NEW YORK (AP) – Plans for a new skyscraper at the World Trade Center site have to be revised because of safety concerns raised by New York Police Department security experts, delaying the building’s opening, rebuilding officials said Monday.
The expected 2009 opening of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, designed by architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind, will be delayed by several months, rebuilding officials said.
“The Freedom Tower must be built in a manner consistent with the highest safety and security standards and yet allow for a bold design that reclaims New York’s skyline with an enduring symbol of freedom,” Gov. George Pataki’s spokeswoman Lynn Rasic said.
The governor is working with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, trade center leaseholder Larry Silverstein and other rebuilding partners on modifications consistent with the Libeskind master plan, Rasic said.
The complications with the Freedom Tower will not delay plans for any other aspects of downtown Manhattan development, including the new performing arts center, set for 2009 or 2010, and the trade center memorial and new PATH commuter train station, both set for 2009, officials said.
Representatives for the governor and the trade center leaseholder declined to identify precisely what aspects of the plans need modification, but they said the police department believed more could be done to secure the building, which would be the tallest in the world and stand at the northwest side of the 16-acre trade center site.
The police department, citing security reasons, declined to comment on the Freedom Tower plans.
As the plans now stand, the twisting glass and steel tower will be topped by a 276-foot spire designed to evoke the Statue of Liberty. It will include 2.6 million square feet of office space on roughly 70 floors. The building will include by a rooftop restaurant, an observation deck and energy-generating windmills.
Silverstein has plans to build four more towers at the site, which was decimated in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
A spokesman said Silverstein’s company will work to address all safety concerns at the site, which is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
“We have worked for more than a year to design the Freedom Tower in accordance with the Port Authority’s extremely rigorous safety standards, which far exceed all applicable building codes,” spokesman Bud Perrone said. “The New York Police Department recently raised new questions, which we are now addressing with all our governmental partners, including the NYPD.”
Since the Freedom Tower’s cornerstone was set last July 4, crews have been cleaning and preparing the site for construction.
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