Now, its demolition seems likely to take longer than was expected just months ago. 

In June, officials said they expected the black building down by next spring, some eight-and-a-half years after it was damaged. But last month, deconstruction contractor Bovis Lend Lease filed a plan with the city that is considerably lengthier than it initially expected, and one person briefed on the filing said the plan would likely add an additional six months to the deconstruction schedule.

While the plan has not yet been approved—a Bovis spokeswoman said “discussions continue” over the deconstruction filing—an even longer deconstruction would come as a major symbolic and functional blow for Lower Manhattan. At almost every turn, the healing of this gigantic wound from 9/11 (which faces the southern edge of the World Trade Center site) has been prolonged. Since the fatal fire in August 2007, the project has been tripped up by an extraordinary level of regulation, and schedules seem to be pushed every few months.

After an accord in 2004 over the deconstruction, it was initially expected to be down by 2005, costing about $45 million. But since, the costs have risen constantly as the job proved more difficult than expected and regulation piled on after the fire. The total could come closer to $300 million (including the building purchase and other related costs), paid for by the federal government, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (which said in July it would need another $30 to $35 million in additional money to finish the job), and various contractors and insurers. All sides expect more lawsuits, to recover costs, once the building is down.

Throughout the process, the building has seen its share of allegations and findings of incompetence and wrongdoing by city officials and organized crime, and a Village Voice cover story by Wayne Barrett, who was baffled that the fire at the building hadn’t been a major scandal for Mayor Bloomberg. The lengthy and costly effort has also attracted the eye of the Inspector General of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is bankrolling much of the effort out of a fund dedicated to Lower Manahttan.

Added delays would further complicate the already-delayed World Trade Center redevelopment, as construction on a complex vehicle screening center has long been scheduled to begin on the site of the tower.

The deconstruction is the final step, as contractors have now gone through the extraordinarily time consuming process of removing any potentially toxic materials from the building, leaving the structure as a steel skeleton.

A spokesman for the city’s Department of Buildings, Tony Sclafani, said the demolition plan had yet to be approved. “They’ve submitted the demolition plan,” he said. “With any demolition project, there’s a back and forth between the department and the contractor.”

ebrown@observer.com

On Thursday, the agency handling the job, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, is planning for its board to authorize another $20 million to be paid to contractor Bovis Lend Lease for deconstruction, bringing the total price tag to $173 million, according to documents provided to LMDC board members. The request is not for any additional public money, according to an LMDC spokesman.

The unending takedown of the tower has proved an extraordinary headache, as the job has been filled with tremendous levels of regulation from a series of federal, state and city agencies in part due to the potential for toxins associated with the 9/11 attacks. While it had been coming down relatively swiftly by mid-2007, a fatal fire at the time halted deconstruction, and the tower still stands at the same height (the contractors have been going through the lengthy abatement process first, before deconstruction).

And still the cost may rise.

The funding for the demolition costs is quite complicated, involving a web of insurers, the contractor, the state and the federal government, and, according to the LMDC documents, the government agency did not need any more money this time around—it just needed to authorize the $20 million contract.

But it seems that sometime soon, more funding will indeed be needed, based on a note in the board documents:

 “LMDC staff estimates that in the future, it will need to identify $30 to $35 million in additional funding from claims against Bovis, Deutsche Bank, the Prior Insurers, or a re-allocation of HUD funds.”

That appears to mean that once LMDC's existing money for the project runs out and if it cannot retrieve any more money from insurers, it will need more money from the federal government, which is providing funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The note is also a portent of the lawsuits that are expected to come once the tower is down, as LMDC and HUD have said they expect that, through litigation, LMDC will try to recover some of the money it has spent from some of the other parties.

And this comes as Bovis, apparently, is having a whole other set of legal problems.

ebrown@observer.com

The new delay is the latest turn in what has become an ongoing menace of a project—one that has taken far longer than officials or construction industry executives ever imagined. First begun in 2005, the tower was on track to be down by early 2008. Initial work proved more regulation-heavy than first imagined, and then a fire in August 2007 that killed two firefighters stopped work for months. A new, more lengthy deconstruction plan followed, though it has taken far longer than initially scheduled.

The most recent delay comes as a result of a small electrical fire, which shut work down at the building in early April.  

“Bovis [the contractor] estimates that as a result of the electrical incident, deconstruction will not resume until mid-July 2009,” the LMDC wrote in its status update, emailed yesterday. “We have directed Bovis to take all appropriate action, including adding additional work shifts to the job, to enable them to resume deconstruction sooner.”

It will take an estimated six months to bring down the tower once deconstruction begins (the contractors are currently doing abatement work). Should it go past January, it would seem to delay the Port Authority’s schedule, as the agency needs the site cleared so it can build a Vehicle Security Center. 

130Liberty_ProgressReport_050609

“In this site, they’re going to have to have an engineer to come in and ensure that the electricity throughout the building is safe,” said Tony Sclafani, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Buildings. “After that’s done, we’re going to inspect.”

In 2007, the tower was quickly moving toward deconstruction until August of that year, when a fire broke out, killing two firefighters. Since, the job has become the subject of extraordinary regulatory scrutiny.  It's now going through a slower deconstruction process, in which contractors first strip the building essentially down to the steel, and then begin dismantling it. After well over a year of work, abatement of he building, known as 130 Liberty Street, was nearing completion, as it was slated to be finished at the end of April. Deconstruction was scheduled to start mid-May.  

Here’s a statement the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns the building, issued to the community today:

At approximately 2:45 AM this morning there was an electrical incident with a power distribution box. Personnel were evacuated from the building and the FDNY was notified and responded immediately. The cause of the incident is being investigated.  Work has been stopped at the direction the New York City Department of Buildings.

Among the steps the mayor plans to highlight are a rezoning of the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn; new energy efficiency requirements for existing buildings and property owners; a repeal of the state Wicks Law; and a reform of the pension system.

While a number of the initiatives were previously announced, such as a commitment to infrastructure, here’s a few notable points from the prepared text of the speech:

We’ve heard the call for the LMDC disbandment before, but the mayor hadn’t before said it should become part of the LMCCC, an LMDC subsidiary of sorts that is run jointly by the city and state.

Mr. Schick's departure comes more than seven months after the Paterson administration announced he would resign his position; in May, the state announced he would leave in September.

At the ESDC, Mr. Schick, once a top prosecutor in the state attorney general's office under Eliot Spitzer, oversaw state involvement in projects such as Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, the development of Governors Island, and Columbia University's West Harlem expansion.

He was also known as Governor Spitzer's man downtown, running the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and attempting to attract and retain large financial firms including JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Schick was involved in getting the bank to agree to build a new tower by the World Trade Center site, a nonbinding commitment that seems highly unlikely to happen at this point. He pushed—ultimately successfully—for candor with dates and deadlines at the World Trade Center, and he also has overseen the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building by ground zero following a fatal fire in the summer of 2007, a demolition that has taken far longer than expected.

Particularly during the Spitzer administration, Mr. Schick showed a tendency to spar with other officials, bringing a prosecutorial style to skirmishes both within state government and outside of it. In turf battles and other fights, he routinely clashed with then-ESDC downstate chairman Pat Foye, then-Port Authority executive director Tony Shorris, then-Lower Manhattan Construction and Command Center director Charlie Maikish, and numerous city officials. He was also said to have clashed with Marisa Lago, the new chief executive of the ESDC, according to a person familiar with the dynamic.

Still, he forged important alliances in his time, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver—a powerful voice in Lower Manhattan—has repeatedly advocated for both Mr. Schick and the LMDC, which the mayor has attacked as an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

Ms. Lago has been conducting interviews with candidates to oversee the agency's downstate operations, according to people familiar with the situation.

Mr. Schick’s e-mailed letter to colleagues, sent this evening:

That puts him at odds with Mayor Bloomberg, who today called in an op-ed for Governor Paterson to disband the agency, which has divvied up much of the federal money that went to Lower Manhattan following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Mr. Silver, who has previously expressed support for LMDC chairman Avi Schick, had this to say this afternoon:

"Speaker Silver said that he welcomes the sense of urgency that the mayor has expressed regarding progress at ground zero. Speaker Silver believes that it is desirable to keep the agency that is responsible for coordinating city, state and federal efforts at ground zero, the LMDC, which has representation from both the city and state government."

Earlier this afternoon, Governor Paterson put out a statement responding to the mayor's op-ed, in which he appeared to imply he will deal with the issue after the Port Authority releases a report on the redevelopment this month.

Absent from the governor's 204-word statement: any mention of the LMDC.

Saying that he looks forward to a report on the World Trade Center redevelopment later this month, Mr. Paterson appeared to be putting off any decision either way on the matter until October.

Statement below.

From the op-ed:

Mr. Bloomberg also called firmly for the Port Authority to finish the memorial by the 10-year anniversary, and to scale back the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH hub, though exactly to what degree the mayor wants the project cut is unclear.

The LMDC was formed after September 11, 2001, to disburse federal funds and incentives, and to assist with the redevelopment at ground zero. Unlike the bi-state Port Authority, which is controlled by a semi-independent board and the governors of New York and New Jersey, the LMDC is almost entirely under the control of the governor.

Toward the end of his time in office in 2006, Governor Pataki called for the dissolution of the LMDC, an agency that then-gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer derided as an emblem of government waste called it an "absolute failure."

But when he came to office, Mr. Spitzer changed course and put his own appointees in the agency, including chairman Avi Schick and president David Emil.

"LMDC will be the vehicle through which Governor Spitzer expresses his vision and articulates his voice in Lower Manhattan," Mr. Schick said at the time.

Since, the agency has continued to disburse some remaining federal money, assisted in a late 2007 attempt to woo Merrill Lynch to the World Trade Center, and is attempting to put together a complex plan for a bus garage and new residential development by the entrance ramp for the Holland Tunnel.

Still, many officials and others involved in the redevelopment at ground zero describe LMDC's role there as a murky one, as the agency has no direct authority except over the dismantling of the former Deutsche Bank tower.

The city and LMDC have sparred in the past, in part over the lengthy process of receiving a new abatement plan from the federal EPA for the Deutsche Bank building after a fatal fire there in August 2007.

We've put out a few requests for comment, and are awaiting responses. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has gone to bat for Mr. Schick in the past, and with his job as Empire State Development Corporation president soon coming to an end, he could be without a role at all working for the state if the mayor's plan is realized.

After a fire at the building killed two firefighters this summer, the deconstruction of the damaged tower was put on hold while officials sorted through the high-profile mess. On top of being strongly associated with the fatal fire and a couple other attention-grabbing accidents at the site, one of the subcontractors on the job, John Galt, was tainted by scandal and mob ties, as the Times revealed, and was booted off the deconstruction team.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation then selected a new general contractor last month, LVI Services, Inc., which plans to mostly remove asbestos before dismantling the building.

Press release below