Anger At MTA Over Scapped Plans For Domed Transit Hub

By Nick Pinto
POSTED MARCH 1, 2008

Downtown residents and business leaders gave Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials an earful before Community Board 1’s World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee after learning that the agency wants to scrap its plans for a grand domed building over the Fulton Street Transit Center.

Originally scheduled for completion last year, the hub was billed a centerpiece of Downtown revitalization. Above an underground nexus linking 12 subway lines, MTA planners envisioned a grand glass dome rising 150 feet above the street, spreading natural light over the station and a bustling integrated retail center.

The project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns, however, and had been scaled back several times already before the MTA announced in January that it might cancel its plans for the ambitious building altogether.

Bill Wheeler, the agency’s director of planning, told the committee last month that the decision to scale back the project was driven largely by the steep increase in construction costs.

“We are in a very superheated construction market right now,” Wheeler said. “The cost of steel has sharply increased, and with the number of projects going on Downtown, resources and contractors are more expensive.”

The MTA said the only viable bid for the building’s construction was for $870 million, more than double the $370 million the agency had budgeted for the project. In response, the MTA opted to stop and perform a review to look for ways to cut costs on the Transit Center.

“We want to know, is there a way to make almost as good a building for significantly less money?” Wheeler told the board. “So…of all the goals we had for the building—natural light, retail space, a distinctive profile to help with way-finding from a distance—what are the most important to you?”

Elizabeth Berger, president of the Downtown Alliance, the business improvement district for Lower Manhattan below Murray Street, said the business community was “stunned” to learn that the MTA was backing off its plans.

“We want our original design built, and we want it now,” Berger said. “Not only won’t we wait, we can’t settle for less than the original design. It’s unjust not to build what you set out to build.”

If the MTA is unable to fund the design itself, Berger said, it should consider entering a public/private partnership to get it done.

Some in attendance were upset that the building was being scaled back after nearly 150 local businesses were driven out to make way for the construction. “To see so many people forced out for this building, and then for it not to be built, that’s just not right,” said Arthur Castle, the former chairman of the Lower Manhattan Small Business Association. “The planning for this has been terrible. If the MTA were a private business, you would be out of a job.”

Wheeler assured them that the displacements were not in vain, because the MTA needed unfettered access to the site to construct the underground “mixing bowl” where commuters will transfer between subway lines.

Still, the committee found the disappearance of 23,000 square feet of retail space promised in the original design for the transit center building unacceptable.

“The retail space is a priority from the perspective of the community and this Committee,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, the committee chairwoman. “We’ve been counting on that.”

The committee approved a resolution calling for the MTA to find a way to build the transit center as it was originally designed. In a letter to MTA executive director Elliot Sander, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver later called the MTA’s decision a “slap in the face” to the Downtown community, “a community that had expected to be using the transit center by now.”

At the committee meeting, McVay Hughes said the consensus in opposition to the MTA’s scale-back was promising.

“With Speaker Silver, CB1 and the Downtown Alliance, we have a powerful triad,” she said. “We are in a position to make our voices heard on this.”

After Sept. 11, 2001, the MTA received $847 million in federal funds for projects including the transit center, and the Transit Authority promised not to spend its own money on the project.

But cost overruns dogged the project from its early days, with the cost of acquiring the real estate for the station ballooning from an estimated $50 million to $157 million.

The MTA eventually pledged to contribute up to $30 million of its own money to complete the project, while at the same time taking steps to hold expenses down. A year ago, planners approved a more humble design, shortening the dome by 10 feet and making it narrower and more regular.

But costs continued to rise. The underground work is now estimated at $930 million even if nothing is built atop the station. Faced with the huge bid for the building’s construction, the MTA opted to break the project into smaller projects, to be bid out individually, and to find more ways to again scale back the plans to bring costs under control.

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