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Deutsche Bank Work to Recommence Shortly Nearly three months after the fire that killed two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank building, decontamination and deconstruction work has yet to recommence at the 130 Liberty Street building and it is only now being completely sealed, In a meeting with Community Board 1’s World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee on Nov. 5, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation President David Emil said work was progressing to seal the building’s windows with plastic and metal panels. Following speculation that the sealed fire doors used to maintain positive air-pressure in the building might have contributed to the deaths of the firefighters, Emil said work is also in progress to create a fire-rated stairway up to the 20th floor of the building. Once these preparations are complete, workers can once again begin decontaminating and deconstructing the building, though Emil offered no guarantees that those two processes will proceed sequentially rather than simultaneously, as the Community Board has demanded. “We haven’t made any final decision on the order of abatement and demolition,” Emil told the board. Emil was similarly uncertain about when the building’s demolition will finally be finished. “We expect the complete decontamination by early spring,” he said. “If the building were down by June or July, I for one would be very happy.” But there were signs that very week that the Deutsche Bank deconstruction site remains riven by the same inter-agency disagreements that plagued it immediately after the fire in August, as federal environmental officials accused LMDC leadership of freezing them out of safety planning for the site. On Nov. 8, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator, Alan Steinberg, sent LMDC Chairman Avi Schick a letter complaining that the LMDC was no longer consulting with the agency in its planning on the building. “LMDC has abandoned the review and acceptance process,” Steinberg wrote, threatening that his agency “is prepared to utilize its statutory authorities, as necessary [...] to ensure that LMDC and its contractors utilize best management practices in all phases of the work.” LMDC spokesman Errol Cockfield dismissed the letter as “much ado about nothing,” and said that it arose from a misunderstanding that has since been resolved. “To date the City, EPA and all stakeholders have approved all work that has taken place at the site and LMDC will continue to ensure that city, state and federal regulators participate as they have done throughout this project so that all environmental issues are properly addressed,” Cockfield told the Trib. At its meeting on Nov. 8, the LMDC board approved millions of dollars in additional expenses to cover the impact of the fire. Among those expenditures requested by LMDC Chairman Avi Schick was: $1 million to the law firm Dechert LLP for emergency services in the wake of the fire; an additional $5.8 million to the LMDC’s air-quality monitoring contract; more than $1.7 million in extra fees to URS, a consulting firm helping to oversee the project; more than half a million dollars more for ongoing scaffolding rental; and an additional $1.3 million to Stier Andeson LLC, which provides “integrity monitoring” on the site. Schick said the increases were meant both to cover the extended duration of the work after the long post-fire hiatus, and to pay for an increased level of services to improve safety at the site. But while the added costs are steep, Emil reassured the board that some of these expenditures will probably come back to the LMDC’s coffers eventually. “We believe we are indemnified for some of the damages under our insurance and through our contract with Bovis,” Emil said, referring to Bovis Lend-Lease, the LMDC’s lead contractor on the deconstruction. “We suspect a substantial amount of these funds will ultimately be recouped.” Just how much might be recouped, and from whom, Emil declined to say when meeting with CB1 members Nov. 5.
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