Nouvelle Génération: How Cost of Train Station at World Trade Center Swelled to $4 Billion

Santiago Calatrava's original concept for the “Oculus” of the World Transportation Hub in January 2004 was much lighter and more transparent than the final version, in which the number of ribs and wing struts was doubled and glass was eliminated from the wings.

With its long steel wings poised sinuously above the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub has finally assumed its full astonishing form, more than a decade after it was conceived.

Its colossal avian presence may yet guarantee the hub a place in the pantheon of civic design in New York. But it cannot escape another, more ignominious distinction as one of the most expensive and most delayed train stations ever built.

The price tag is approaching $4 billion, almost twice the estimate when plans were unveiled in 2004. Administrative costs alone — construction management, supervision, inspection, monitoring and documentation, among other items — exceed $655 million.Even the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is developing and building the hub, conceded that it would have made other choices had it known 10 years ago what it knows now.

“We would not today prioritize spending $3.7 billion on the transit hub over other significant infrastructure needs,” Patrick J. Foye, the authority’s executive director, said in October.

The current, temporary trade center station serves an average of 46,000 commuters riding PATH trains to and from New Jersey every weekday, only 10,000 more than use the unassuming 33rd Street PATH terminal in Midtown Manhattan. By contrast, 208,000 Metro-North Railroad commuters stream through Grand Central Terminal daily.

In fact, the hub, or at least its winged “Oculus” pavilion, could turn out to be more of a high-priced mall than a transportation nexus, attracting more shoppers than commuters. The company operating the mall, Westfield Corporation, promises in a promotional video that it will be “the most alluring retail landmark in the world.”

The architect Santiago Calatrava and his daughter Sofia released doves to mark the start of construction of the transportation hub in 2005. Credit Ruby Washington/The New York Times

But whatever its ultimate renown, the hub has been a money-chewing project plagued by problems far beyond an exotic and expensive design by its exacting architect, Santiago Calatrava, according to an examination based on two dozen interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of documents. The soaring price tag has also been fueled by the demands of powerful politicians whose priorities outweighed worries about the bottom line, as well as the Port Authority’s questionable management and oversight of private contractors.

George E. Pataki, a Republican who was then the governor of New York, was considering a run for president and knew his reputation would be burnished by a train terminal he said would claim a “rightful place among New York City’s most inspiring architectural icons.” He likened the transportation hub to Grand Central and promised — unrealistically — that it would be operating in 2009.

But the governor fully supported the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s desire to keep the newly rebuilt No. 1 subway line running through the trade center site, instead of allowing the Port Authority to temporarily close part of the line and shave months and hundreds of millions of dollars off the hub’s construction. That, however, would have cut an important transit link and angered commuters from Staten Island, a Republican stronghold, who use the No. 1 line after getting off the ferry.

The authority was forced to build under, around and over the subway line, at a cost of at least $355 million.

Michael R. Bloomberg, who was then the mayor, demanded in 2008 that the memorial be completed by the attack’s 10-year anniversary. That meant part of the hub’s roof, which would be the decking under the memorial plaza, had to be built first, adding about $75 million to the budget.

At the same time, the Port Authority was often its own worst enemy.

A 2005 construction contract was supposed to set a guaranteed maximum price, but to accelerate the work, several expensive subcontracts were approved. And in 2008, the authority rejected money-saving suggestions worth over $500 million.

Ultimately, though it may prove to be the building’s saving grace, the architect’s extravagant vision was inextricably linked to the problems.

Mr. Calatrava — known for lyrically expressive structures that are challenging and costly to build — insisted on column-free interiors, labor-intensive building methods and sculptural and curvilinear steel elements that could only practicably be manufactured abroad.

One factory in northern Italy produced one-third of the 36,500 tons of steel in the hub. The steel bill for the entire project was $474 million.

Mr. Calatrava’s boldest gesture called for a roof that could open to the sky. In 2005, not yet convinced that the roof was practical to build, authority officials including David Steiner, a board member, visited the Milwaukee Art Museum to see Mr. Calatrava’s operable roof there.

As they waited outside the museum, the officials were joined by schoolchildren who had also come to watch. When the screen opened, the children applauded. Mr. Steiner turned to Mr. Calatrava and, according to the recollection of those who were there, said: “O.K., Santiago. You can have your goddamn wings.”

It would take another three years to kill this exorbitant idea.

An Irresistible Opportunity

In 2002, the federal government set aside $4.55 billion for Lower Manhattan transportation projects, an irresistible pot of money to local officials who could build something grand without dipping deeply into their own treasuries or spending too much political capital.

Planners envisioned an east-west underground pedestrian network radiating from two new aboveground landmarks: the Fulton Center, which opened in November and was built by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the trade center hub.

“The hub is a project driven by institutional ambition, and once begun, the decisions that have made it so costly became irreversible,” said Lynne Sagalyn, the director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at the Columbia Business School, who is completing a book on the trade center redevelopment.

In 2003, the authority chose the Downtown Design Partnership, a joint venture, to design the hub’s aboveground entrance and other elements, while an in-house team was to focus on the PATH mezzanine and platforms. The partnership chose Mr. Calatrava as a subcontractor.

Then 52, Mr. Calatrava, a Spanish native, was at the top of his game. His train stations, bridges and cultural buildings were aesthetic sensations, though some have since been criticized for their cost and design.

His spectacular plans for the hub, unveiled in 2004, departed radically from the modest, utilitarian temporary PATH station that had been completed two months earlier for $323 million.

The hub’s centerpiece, called the Oculus, would be larger than Grand Central’s main concourse, with a roof of two movable wings that could open to the sky. Mr. Calatrava likened it to a bird taking flight.

Going beyond what the authority had initially sought, Mr. Calatrava designed the rest of the hub, too — the underground mezzanine, train platforms and connecting concourses. What concessions he could not gain with his considerable charm were often won by obstinacy.

The authority’s board authorized a $2 billion project in 2004 — $1.7 billion from the Federal Transit Administration and $300 million from the authority.

“The original schedules and budgets were unrealistic to begin with,” the Port Authority conceded in a 2008 self-critique. “Had the rebuilding program gone without a hitch, those dates and costs could never have been met.”

And there were many hitches. The Bloomberg administration upended the project in 2005, when a Police Department security assessment compelled significant revisions. To improve blast resistance, the Oculus had to have twice the number of steel ribs. The birdlike structure began to resemble a stegosaurus.

Doubts grew about the practicality of the design, prompting authority officials in 2005 to head to Europe and Milwaukee to tour Mr. Calatrava’s projects. They returned satisfied that his design was feasible.

In 2005, the authority finally authorized a construction contract with a joint venture called Phoenix Constructors. But the two sides could not agree on a guaranteed maximum price for the overall project, so Phoenix was allowed to sign subcontracts that cumulatively drove up the price. The Federal Transit Administration would cite this as a crucial failure.

When plans were dropped in 2005 for a building at Fulton and Greenwich Streets that would have allowed daylight to reach the hub mezzanine, Mr. Calatrava proposed an expanse of skylights set into the pavement. At night, they would glow from below — not unlike the disco dance floor in “Saturday Night Fever,” one architect suggested.