‘Death Trap’ Demolition Costs $280M

Demolishing the Deutsche Bank building is going to cost at least four times as much as constructing it, sources with knowledge of the project said.After a series of delays, the 25-story building at 130 Liberty St. was supposed to be brought down by the end of 2008 to make way for the construction of Tower 5 at the World Trade Center site. But at a meeting today, the board of directors of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the state agency that owns the building and is in charge of its demolition, will not receive a firm deadline for completion.Instead, the board will be presented with about $40 million in additional costs for decontaminating the building, which was coated with toxic dust and debris during the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The additional sum pushes the total cost of preparing the building for demolition to almost $280 million.To put that figure in context, the building’s original cost was around $63 million, and the day before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the building was worth an estimated $170 million, according to previously published reports.“The goal that we are working towards with the city and our regulatory partners is to have the building down by the end of the year,” a spokesman for Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Michael Murphy, said yesterday in an e-mail. “We are working with the city and all of our over 13 regulatory partners to get this done. Obviously it is an extremely complex job. We are working double shifts, six days a week with over 250 people in the building to insure that the building comes down as quickly but as safely as possible.”In January, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Avi Schick, said the building would be brought down by the end of 2008. But now, sources familiar with the demolition plans say that is far from a realistic goal.News of the increased costs and delays at the Deutsche Bank building comes just days before the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is expected to present an updated construction schedule for the entire World Trade Center site to Governor Paterson.According to an official involved with construction at the site, a delay at the Deutsche Bank building could have a ripple affect for other projects in the vicinity, particularly construction on the underground vehicle security center.“It affects the vehicle screening center, which has an impact on Tower 4 and fitting out of the rest of the site,” the official said.Until its acquisition of Bear Stearns in March, JPMorgan Chase was expected to move its investment banking operations to the new tower. But doubts about the likelihood of that deal have grown since JPMorgan Chase said it would move its operations to the 43-story Bear Stearns building on Madison Avenue. A spokesman for JPMorgan said the bank remains interested in the site.The procedure for decontaminating the Deutsche Bank building — necessary before demolition can occur — is extremely complex and painstaking. Under the LMDC’s abatement plan, two external hoists have been constructed to transport the 250 workers from floor to floor, as the elevators and stairwells are sealed off. Each floor is required to have a decontamination chamber, and workers are required to wear protective covering at all times. Negative air machines are in place to deter any spread of contamination, and 12 air monitors, which alone cost around $200,000 a month, must be on-site.Inspectors are holding the team of workers to a “dime” standard for any and all possible contaminants found in the building: Not even a dime-size contaminant can remain.Part of the delay stems from a fire that occurred in August 2007, which killed two firefighters. According to a source involved in the cleaning, the New York City Fire Department’s imposition of new safety regulations after the fire, coupled with a change in procedure that required the entire building to be cleaned before demolition could occur, instead of each individual floor, pushed back the timetable.The family of one of the firefighters subsequently filed a lawsuit against more than nine government agencies and construction companies, including the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, blaming them for turning the building into a “death trap.”“It’s a disgrace,” the president of Manhattan, Scott Stringer, said in an interview yesterday. “It is a tragedy for the neighborhood and residents that stayed after 9/11. We look ridiculous in the eyes of the rest of the world, and it calls into question some of the major development challenges when the building is allowed to stand after all this time. We residents have the right to demand specific time frames and no more excuses.”

‘Death Trap’ Demolition Costs $280M

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