port put out a similar request earlier this year for an operator of a restaurant on the 100th and 101st floors of the building formally known as One World Trade Center.

Statements from Port Authority execs after the jump.  read more »

The directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were not part of the mass of resignations requested by the Paterson administration.

The Times Union reported today that Governor Paterson’s staff has asked all directors and commissioners to put in their letters of resignation so as to give the new governor more flexibility in shaping his administration.  read more »

The Port Authority is putting up some cash to restore the iconic Eero Saarien-designed TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport, preparing it for another use yet to be determined. JetBlue is currently building its new terminal around the curvilinear structure, which was built in 1962 and is now far too small for a large airline.  read more »

Seven weeks after he had hoped to start construction, Larry Silverstein is ready to build at Ground Zero, as the Port Authority announced today it has finished excavations and cleared space for World Trade Center Towers 3 and 4.

The Port Authority missed its deadline of Jan. 1 to turn over the site to Silverstein Properties, and has owed $300,000 a day to the developer since, an amount that now exceeds $14 million. However, the cost is offset some, as the agency has said it offered a $10 million incentive to its contractors to finish before the deadline.

Completion of the towers is expected for 2011.  read more »

The troubles of the credit world seem to be hitting the public sector, too, as the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority each got zero bidders on a $100 million set of bonds yesterday.

No bidders means no sale, and no sale means these public authorities aren’t getting the up-front money they want and need for capital projects. A lack of bidders on the state agencies’ bonds tends to be rare, finance experts say, as they tend to be rated high and reliable.  read more »

With the hole at Ground Zero gradually filling in, the Port Authority is putting out its feelers for a company to develop and manage a two-floor restaurant on the 100th and 101st floors of the 102-story Freedom Tower.

Tomorrow the Port Authority expects to issue a request for expression of interest (RFEI) for the restaurant, seeking early, nonbinding bids from developers.  read more »

The Port Authority has finished excavations in the bathtub for Tower 4 at the World Trade Center, making way for the Fumihiko Maki-designed, Larry Silverstein-developed, 64-story building.

The bi-state agency, which owns the site, said it is slated to finish excavations on the neighboring Tower 3 site in mid-February. The Port Authority missed its deadline of Jan. 1 to complete excavations on the two sites, and every day since, has owed Silverstein Properties $300,000 in penalties.  read more »

The Port Authority voted today to raise fares and tolls on bridges, tunnels and PATH trains, making life that much harder for those who lives outside of New York City. Such crossings as the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge, among others, will cost drivers another $2, bringing the out-of-pocket fare for each trip in to $8.

The fare hike came as a state commission prepares recommendations related to Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing proposal to levy a daily charge of $8 on cars that cross below 86th Street.  read more »

The Port Authority has finalized a deal with the mall-operating giant Westfield Group to develop and operate the 488,000 square feet of retail planned for the World Trade Center site. The group, now in a joint venture with the Port Authority, will control retail both above ground and below, both in transit-related concourses and in Larry Silverstein’s three towers.

The total cost of developing the retail is estimated to cost $1.45 billion, with Westfield paying $625 million, according to the Port Authority.  read more »

The Port Authority acknowledged today that it will miss its deadline of Jan. 1, 2008 to finish up excavations on the bathtub for World Trade Center Towers 3 and 4, thereby owing developer Larry Silverstein more than $12 million in delay penalties given the agency’s current timeline.

The Port Authority will owe Silverstein Properties $300,000 for every day until the excavations are done, and in a statement, the agency said that the bathtub would be ready for complete handover to Mr. Silverstein in about two to four weeks after mid-January (when they expect to finish excavations for Tower 4).

The Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center site and is leasing the land for Towers 2, 3, and 4 to Silverstein, said in the statement that the hit from the penalties will in part be passed along to its contractors.

Silverstein, in a statement, said it will begin “pre-construction activities” as the firm waits on the Port.

Release after the jump.

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Governor Spitzer has nominated a bond lawyer to fill the vacancy at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey caused by Vice Chairman Charles Gargano's resignation: H.  read more »