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Port Authority Confirms Delays, Billions of Cost Overruns with World Trade Center Rebuilding

Photograph of the World Trade Center site, taken by Joe Woolhead, courtesy of Silverstein Properties

The Port Authority released its status report of sorts about World Trade Center rebuilding, and that grimly forecasts lots of patience and money--along with the difficulties--needed to see the whole thing through and.

PA Executive Director Christopher Ward prefaces his assessment with a note that highlights how previous costs and rebuilding timeline estimates were not realistic, there are tons of stakeholders involved, there's no "efficient, centralized decision-making structure" with the authority to make final decisions in place, and the logistics of all the projects are unprecedented. Here's how Ward explains the challenge:

To put this challenge in perspective, the WTC rebuilding program attempts to fit within the size of just a few city blocks:
• Five major skyscrapers, which will house Class A office space comparable to all of
downtown Atlanta;
• One of the world’s most significant memorials and museums;
• The third-largest transportation hub in New York City;
• A world-class retail venue serving all WTC users;
• A major performing arts center;
• A state-of-the-art vehicle security center;
• Two brand-new city streets (Greenwich and Fulton) and two brand-new pedestrian ways (Cortlandt and Dey); and,
• All of the critical infrastructure to support these projects (chiller plant, utility and communication networks, etc).

 

And all of this is happening within the confines of a transportation corridor that moves 150,000
commuters a day through an active construction site via the MTA #1 subway line, which literally cuts through the center of the site, and the WTC PATH Terminal, which runs beneath the site.

 

No specifics are given in terms of costs and added time, but basically it boils down to tacking on a a few more years to each project and about $1-3 billion to the entire estimate of the project (however, these numbers are just estimates and the actuals may be smaller).

Tekið af NYC blog

Fyrir þá sem vilja kynna sér málið nánar klikkið á þessa linka með PDF skjali.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/city_room/20080630_WTCAssessmentBookFF.pdf

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/higher-costs-and-delays-expected-at-ground-zero/

Framkvæmdir á rústum WTC tefjast

Model Apparently Jumps to Death in Lower Manhattan

Police believe that a 20-year-old woman committed suicide by jumping out of her Water Street apartment's balcony around 2:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. The woman was identified as Kazhakstan model Ruslana Korshunova.

Newsday reported, "It appeared she fell from the balcony of her ninth-floor apartment, police said, where a large hole was visible in construction netting hanging on the front of the 12-story building." A Con Ed worker, who had been talking to a cop at the time, told the Post, "I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a bomb or an explosion...I looked down the street, and I say to the cop, 'Did that person just get hit by a car?'"

Another person told the Daily News, "All I saw was something moving out of the corner of my eye, and then boom. It sounded like a bass drum when she hit the ground." No one on Water Street was hurt.

The building's doorman Mahmoud Nakeeb described Korshunova, who had modeled for DKNY, Marc Jacobs, Jill Stuart, Vera Wang, Lela Rose, and others, as "sweet" and "always smiling." He added that she moved in two months ago. A friend spoke to the Post and said the model had just returned from a job in Paris, "The world lost a great person...There were no signs. That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that."

The ME's office will determine a cause of death; per Newsday, a police source said there were no signs of a struggle and it's "unclear if anyone else was in the apartment at the time of the fall or if a suicide note was found." According to British Vogue, Korshunova was discovered in 2003, when a booker was reading an in-flight magazine feature about her hometown, "I saw her by chance and she looked like something out of a fairytale!"

As Friends Mourn, Model's Death Ruled a Suicide

The medical examiner's office determined suicide as cause of death for Ruslana Korshunova, a 20-year-old model who fell from her Water Street apartment in lower Manhattan Saturday afternoon.

Friends gathered outside the building, crying and leaving flowers. Many reports noted that there was a hole in the construction netting outside her building; Newsday reported, the DOB couldn't "confirm whether the fall caused the hole and, if so, why the netting did not prevent her death." Her current boyfriend, Mark Kaminsky, says she had moved into his Staten Island home soon after they met in March, but she kept her Manhattan apartment.

The Daily News reported Kaminsky "last saw his girlfriend about noon on Saturday, about two hours before" she died. Kaminsky said she was "doing good" and "happy" with modeling. But her ex-boyfriend Artem Perchenok (who had seen Korshunova on Friday night) told the Post, "I think she just gave up" and said she was feeling the pressures of modeling.

She previously wrote about her sadness on a Russian social networking site, things like, "I'm so lost, will I ever find myself?" But Korshunova's mother, who lives in Alamty, Kazhakstan, was shocked, telling the Post, "She's had her ups and downs but never anything that would lead to suicide. This is completely unexpected."

Tekið af NYC Blog

Féll af níundu hæð og lést

Amy og Pam í fréttum

Oh dear! A blonde girlfight! Serial homie humper Pamela Anderson blasted Jessica Simpson on an Australian radio program on Monday.

The thrice divorced animal rights activist is hopping mad over a shirt Jessica wore during an Encino shopping trip two weeks ago-the tee read “Real Girls Eat Meat.” What was originally perceived as a diss to singer Carrie Underwood  a strict vegetarian who once dated Jessica’s beau Tony Romo, has earned the “Sweetest Sin” star all kinds of flack from PETA-and now Pamela Anderson.

“I think she is a bitch and whore,” Pam fumed. “Actually, I don’t know if she was talking about food or men.”

Amy Winehouse is about to be immortalized in wax. The five-time Grammy Award winner will be honored with a statue at the World-Famous Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London. The wax figure, which’ll be unveiled later this year, will feature Winehouse’s signature beehive hairdo and assortment of decorative pin-up girl tattoos. (Crack pipe not included.)

“We are really pleased to be creating Amy; she is a real icon in modern British music, a continual award winner, and an internationally recognized star widely requested by our guests,” says Madame Tussauds General Manager Edward Fuller.

Tekið af PC

Looking Young

A woman was in the kitchen cooking dinner and she was just singing,
humming and giggling all over herself. Her husband asked her why she was
so happy. She said, "I went to the doctor today and he said I have the
breasts of a twenty year old."

The husband then asked, "What did he say about your fifty year old ass?"

"Your name didn't come up in our conversation." She replied.

Take poster