By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — The World Trade Center site met all 13 of its construction goals for the third quarter of 2010, the Port Authority announced Thursday.
From July through September, the Port Authority started building the 9/11 memorial plaza, erected steel for the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH station and made substantial progress on One World Trade Center, the Port said.
The report marked the first quarter that the Port Authority has met all of its milestones since executive director Chris Ward started setting specific, public goals two years ago.
"Things are moving forward in the right direction, and that’s what we want," said Catherine McVay Hughes, chairwoman of Community Board 1’s WTC Redevelopment Committee, which has closely followed the rebuilding.
But Ward also warned of some upcoming challenges in the Dec. 30 letter to Gov. David Paterson that accompanied the report.
One of the biggest setbacks to the World Trade Center project has been the years of delays at the cursed Deutsche Bank building, where two firefighters were killed in a 2007 fire.
The building is finally down to its last couple of stories, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the building’s owner, is now scheduled to turn the cleared site over to the Port Authority in the first week of February.
The project lost at least two days of work because of this week’s snowstorm but would make up the time and would not miss the February deadline, an LMDC spokesman said.
The Port needs the site of the Deutsche Bank building to build a below-ground parking garage and vehicle screening center that will serve the new office towers and the memorial.
Another project that was at risk of falling behind was the winged PATH hub, because its schedule was dependent on the many companies that would fabricate the materials and build the structure, Ward said in his letter to Paterson. To further complicate matters, the station’s infrastructure overlaps with developer Larry Silverstein’s office towers.
"We will be focused closely on each of these sets of risks," Ward said in the letter.
The third-quarter report was released as the fourth quarter was drawing to a close, but the Port Authority usually waits several months to announce which milestones have been met.
