But today, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey doesn’t brag about the records it sets. One World Trade Center, born the Freedom Tower and taken over by the Port in 2006, will be the most expensive office building in the world. The “Vehicle Security Center,” an underground tour bus garage and road network serving the World Trade Center complex, may very well be the most expensive parking garage in history.

And then there’s the PATH station to New Jersey, the most troubled project at one of the world’s most troubled construction sites. At $3.74 billion, plus another $200 million in contingencies, the “Transportation Hub” at the World Trade Center—not even the busiest station in the Financial District—will be far and away the most expensive train station built in modern history.

The Hub, as it’s known in Port Authority speak, will be the crowning artistic statement of the World Trade Center complex, perhaps the last grand gesture at a site that was supposed to be full of them. “Let me draw for you what I cannot say,” its architect, Santiago Calatrava, said at the unveiling in 2004. Then, wrote Newsweek, “he fluently sketched a child releasing a bird—a spellbinding image that had inspired his design.”

When the grandiose ambitions and the emotions of 9/11 met with the famously flush Port Authority, disaster struck. Mission creep, an inattentive governor and extreme politicization sent costs skyward, eventually outstripping even the record-setting resources devoted to it. Its wings had to be stilled and its supports thickened, the bird in flight devolving into an immobilized stegosaurus. The world’s most expensive train station, it seems, was not expensive enough to contain all of New York’s dreams.

For nearly $4 billion, most cities could build entire subway lines. Even the MTA, which frequently breaks cost records of its own, managed to build its Fulton Center hub, a renovation of five densely tangled lines, for $1.4 billion. Nobody’s subway tunnels cost more than the MTA’s, but even they could fund most of the second phase of the Second Avenue subway, from 96th Street to 125th, with that kind of cash.

The World Trade Center PATH station is actually not a particularly busy one. “No one intelligently could say that the level of design and architecture associated with it was commensurate with the level of usage,” said one former commissioner. (Like nearly everyone we interviewed for this story, he would only speak on the condition of anonymity.)

The Port Authority likes to play up the significance of the station by calling it Manhattan’s third-largest transit hub. That’s a tenuous claim at best. Were the PATH system to be integrated into the New York City subway (no, nearly $4 billion does not buy a free transfer to the subway), the World Trade Center stop would barely crack the top 10 busiest stations.

Once a bird in flight, the Hub has devolved into an immobile, skeletal stegosaurus.

With its contribution to the project, which was supposed to cost it virtually nothing, ballooning to nearly $1 billion, the Port Authority now finds itself unable to fund the sorts of regional transportation projects that have traditionally justified its existence.

In 2009, to pay for ballooning World Trade Center costs, the Port cut $5 billion from its 10-year capital plan. That pleased the bond markets temporarily as Moody’s upgraded the Port Authority’s bond rating the next year, only to knock it down again in 2012 due to still-increasing World Trade Center costs and the fear that the Port’s seemingly limitless ability to raise bridge and tunnel tolls may in fact be limited.

From the proposed ARC rail tunnel beneath the Hudson into Midtown (canceled by Chris Christie in 2010) and an extension of the PATH train to Newark Liberty International Airport (at a cost of around $500 million) to a thorough renovation of La Guardia Airport ($1 billion in capital funding was cut in 2009), the region has needs, and the Port Authority is struggling to fund them.

Santiago Calatrava.

Any discussion of the cost of the Hub must start with Santiago Calatrava. He was given the job just two years after the attacks, when emotions were running high and George Pataki was eyeing a presidential bid. A starchitect of the highest order, Mr. Calatrava was known for his complex feats of engineering in fashioning soaring, animalistic structures, with a specialty in public works projects.

The architecture critics were smitten. The design, The New York Times’s architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote, “should satisfy those who believe that buildings planned for ground zero must aspire to a spiritual dimension,” and he hoped that New Yorkers would detect the “metaphysical element” in Mr. Calatrava’s work. His design was supposed to spur development throughout the neighborhood and lead lower Manhattan, still reeling from the attacks, out of its malaise. To the extent that the critics were worried, it was about how it would fit in with the architectural context of the site, not its cost.

Mr. Calatrava would eventually become to be remembered with regret among those in his hometown of Valencia, where his City of Arts and Sciences ended up costing more than three times its initial $400 million budget. But at the time, Mr. Calatrava could do no wrong.

In New York, his starting point was far higher than it had been in Valencia. The Federal Transit Administration pledged $1.9 billion for the project early on, and the Port Authority would throw in another few hundred million—a number that would climb much higher. (The feds, acting as enablers to the Port’s profligacy, ended up quietly throwing in another billion dollars to cover some of the cost overruns.)

But at this point, years before construction was to start, the project was, as one former Port Authority commissioner put it, “proposed to get an expansive federal grant at a point in time when nobody really knew what it would cost in its entirety.”

The feds were supposed to pay for nearly the whole thing, and the number was more of a placeholder. The fate of the site was still in jeopardy—Silverstein Properties (which had signed a lease for the site just months before the 2001 attacks) and the Port Authority were still fighting over who would build what, the tower designs hadn’t been finalized and security issues hadn’t been thought through. The Port Authority didn’t have a good grip on what the project would entail—a spokesman told The Observer that the initial estimates for the Hub were “unrealistic.”

Of the nearly $4 billion eventually budgeted for the Hub, a fair amount—the Port Authority has never clearly broken down the costs for the public, but the number likely has 10 digits—went toward common infrastructure that, in any other project without the emotions and political backing of the World Trade Center site, might not have passed the FTA’s muster.

There was $75 million, for example, that was spent to build a deck over the Hub to support the memorial. Another few hundred million are going to infrastructure costs on Greenwich Street with only a tenuous connection to the Hub.

The site, shared among various public and private entities and budgets, includes a lot of common infrastructure that appears to have been disproportionately billed to the Port Authority. The Hub is shouldering significant costs in rebuilding the site’s foundation, and it is also building a web of pedestrian passageways leading from the Hub to the private office towers on the site and across West Street to Brookfield Properties’ World Financial Center.

To win these concessions, Larry Silverstein took advantage of the Port Authority’s eagerness to show some progress on the site. He played hardball with the government from 2004 to 2006, a period of acrimonious negotiations between Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority over who would be responsible for what aspects of the site.

His lobbyists were the best of the best. He hired Global Strategy Group, whose clients have included Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, to lobby for him, along with David Samson, who would go on to become the chairman of the Port Authority.

Given the choice between making Larry Silverstein pay his way and trying to get the site finished as quickly as possible, the Port chose the more expensive option. (Whether it worked is debatable—3 World Trade Center is a stump, and 2 World Trade Center is nonexistent; both are awaiting tenants to restart construction, with delivery now slated for 2015 and 2016.) The feds were throwing even more money at the Port Authority—nearly $2.9 billion—and it was the path of least resistance.

After responsibility for the site was ironed out, there was one last chance to bring the Transportation Hub’s cost back down to earth. George Pataki had promised the moon during his years in office, but Eliot Spitzer and his Port Authority chief, Anthony Shorris, wanted to keep the project within its budget.

Mr. Spitzer took a more business-minded approach to the Transportation Hub than Mr. Pataki. “The best way to explain the cost of downtown was the opportunity cost—what was not done because you had to do that?” said Mr. Spitzer in a telephone interview with The Observer. “Do you do Calatrava, or do you do the rebuild of Penn Station? That’s the way I forced us to think about it.”

His pick for executive director of the Port Authority was Anthony Shorris, who spent most of the ’80s as Ed Koch’s deputy budget director and finance commissioner and the early ’90s as the Port Authority’s first deputy executive director.

The public hadn’t yet been clued in, but costs were spiraling out of control. Working with Steven Plate, the director for World Trade Center construction at the Port, Mr. Shorris set to work on a plan that, he thought, would keep the project within its budget, which at the time topped out at around $2.5 billion, without the Port Authority having to contribute $1 billion of its own money. “I was determined not to severely diminish the Port Authority’s capacity because of the World Trade Center,” Mr. Shorris told The Observer.

Mr. Shorris wanted to strip the concourse and platforms of the most expensive Calatrava-designed elements and make use of more of the existing PATH infrastructure that had been serving commuters for a decade.

He told The New York Times in April of 2008 that he would put the full-fat project out to bid, but that “we want to make sure we have that alternative in place that does price out at $2.5 billion, so we know that we have an option to go to.”

But that was the last the public heard of Mr. Shorris’s ideas to keep the Transportation Hub within its budget. Eliot Spitzer resigned less than a month later, and Mr. Shorris resigned several days after that.

When David Paterson took office, he hired Christopher Ward to head the Port Authority. Where Mr. Shorris planned and consulted, Mr. Ward built. The Daily News, at the end of his tenure, called him a guy who “got things done,” but rapid progress came at a price.

Decisions under Mr. Paterson’s watch, said one former commissioner, “were really very heavily driven by the optics.” It was seven years after the attacks, and nothing on the site had even started to rise from the ground—an embarrassment to New York City. Mr. Paterson, who would not comment for this article, wanted tangible signs of success, said several sources close to the project, and he was less concerned than Mr. Spitzer about the financial hit to the Port Authority.

“Candidly,” said one former commissioner, Mr. Ward “was building it for you guys”—i.e., the press. New York’s media lambasted both the skyrocketing costs and cascading delays at the project, but it cheered Chris Ward for fast-tracking construction.

With the World Trade Center memorial sitting partly on top of the Transportation Hub, the logical order of construction was to finish the Hub first, and then worry about the at-grade memorial elements. Mr. Paterson’s command to Chris Ward to “get this fucking memorial open by 9/11”—the 10th anniversary of the attacks—meant the order of construction had to be reversed, with a deck built over the unfinished Hub to support the weight of the memorial.

Aside from his order to finish the memorial by the September 11, 2011, David Paterson was by most accounts not terribly concerned with how much it would all cost, or indeed with the World Trade Center site much at all. “We got lots of visits from Spitzer’s guys and Pataki’s guys,” said one former commissioner, “but I don’t believe we ever got any visit from Paterson’s.”

The hard costs of rushing the memorial were not significant in the context of a project measured in the billions of dollars—only $75 million, according to Port Authority documents—but the shift in focus from cutting costs to hurrying construction meant that Mr. Shorris’s value engineering of the below-grade elements, from which the majority of project costs would come, largely went out the window.

With the Port’s permission, Mr. Calatrava went all out in his design for the train station.

The Port Authority under David Paterson and Chris Ward did make some cuts to the design, including, notably, the now-infamous devolution of the light bird into a heavy stegosaurus. But the majority of Mr. Calatrava’s elaborate underground designs, throughout the web of passageways and retail space, were retained. The cost is now closing in on $4 billion, and Mr. Shorris’s more ambitious plan to keep it within its budget died a quiet death.

In the private sector, these things often turn out differently. Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn is one example. Despite Bruce Ratner’s “man crush” on Frank Gehry, in the words of one of his employees, and the nearly $100 million in fees that he paid for the design of the undulating apartment towers and stadium, Mr. Ratner didn’t hesitate to drop the starchitect from Atlantic Yards when the costs got too high—costs that were partly the result of Mr. Gehry’s insistence on designing the interior elements down to minute details like the stadium seats, something that should sound familiar to the Port Authority.

As an independent authority without access to the treasures of New York and New Jersey, the Port Authority is somewhat insulated from criticism and oversight. Its money comes from the cars that stream through its bridges and tunnels—the George Washington Bridge, with its $13 cash toll, is its biggest moneymaker, bringing in around half a billion a year. Its costs are hidden not only from the users of the World Trade Center buildings and Transportation Hub, but also from legislators in New York and New Jersey.

In its early years, the Port exerted its freedom from political pressure and acted independently of the governors. But decades later, it’s turned into something else entirely. Too juicy a target to remain autonomous, the Port Authority has devolved into a sort of slush fund for the governors of New York and New Jersey, its revenues out of reach of the states’ legislatures.

And then there’s the question of whether the Hub will have the intended uplifting effect on development in the Financial District. Office leasing is weak across the whole city, and there are huge vacancies in the towers that are going up (while half of them are not). Already chock full of architectural landmarks, the Financial District isn’t Valencia or Bilbao; it doesn’t need a monument to put it on the map.

Despite the staggering cost increases, some at the Port Authority—even those highly critical of the project’s cost—see it ultimately as a success. “At the end of the day,” said one former commissioner, “we didn’t fail—it got built.” (“It’s getting built” would be more accurate; the Hub is just now starting to rise above ground level and isn’t scheduled to open for at least another two years.)

These low expectations are a testament to the tremendous failings of the project—that the world’s most expensive train station, at nearly twice its initial budget despite design cutbacks, can be viewed in any light as a success.

Maybe, some years into the future (the Port Authority says two and a half), with tens of thousands of commuters from New Jersey pouring out from beneath the wings of Mr. Calatrava’s would-be concrete and glass bird, nobody will remember the cost.

But every time they can’t get a seat on a PATH train at 2 a.m., or get held up by delays in the 100-year-old North River Tunnels to Midtown, or emerge from a decrepit La Guardia Airport, they’ll have the Transportation Hub and other World Trade Center projects to thank.

At $3.7 billion, Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center PATH terminal will be the world's most expensive subway station when completed.

Santiago Calatrava does not have the best reputation when it comes to designing practical public works. The Valencian architect has achieved great success in winning design commissions across the globe—especially for public works projects like bridges, train stations and cultural centers—but has also attracted criticism for his budget-busting designs.

Mr. Calatrava is practically a persona non grata in Valencia (he is now based in Zurich), where the leftist Esquerra Unida political party has started a website called Calatrava te la clava—loosely translated as "Calatrava bleeds you dry"—on which it accuses the architect of making 100 million euros off the Valencian City of Arts and Sciences, a cultural complex that is widely seen as a symbol of excess, built during Spain's boom years but now a drain on the government's finances as it undergoes a period of fiscal austerity.

He has also come under scrutiny in Italy, where a prosecutor put Mr. Calatrava under investigation for design defects and cost overruns on his Ponte della Costituzione, a pedestrian bridge in Venice.

Mr. Calatrava's most expensive project is found not in Europe, but in lower Manhattan. He was chosen during the heady post-9/11 days to design the World Trade Center PATH terminal—a project whose costs have since ballooned to $3.7 billion, making it by far the most expensive subway station in the world, even after its elaborate, movable roof was scaled back and made stationary.

"There's no question that the World Trade Center"—half of whose costs are in the PATH terminal—"has been a drain on the Port Authority's technological as well as financial resources," said Denise Richardson, managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York, to the Wall Street Journal.

So it came as a surprise that the Municipal Art Society, perhaps the city's foremost independent planning group, chose Santiago Calatrava as one of four architects—alongside Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects and modernist giants SOM—to present proposals for a new Penn Station, to be unveiled on May 29.

The Observer spoke with Vin Cipolla, president of MAS, about the choice yesterday. He defended the inclusion of Mr. Calatrava in what he called a "provocation" on Penn Station, saying, "I'm a huge fan of Calatrava's work."

Benjamin Kabak, who runs the New York City transit blog Second Avenue Sagas, was not such a huge fan. "Even involving Calatrava" in the Penn Station challenge, he told The Observer, "underscores the utter contempt for transit improvements that some of the city's leading institutions have." He suggested that money should be spent on increasing transit capacity, especially beneath the Hudson River, not aesthetics—and especially not on an extravagant Santiago Calatrava design.

Mr. Cipolla took issue with that characterization. "I don't believe there's a tradeoff," he said. "I think a compelling design is an essential part of what is successful infrastructure."

Some call it a bird, some call it a stegosaurus. Ms. McKissack Daniel calls it late for dinner.

At $3.4 billion (or is it $3.8 billion?), the new Port Authority Trans-Hudson terminal at the World Trade Center will very likely be the single most expensive subway station on earth. Riders traveling between the Financial District and New Jersey have been using the $323 million temporary station since it opened a decade ago. And if you believe Cheryl McKissack Daniel, a subcontractor who did a short Q&A with The New York Times, the project will be delayed another 18 months due to damage incurred during Hurricane Sandy.

"The World Trade Center started out being about 48 months and quickly grew to about six years," Ms. McKissack Daniel told The Times. "And now, after Sandy, that added another year and a half to the whole project. Everything was flooded—everything was new and flooded. And all of that had to be replaced because it’s all electrical work." The station was reportedly under 25 feet of water after the hurricane.

Before Hurricane Sandy, the new station was scheduled to open in 2015. An 18-month delay would push that date back to 2016, at the earliest.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, however, denied that there is any delay, and insisted that the station is still anticipated to be completed by 2015. They have not yet, however, responded to inquiries by The Observer regarding possible cost escalations to be borne by the Port Authority in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

The project's main contractor, Tishman Construction, a division of AECOM, also denied that there was any delay, sending The Observer a statement saying, "Ms. McKissack Daniel incorrectly informed the New York Times about the completion date of the WTC Transportation Hub."

Ms. McKissack Daniel was unavailable to comment by press time.

The new Santiago Calatrava-designed terminal—a relatively small station, which currently serves only two lines with five tracks—has already been scaled back due to costs. The "wings" of the station, which resembles a giant rib cage, were once meant to open and close, but the design was neutered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey under the leadership of Chris Ward, in favor of a stationary structure.

Especially since the global downturn, Mr. Calatrava has been criticized in his home country of Spain for his extravagant designs and ballooning costs. Last year, a left-wing Catalan political party started a website called Calatrava te la clava, which roughly translates to "Calatrava bleeds you dry."

Update: Blogger Ben Kabak at Second Avenue Sagas claims to have some inside info on how the construction is going—and he says Sandy isn't the only problem they're having:

I’ve heard from a few sources that Sandy isn’t the only factor behind this delay. These sources claim that Santiago Calatrava’s influence (and meddling) have led to some redesigns and cost increases. Additionally, others have questioned Downtown Design Partnership’s ability to manage public perception and the behind-the-scenes timeline.

The space, by the way, is still available for lease, for those so enticed.

Speaking of the top of the World Trade Center: last week, while the rest of us were busy hustling out of town for Thanksgiving, some pieces of the spire that will crown the city's tallest tower (for now) set sail on a barge from Valleyfield, Quebec, where they were fabricated. It's the first real look at the spire in real life, and those steel beams sort of force the question: is that really anything more than a glorified antenna?

Update: The 102nd floor is not for lease, as it is one of the upper floors that will be used for an observation deck/restaurant/vertigo-inducing tourist trap. Which is kind of good news because it means we will all be able to enjoy the space—for a price, just like at the Empire State Building or Top of the Rock. The top-most office floor is floor 93 (there are a number of mechanical floors between that and the observation extravaganza on three floors, though there are also some floors missing).

Weathering the storm. (Reeve Jolliffe/Flickr)

After the Hudson flooded into the World Trade Center during Hurricane Sandy, it was remarkable that the site had been pumped out and work had resumed within days rather than weeks. Now, construction has recommenced in earnest, as some 750 construction workers returned to the site to finish the work of building 1 World Trade Center, the Vehicle Screening Center, the PATH station and other pieces of the 16-acre site.

Governor Cuomo announced the return of workers earlier today, as well as the fact that 95 percent of the World Trade Center site was now dry. Damage to the site, and the storms impact to the construction time table, is still being assessed. The resumption of work means cranes are in operation yet again on the site.

The hardest hit part of the site was the subterranean 9/11 Museum, located beneath the Memorial plaza. Some 16 million gallons had filled the structure, rising some 7 feet across the site. It took a team from the Port Authority, private contractors and the Army Corps of Engineers pumping non-stop for almost a week to get all the water out.

On Saturday, standing at the m0uth of the still-flooded Hugh Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Governor Cuomo spoke dramatically of watching the rivers meet and flood into the World Trade Center site.

"The World Trade Center site was frightening," Cuomo said. "At the cresting of the tide on Monday night, the Hudson River was basically pouring into the World Trade Center site."

"The World Trade Center site had 28 feet of water in the bottom," Cuomo said.

Now there is almost none, yet the latest sign that life is getting back to normal after the craziest week in at least a decade.

Somehow no matter what happens in this town, the World Trade Center always has a way of being at the center of it.

At his press briefing this evening, Gov. Cuomo made a surprise announcement, actually in the middle of talking about what dismal shape the PATH train is in—there appear to be some five miles worth of flooding, the length the line under the Hudson from New York to New Jersey, so that is one thing that will probably be submerged for some time to come. But a place that will not be is the World Trade Center, which, after flooding a good 15 to 20 feet across the site only three days ago, is now dry and in working order.

"Work will recommence at the Ground Zero site tonight," Gov. Cuomo declared. I was just congratulating some of the workers; there was tremendous flooding at the Ground Zero site. We went from seeing the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel turned into a flume, we walked up the World Trade Center site, where water was cascading into the site from every imaginable angle, at such a decibel level it was disorienting. The entire site was flooded."

But through an almost miraculous, and certainly Herculean, pumping and recovery effort, led in part by the Army Corps of Engineers, the site has been cleared in a fraction of the time anticipated. "They originally anticipated it would be two to three weeks before they could get back to work," the governor said. "But instead of two to three weeks, they've gotten it done in three or four days, and the work will recommence tonight on the site, and you'll see light on again at the site."

And indeed we did on the way home, along with a few other buildings way downtown, including the Goldman Sachs headquarters, the American International Building with its red spire and 7 World Trade, with its roof lit up bright as a candle. It just so happens that earlier in the day, The Observer spotted a construction lift in operation on Larry Silverstein's World Trade Center tower 4, but it was not clear if it was an inspection or construction work.

While it could still be days, if not longer, before downtown finally gets all its lights back, it is nice to see these buildings back up, especially given their symbolic nature. "The Ground Zero site will be illuminated once again," Gov. Cuomo said. "New York goes back to work."

Flooded. (Photo: Getty)

According to Senator Chuck Schumer, the federal government will soon begin the arduous task of returning floodwaters back to the Atlantic Ocean after Hurricane Sandy's surge flooded key transportation arteries earlier this week.

“In the past hour, I have received an update from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about the federal de-watering efforts happening in New York City," Mr. Schumer said in a statement this afternoon.  "A team of experts from Illinois and contractors from around the country are making their way to Lower Manhattan as we speak. Significant assets like pumps and de-watering equipment should arrive in Manhattan by this evening. The Corps is confident that they can begin pumping water by tomorrow morning."

Mr. Schumer said the priority will be pumping the salt water out of two tunnels and the World Trade Center site.

"The city has identified three major priority areas for pumping--the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, Battery Park Tunnel and the World Trade Center," he continued. "This is a critical mission that I know the Army Corps and FEMA are taking very seriously and I want to thank these federal agencies for working so diligently with the state and the city.”

Watch your back, Centrury 21! (Port Authority)

Cortlandt Way is between Tower 4 and Tower 3. (WTC Progress)

Until the towers fell, no one particularly loved the World Trade Center. It served as a useful landmark but was otherwise too big, too empty, too cold. Well, except for the underground shopping center, which was one the busiest in the country. Numerous brands had their top-grossing stores at the World Trade Center.

Today, retail may be the least obvious part of the redevelopment of Ground Zero, as the memorial bustles with people, the museum awaits completion and two of the four new towers have already taken their place on the skyline. But shopping will still be an important part of the new World Trade Center, just as it was with the old one.

Today, the Port Authority moved closer to realizing every shopaholic’s dream (and really, how many New Yorkers aren’t shopaholics?) by authorizing construction for Cortlandt Way. An above-ground shopping concourse running along between Towers 3 and 4 where Cortlandt Street would be if it continued onto the site, it will serve as an anchor for the retail throughout the site, including the below-ground portions between and within the towers. The new shops are also seen as a catalyst for retail development throughout Lower Manhattan.

“Cortlandt Way will be a world-class shopping destination for residents of the local neighborhoods and for the millions of visitors who come to the World Trade Center site each year,” Port Authority executive director Pat Foye said in a statement. “It will continue the ongoing restoration of Lower Manhattan’s street life by providing a unique shopping experience in one of the most well-known locations in the world.”

When complete, the project will offer 16,000 square feet of new retail space along Cortlandt Way as well as on parallel Church and Greenwich Streets. It will be operated by Westfield, the Australian-based mall giant that won a contract from the Port for the lucrative retail spaces throughout the site.

Tower 4 is nearing completion, but the future of Tower 3 remains uncertain as Larry Silverstein still looks for an anchor tenant for the building. As The Commercial Observer recently reported, GroupM is looking at a large enough block of space to get the tower going, but if not, the show must go on.

But because of the complex, interconnected nature of the World Trade Center site, features like the new PATH station and the mall rely on mechanical systems in Towers 2 and 3 to become operational. That is why Mr. Silverstein has promised to build Tower 2 up to street level and Tower 3 up to eight stories. Otherwise, it would hobble the entire site.

Still, it is good to know that with the construction of Cortlandt Way, the so-called stumps will not be barren as some had feared, assuming nothing is built above them. They will be something much greater—that most New York of institutions, the humble store.

Turns out this was not some sick joke. As is well-known (from the various signs he has hung in his windows over the years), Mr. Simmons, the rap mogul, lives across the street at 114 Liberty Street. Or rather used to—the Def Jammer is trying to sell the place for $11 million as he moves out to the West Coast for good.

As the lift made its way up the side of the lovely office tower, there he was. Not Mr. Simmons—though there was a woman sitting outside, smoking and talking on a phone—but the Buddha. And a big Buddha at that. Sitting, it looked to be about six feet tall.

This also reveals another nice amenity to the space so far underplayed: views into 4 World Trade Center, along with the rest of the 16-acre site. Though that also means the thousands of Port Authority employees who are moving in can see you, too. So much for naked sunbathing.

The museum (at right) is coming back to life. (Getty)

It is one of those September 11 bright clear mornings today. Perhaps the sun is shining a little bit brighter because after nearly a year of delays, construction is set to resume at the 9/11 Museum at ground zero.

The museum was supposed to have opened today, a year after the memorial plaza on which it sits finally opened to the public, but a dispute over who owed whom millions of dollars in unpaid construction costs halted construction last fall, and the site has sat dormant ever since. For a time it looked like nothing would happen as pressure mounted going into the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but an agreement was reached this weekend between Governor Andrew Cuomo, who shares control of the Port Authority, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who oversees the 9/11 Memorial Foundation.

The foundation has agreed to stop seeking $17 million in funds it believes the Port owes it for construction work it did on the complex 16-acre site—since everything is interconnected, the boundaries and work orders can easily blur. In exchange, the Port will begin overseeing work on the museum by the end of the month and will continue to do so until the project is completed. A new opening date has not been set.

Governor Cuomo, along with Governor Chris Christie, have been critical of the project for costing tax payers additional public funds, billions of dollars of which have been sunk into rebuilding the World Trade Center, including suggestions that toll hikes last year on Port Authority Hudson River crossings resulted from the rebuilding. To ensure no extra funds go to the project, a special eight-member advisory panel will be established to keep an eye on the continuing construction, including monthly updates to the Port from the foundation.

"Over the last few years, we have made extraordinary progress at Ground Zero and today's agreement is yet another milestone in our work to finally complete the site as a place where people from around the world can come to work, visit and remember," Governor Cuomo said in a statement released last night. "By ensuring that no additional public funds are spent to complete the memorial and museum, today's agreement puts in place a critical and long overdue safeguard to finally protect toll payers and taxpayers from bearing further costs, and, at the same time, put the project on a path for completion."

The museum still faces challenges, such as who will run it (the governors have been lobbying for the National Parks Service to step in, which would help provide federal funds). After all, the AP revealed yesterday it will cost upwards of $60 million to operate the memorial and museum. The wire points out that Gettysburg gets $8.4 million per year, the U.S.S. Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor costs $3.6 million while Arlington Cemetary gets $45 million and saw almost as many visitors, 4 million compared to 4.5 million at ground zero.

Then again, all those downtown visitors had to file through a tight security line that can take up to an hour to get through. Imagine when the project is finished and flooded with visitors in the nation's biggest city. Nevermind that this is a complex, urban setting, rather than a bucolic park. We shall see.

Mayor Bloomberg certainly thinks it is worth it, as his statement yesterday made clear: "The museum is important to the families of those who died on 9/11 - they've contributed photos and memories of their lost loved ones, who deserve a thoughtful tribute. The museum is important to the historical record and will preserve materials and artifacts of great significance that tell the story of what happened on that terrible day. The museum is important to the country and the world because it helps us remember that freedom is precious."

Now if only they could figure out what to do with The Sphere.