Coming off of more than three years as its top New York executive, Mr. Ward has no illusions how the bi-state agency is run.

The audit last week cited mismanagement at the Port Authority and spiraling costs at the World Trade Center site, findings that aren’t exactly revelatory. Swelling budgets have been a long-running problem at the complex site and criticisms have been lobbed before at the sprawling agency’s byzantine structure.

Chris Ward.

To the politically cynical, the findings were a way for governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie to distance themselves from the inevitable overruns at the World Trade Center site as well as the unpopular toll and fare hike last year by the agency early in their tenures.

One thing is immediately clear: It won’t impact the consensus on Mr. Ward’s time at the Port Authority, which is widely hailed as one of the key reasons behind the progress at the WTC site.

“Government has to reinvent itself all the time,” Mr. Ward said. “Good for them for raising questions about the Port Authority. All I can say is, imagine what the audit would be, what the conclusions would be if the world looked at the site on the 10th year anniversary and it wasn’t complete and President Obama was working his way through an incomplete site and the families were there and it’s been 10 years and the memorial was not done.”

Such is the contradictory and sometimes absurd nature of public service, where memory of the overwhelming mandates Mr. Ward and his colleagues at the authority faced when he stepped in as executive director in 2008 can give way to scrutiny over the evasive actions they were forced to take. Building in the expeditious manner that was required to get the memorial done in time for its big moment in the national eye was more expensive. But in the pressured years leading up to anniversary, who among both the government and public would have been willing to accept failure to meet the deadline in exchange for cost savings?

“The alternative was incredibly worse,” Mr. Ward said. “From 2008 to 2011 we completed the memorial, we solved the Larry Silverstein issues, we signed Condé and did a deal to have the Dursts invest $100 million into the building. And the site now has all of this progressive momentum. In 2008 people thought the project would never get built. Now it’s a done deal.

“I think you have to be a little perverse to enjoy major league public service,” Mr. Ward added with a smile.

And yet one can sense that Mr. Ward also misses the thrill of being one of the top transit and infrastructure officials in the country. During his time at the authority, Mr. Ward, wearing his trademark designer eyeglasses, excelled as a public speaker and face for the agency, always at ease in the limelight and a forceful presence during the authority’s tough talks at the WTC site that reassured the public its stake in the rebuilding effort would not be subjugated to Mr. Silverstein’s.

While perhaps out of the public eye, Mr. Ward’s new role places him closer to a pipeline of transit and infrastructure that is potentially bigger than the Port Authority’s. Last month, Mr. Ward took an executive level position in the U.S. operations of the large international construction company Dragados, and he has grand ambitions for the firm.

“It’s a big change,” said Mr. Ward. “Being executive director of the Port Authority is making 50 different public policy decisions every day; here the focus is bottom-line business development.”

In recent years, a pattern of ballooning construction costs has plagued more than just the Port Authority. The situation has transpired in so many instances, it has come to seem like an endemic outcome for public transit and infrastructure projects. It’s a story that Mr. Ward can tell more compellingly by virtue not only of his tenure at the Port Authority but, before that, his time at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, where, as that agency’s commissioner, he presided over the planning and construction of a water filtration plant in Westchester County’s Croton, which also busted through preliminary cost estimates.

According to Mr. Ward, a new era could be dawning in the U.S. where government seeks to off load large civic construction projects onto private partners who take on not only oversight of the work but responsibility for its costs, guaranteeing that government is not on the hook for overruns. These public-private partnerships (PPP) have become popular in Europe but slower to catch on here. Mr. Ward has ambitious plans for Dragados. The company, he says, will be in contention for billions of dollars of construction work and has a war chest of billions more to invest alongside government partners who embrace the PPP concept.

“My job is to identify and then win some of these large public works projects that are on the planning boards or ready to go around the country,” Mr. Ward said, citing plans to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge as one among many potential jobs that will be up for bid in the coming years. “There are major highway projects down in Texas that we’re keen on, some tunnel projects out West that we’re looking at.

Hydro plants in Canada. There’s a good $35 billion of major public infrastructure that will need to get built in the next five years and we’d like to get a significant part of it.”

When Mr. Ward left the Port Authority late last year, he didn’t have his new position lined up yet. He said he went to the gym and caught up on reading. More than anything else, he said, he walked. As a high official, Mr. Ward said he was cloistered.

“Three and a half years at the Port Authority, you don’t have a lot of time to yourself,” Mr. Ward said. “I walked the Hudson River Park, which is so beautiful. I walked new neighborhoods that I hadn’t been to. I hadn’t really been over to Williamsburg and so I saw that part of the city, just walked the whole thing. I walked Madison Avenue one day, which is such an eye opener. With everything that is going on in the world there’s this one little place that remains protected from the economic recession.”

Mr. Ward went to Macalester College in Minnesota and when he graduated in the late 1970s, he said he went to work as a ranch hand in NewMexico, leaving to then do a stint on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We were about 150 miles offshore, out there for seven days on and then off for seven days,” Mr. Ward said. “There was every walk of life,

South Houston blacks, West Texas cowboys, Chicanos. At the time I had to be a working-class hero, I wanted to live the authentic life. I came to work for the city after graduate school at Harvard.”

One point that always stands out in his résumé is the focus of his studies. Mr. Ward has spent much of his career in public service roles involved with transit, infrastructure and construction, but in college he primarily studied theology.

“I always get questions about that,” Mr. Ward said. “All I can say is, it equipped me to ask critical questions and try to find answers to hard questions. Whether it’s an answer for a construction project or economics, it’s just a useful skill for problem solving.”

dgeiger@observer.com

Re-Ward. (waywuwei/Flickr

Before he even took office, Governor Andrew Cuomo went and visited the Tappan Zee Bridge, and he has made the Hudson span an important policy priority—one that has angered some locals and transportation advocates as the project was fast-tracked at the same time that mass transit was stripped from the reconstruction plan.

Last week the Throughway Authority selected four partnerships in the running rebuild the bridge. Among them is a familiar face: Chris Ward.

As you may recall, Mr. Ward and the governor did not exactly get along, strong-willed political bulls that they both are. Now, Mr. Ward's new employer, Dragados, is a member of one of the four consortiums on the short list to rebuild the Tappan Zee.

So could Mr. Ward's involvement jeopardize his firm's shot at the project? Not likely, he recently told The Observer. "Nobody else is as capable of that job as Dragados," he said.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

1 World Trade Center.

The Phase I Interim Report, arranged by the Port Authority's Special Committee of the Board of Commissioners and co-prepared by Navigant Consulting and Rothschild Group, depicted the Port Authority as an agency “at a crossroads, one that is in need of a comprehensive overhaul of its management structure,” said David Samson, Port Authority Chairman, in a conference call with reporters yesterday.

The 51-page report also identified the bi-state agency as one that let costs escalate as it rushed to complete the September 11th Memorial in time for the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack while suffering from “a lack of consistent leadership.”

There have been seven executive directors since Robert Boyle took the position in 1997.

“With such turnover at the executive director level, it is difficult for any significant strategic initiatives, goals and objectives to be realized,” the report reads. “Organizations typically become inwardly focused and tend to run adrift in the absence of leadership continuity.

Former executive director Chris Ward stepped down from his post last October to eventually become executive vice president at Dragados, an international construction firm. His successor, Patrick Foye, a former deputy secretary for economic development for Governor Andrew Cuomo, became the agency’s fourth executive director since 2004.

Mr. Ward did not return a voicemail message requesting comment.

Other organizational problems within the Port Authority have also affected the agency. Capital planning and project delivery has had five different “owners” in the past ten years, according to the report.

“Capital planning and project delivery, a critical area of focus within the Port Authority, has suffered from a lack of consistency in management and leadership,” the report reads, while “non-appointed senior career services professional of the Port Authority have an unusually long tenure, averaging 24 years of service.” This kind of infrastructure has turned the Port Authority into a “siloed” organization, the report said.

Redevelopment costs for the World Trade Center site grew from $11 billion in 2008 to $14.8 billion today, according to the report, with the memorial playing “a key role in the escalation of these costs,” said Mr. Sampson. The estimated net cost to The Port Authority after third party reimbursement has grown from approximately $6 billion to an estimated $7.7 billion.

Gross compensation at the Port Authority has also grown in the last 5 years by 19 percent, from $629 million to $749 million.

“Much of the reason for this is the result of add-on compensation such as overtime, unused vacation exchange, and so-called longevity programs,” said Mr. Samson.

The Special Committee said it will introduce new financial and management controls that will limit the $1 billion of cost exposure detailed in the report, added Mr. Samson.

“Given that enormous burden, we are committed to taking the steps necessary to properly complete the project and to mitigate exposure to the World Trade Center cite,” he added.

Drosen@Observer.com

Chris Ward. (Photo by Daniel Neuner)

Mr. Ward, credited with helping to devise and implement plans that put the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site back on track, will be involved in helping the company identify and compete for major construction and infrastructure projects he said.

In an exclusive conversation with The Commercial Observer, Mr. Ward identified several high profile bids that he will likely be involved in helping the company make, including the expansion of Boston’s Green Line street car system, the replacement of Calaveras Dam in California and the replacement of the Tappen Zee Bridge in Westchester.

“There’s probably $36 billion of projects out there and we could honestly compete for probably $15 billion of that,” Mr. Ward said.

The company is a major construction firm that has handled complex projects in the city. It is currently building the East Side Access tunnel that will connect the Long Island Rail Road from Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal.

Public private partnerships will likely figure into the Dragados’s pipeline of business in the future, arrangements where private investors contribute funds to public infrastructure in return for a slice of the revenues that the infrastructure generates. Mr. Ward said the company had billions of dollars it could invest into such ventures and that the partnerships would be the way of the future for infrastructure development in the U.S.

“It’s the way governments do infrastructure in Europe,” said Mr. Ward. “It’s about selling creative solutions to government to get projects done. We need to be able to build roads and bridges and infastructure in a way that guarantees a reliable schedule and saves money. There’s not enough government resournces anymore to get projects done any other way.”

Mr. Ward’s first day at Dragados was yesterday, he said. Although his tenure as the Port Authority’s executive director was widely viewed as successful, Mr. Ward was replaced late last year by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Gov. Cuomo placed former Empire State Development Corporation head Patrick Foye in the executive director slot in what was viewed as a bid by the governor to put his own stamp on the agency and exert control by using his own appointee.

Daniel Geiger can be reached at DGeiger@Observer.com

Thanks, David. (Daniel Neuner)

It's only been a few days since the Ward-for-mayor movement got started, but he's already gotten that coveted endorsement from The Times's editorial page—well, the Op-Ed page, actually.David Brook's got a tour of the World Trade Center from Mr. Ward, and apparently he liked what he saw:

Ward (who is inexplicably being replaced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo) rescued the ground zero project by disenchanting it, by seeing it as it is, not through shrouds of symbols — by attending closely to all the practical complexity. American politics in general could use that sort of disenchantment.

[...]

Maybe it’s part of living in a postmaterialist economy, but nearly every practical question becomes a values question. You get politicians and commentators whose views are entirely predictable because they don’t care about the specifics of any particular issue. They just care about the status war against their social enemies and the way each issue functions as a symbol in that great fight.

It would be nice if there were more leaders like Ward inclined to disenchant problems and stare directly at specific contexts. Sometimes circumstances compel you to raise taxes, sometimes circumstances allow you to cut them. Sometimes government can promote innovation; in most cases it can’t.

As one politico put it to The Observer earlier today, "the man’s PR skills have now reached legendary status."

Speaking of, we caught the Port Authority boss' speech at the Summit for New York City yesterday, where he talked about leveling Red Hook to create a better Governors Island. Afterwards,  The Star-Ledger collared him and asked about his mayoral ambitions, giving us his first on-the-record thoughts on the matter. He seems interested but unsure.

"I think it's very flattering, but highly unlikely, given the politics of New York City," Mr. Ward told the Jersery daily. He did argue that he would be capable of the job, though: "I think I am qualified. I've run a large city agency. I've been with the Port Authority. I think I could do O.K."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Let's dig another tunnel!

With at least a few people clamoring for a Chris Ward mayoralty, the Port Authority executive director visited the Time Warner Center today and talked about something besides the World Trade Center--not only the focus of much of his work the past three years, but also his public speaking.

Instead, he proffered an ambitious, even absurd, proposal for the Brooklyn waterfront and Governor’s Island. The former he likened to Vietnam: “nobody ever seems to retreat with a clear victory,” he said during an address at Municipal Art Society's Summit for New York City. Of the latter, he said “it is the last open question, in terms of land-use, in the city.”

To fix one, you must fix both, he suggested. In the bombastic style reminiscent of his infamous LaGuardia remarks, Mr. Ward called for the elimination of the Red Hook container terminal. "Red Hook is in the wrong location is Governors Island is to succeed," he said.

Both could become a new cafe-hub, instead of a containerized one, another piece of BroBo-dom. (It is something the mayor has spoken longingly over before, referring to Red Hook on occasion as the new East Village.) It is an unusual proposition, considering Mr. Ward used to run American Stevedoring, which operates the Red Hook port. Perhaps it is his familiarity with the area that allows Mr. Ward to make such a radical, anti-industrial call.

Well, anti-industrial in a sense, because he thinks that the shipping capacity, though it will never be "the huge, supertanker shipping," could move to Sunset Park, where it is insulated by Industry City. There it can hook-up with the project of every politician's dream of the past century, a trans-harbor freight rail tunnel—ironically the very thing the combined Port Authority of New and New Jersey was founded to create yet never did.

"People think the Port loves trucks, because it brings us revenue," Mr. Ward said. "Believe me, we have enough revenue, and the non-stop delivery trucks are killing our city."

"We must get beyond out nostalgia for the Brooklyn waterfront for the future of this city," Mr. Ward said. He calls for a more permeable waterfront, one of transportation and recreation. "Climate change is real, and it changing the way we live."

It was no stump speech, but the audience sure loved it.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Chris Ward chilling with another governor. (Newsday)

Just not much less than he already does.

At least that is the impression given by our former colleagues over at Capital and WNYC, who point out that in the governor's recently released schedules, no mentions are made of meetings with either agency's head, Jay Walder or Chris Ward. As The Observer has previously reported, the governor has had limited contact with either Mr. Walder or Mr. Ward, despite their being in charge of two of the state's most important and powerful agencies.

Andrea Bernstein opens with this spry appraisal:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo met repeatedly in the first eight months of the year on marriage equality, the property tax cap, and even farmer’s markets. But his schedule from January 1- August 31, made available online Thursday, shows no meetings or phone calls with Port Authority chief Chris Ward or Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Jay Walder.

Meanwhile Reid and Dana bring us these amusing details:

On Thursday, Feb. 3 at 4:15 p.m., he had a meeting in Albany on "Public Authorities." No attendees are listed. But that same day, the board of the Port Authority voted in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's pick for Authority Chairman, David Samson.

On Friday, March 4, at 1:30 pm, the governor had a meeting about the vaguely defined topic, "Transporation and Infrastructure" at his New York City offices.

In April, May, June and July, there was no mention in his public schedules of "Ward," "Walder," "Port Authority," or "MTA."

On August 10, he made a "New York Remembers" announcement that included Robert Morris, a vice president at the Port Authority Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

There was some attention paid to the M.T.A. in the lead up to the Hurricane Irene shutdown, but otherwise it appears the governor has taken almost no notice of these agencies. That said, perhaps this is a good thing, given the relative repute of their directors. Yet for a politician who is known to be incredibly hands-on, that would seem strange.

With the appointment of a new M.T.A. chief forthcoming—and the 9/11 anniversary behind us—it would seem these are positions Governor Cuomo might be paying more attention to in the near future.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Get me my galoshes! (Getty)

With all the angst and frustration over Hurricane Irene, the city actually got off pretty good. At ground zero, precautions to protect the 9/11 memorial actually helped prepare the site for its opening in just over a week. But as Port Authority executive director and big man downtown Chris Ward told the audience at a New York Building Congress forum today, we were inches away from disaster.

"Thank god Irene didn't come over the sea wall at Battery Park City," the avowed atheist said. "I was down there at 2 A.M. watching the waters lap at the sea wall, and if the surge had come up over the Battery, across West Street and on to the site, it would have been an enormous amount of flooding. It could have been devastating. The waves were lapping right at the edge of the sea wall and going in about two or three feet, and there was a moment of, 'just stay there.' And it did, and we're very lucky."

Mr. Ward was the keynote speaker at the forum, which was held to introduce a new report highlighting the importance of public investment in infrastructure. Mr. Ward gave an animated speech that bordered on the political at times—more on that tomorrow—but his remarks about Irene were notable for the disaster averted.

"Like Satchel Page said, I'd rather be lucky than good," Mr. Ward added in his gravelly voice. We're pretty sure he thinks he's good, too.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

I've got a strong team behind me. (NY Sun)

With all his success at rebuilding the World Trade Center, Chris Ward has sometimes been criticized for not sharing the spotlight. But in Jim Dwyer's About New York column today—the first in months—Mr. Ward gives credit to at least three of the guys who helped solve one of the biggest challenges at the site: How to get the memorial plaza built by the 10th anniversary, instead of some time in 2013.

“Three engineers from the Port Authority — Mark Pagliettini, Tom O’Connor, and Dave Puza — were working on this,” he said. “Then Pagliettini said, ‘Maybe we can just build it from the top down.’ These three great engineers made it happen.”

That is why there is a plaza to stand on today.

A roof was put over a vast underground construction site. The plaza went on top of the roof. “All that stuff that is down underneath us is being built horizontally — it’s coming in from the sides,” Mr. Ward said.

Mr. Ward also shares some of his unsentimental thoughts on the site:

“We were free before 9/11, we were free after 9/11,” he said. “New Yorkers don’t need a tower named ‘freedom.’ New Yorkers need to know that we built it, that there’s a place to go and work.”

[...]

“What will it be?” Mr. Ward said. “It will be your conversation with New York City. Whether you lost someone, or whether you work here. Or you’re meeting someone for a date. We can finally shed all of that rhetoric that was so caught up in deciding the larger meaning. The larger meaning is going to be found in everybody’s day-to-day experience here.”

Larry Silverstein shared his own message on this last week with The Journal, namely that it is time to stop calling the World Trade Center "ground zero."

Now what do you think?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Nice mall. (PANYNJ)

Chris Ward's days as head of the Port Authority may be numbered, but he is determined to do as much as possible before he gets the boot sometime after the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Who knows, it might even save his job. In addition to driving World Trade Center ever-skyward and fixing up bus stations no one even knows existed, the Port Authority is now approaching a deal with an Australian mall operator to run the hip, new retail at the site.

The deal was rekindled in June, as Crain's reported at the time, and now The Journal has more details, along with the news that the ground zero retail is on the verge of being finalized, after it stalled out in 2008.

Retail would be spread throughout the complex. Some stores would line the multiple levels of the large, open atrium that will make up the $3.4 billion Santiago Calatrava-designed transit hub.

Pedestrian-only walkways would be lined with shops and outdoor cafes. Above ground, lower floors of office towers along Greenwich Street would be filled with shops and restaurants. Some would overlook the memorial currently under construction at the site. The complex has a target opening date of 2015.

Australia-based Westfield, which builds and operates shopping centers around the world and concessions at places such as John F. Kennedy International Airport, agreed this week to the terms of a deal. The company would contribute $612.5 million toward construction costs of 365,000 square feet of retail space.

In return, it would get a 50% stake in the development. The Port Authority would cover the rest of the total cost, which is expected to be $1.55 billion.

This used to be one of the most popular malls in the entire country—the neighboring World Financial Center is keenly aware of this fact—so it is easy to understand why Westfield wants in. However, there are extreme constraints on the design,  as the wayward Greek Orthodox church well knows, so it is not a perfect deal, either.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC