MTA: Fulton Center Cost Has Risen to $1.15B
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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is reviewing several options to salvage the planned Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan after announcing yesterday that cost estimates have grown to $1.15 billion from an original price tag of $750 million.
“I am sad to say that we cannot build the transit center as currently envisioned in this market,” the executive director of the MTA, Elliot Sander, said.
Officials say options will be reviewed in the next 30 days to save money. Possible changes include the scuttling of a planned aboveground retail complex, which would reduce the project’s cost to $903 million.
Mr. Sander cited the rising price of construction services as a major factor in the cost overruns. A request this month for contracting bids on an estimated $408 million phase of construction yielded only one proposal for $870 million, more than double what the MTA projected.
Any spending above the $847 million in federal funds allocated to the project must be secured by the MTA.
Mr. Sander raised the prospect of a possible infusion of capital from the private sector, but said the state’s acquisition and condemnation of six downtown properties in 2005 under eminent domain law may complicate those efforts.
The more than 200,000 commuters who use the 12 subway lines that would be linked by the new hub will now have to wait at least until October 2010, according to the new estimates.
The downsizing today is one of several that the MTA has undertaken since it first began work on the transit center in 2005. The center was originally slated to open by the end of 2007, but the deadline was pushed back twice and its budget increased by $133 million before the MTA’s announcement today.
“There is no question that construction costs are way up,” the chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, John Liu, said. “The question is why the whole project itself is taking so long.”
“It’s important that the MTA get its arms around this beast, because the project is so vital,” Mr. Liu said. “The MTA should not blow this opportunity.”
