Video: NYC's Transit Hub is Over Budget and Behind Schedule
Calatrava designed terminal is at $4 billion and counting.
The saga of what may be the city's biggest boondoggle, or what could be its greatest public building since Grand Central Terminal, or both, began at a news conference 10 years ago.
The Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was grasping for words to describe his design for the planned World Trade Center Transit Hub. So he stepped from the podium — "Let me draw what I cannot say'' — and sketched a picture of a girl releasing a bird into flight.
That image, he said, inspired the shape of the vast, glass-and-steel hall at the heart of a network of subway lines that converge in Lower Manhattan. It would be longer and higher than Grand Central Terminal's hall, and brighter — "a lamp of hope,'' Calatrava said, for a city still shadowed by 9/11.
"'Wow' is the first word that's just got to come to your mind," said the mayor, Michael Bloomberg. It would be more than a station, said the governor, George Pataki, it would be "a tribute to those we lost on Sept. 11.''
A decade later, however, the Trade Center Transit Hub has taken twice as much money and time to build as promised. Design changes have made it look more like a stegosaurus than a bird, and it's been vilified by a legion of kibitzers as a political self-indulgence, an architectural ego trip and a money pit — the world's most expensive subway station.
Click here to read the entire story and watch the video.
Source: USA Today
CONTRACTOR SUPPLY MAGAZINE
The April/May 2024 issue of Contractor Supply magazine is here!
This digital edition is sponsored by BECK AMERICA Inc.
Our cover story, Masters of Fasteners, visits Interstate Screw Corp. of metro Miami, which serves the fastening needs of south Florida, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Also in this issue,our Industry Updates cover Adhesives, Tapes and Sealants, Anchoring Systems and Safety and PPE.
This digital edition is fully searchable and contains live links to every advertiser and new product listing. Click away!
