As the deadline approaches this week for a revised World Trade Center memorial plan to trim the staggering cost, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that designers may have to start from scratch.
"It may be that you have to go back to the drawing boards and it'll take some time," Bloomberg said.
"We're going to have some balance between cost and what we'd like to do in a perfect world, and we'll find out just how much we'd like to do [that] we can afford without a major redesign or with some design changes," the mayor said during a press conference in The Bronx.
WTC construction czar Frank Sciame has until Thursday to come up with a way to cut the estimated $1 billion cost in half.
Gov. Pataki has said he'd like to keep the "vision" of Michael Arad's design intact, and Sciame's team has been working around-the-clock to come up with $500 million in savings that do just that.
"A commitment was made a long time ago to not build anything on the footprints, and that in many senses defines the design and the scope of the memorial. But we do have to see what we can afford to do," Bloomberg said.
"It may not be that you get just one report that says this is what you do," he said.
The final plans are expected to be made public on the Internet by Friday.
Bloomberg added, "I think while everybody wants to get things done quickly, what is more important is to do things right.
"After all, whatever we build is going to be there for a very long time, and so while everybody's pressing, we have to put it in the context of what else and do it with some foresight and some understand how it fits in with everything else."
Meanwhile, construction workers began blasting the bedrock at the site yesterday to make way for the foundation that will hold the Freedom Tower.
Workers had warned the public for several days that the blasting was going to take place, and as they predicted, there was little disruption or panic to workers and tourists at the site.
"You may hear something up here [at street level] but if you do, I don't think you can distinguish it from any other sound of a truck passing or any other construction work around here," said Mel Ruffini, project executive for Tishman Construction Corp.
"I don't think you'd recognize the actual blast," he said. "I was down there standing about 100 feet away - I could barely hear it."
And people who work near Ground Zero agreed.
"I didn't hear anything," said a grateful David Langolf, who works at Arch Insurance at One Liberty Plaza. "It would have been nerve-wracking."
Construction workers building the Freedom Tower, which will be located at the northwest corner of the site, said they chose to blast the bedrock, rather than use the hoe-ram method.
Blasting is quieter, faster and better for the environment. It will save about six weeks and 50,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
The blasts will take place three or four times a day - with a warning whistle before each blast - from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the next two months.
Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
Republished with permission of The New York Post.
