NYC World Trade Center site faces fresh delays

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Freedom Tower, centerpiece of the plan to rebuild Manhattan's World Trade Center, will not be completed until 2013, well past the original target date of 2009, the landowning agency for the site said on Thursday.

But the most important parts of the "heart" of the site, the memorial to the nearly 3,000 who perished in the September 11, 2001 attack, will open by the 10th anniversary, New York Gov. David Paterson told reporters. He noted that in June the completion date had slipped as far back as 2015.

The memorial's plaza, waterfalls, displays of victims' names and a gathering area will be finished by 2011, although some of the site might subsequently be open only "intermittently" until it is finished, he added.

Paterson took office in March and after reviewing six years of missed deadlines, ordered the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to come up with realistic estimates, which the agency's new executive director unveiled on Thursday.

The cost of the 1,776-foot (541-meter) Freedom Tower, meant to symbolize the city's revival, will rise to $3.1 billion, partly because it will now have two observation decks instead of one, Executive Director Christopher Ward said.

Other parts of the project are also delayed, including the underground part of a memorial museum and a mass transit hub. Service on a subway that runs through the site will partly be suspended, said Ward, whose agency helps oversee the project.

The delays are the latest hurdles in the reconstruction of the World Trade Center, which has repeatedly stalled due to fights over insurance and wrangles between the major players -- state, city and federal agencies and developer Larry Silverstein, who leased it two months before it was destroyed.

The worsening financial crisis has imperiled many construction projects in the city and around the country. Wall Street's troubles have also hit the city's office market.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says developers will benefit from a recent slide in commodity prices, which had soared. But he acknowledged: "The reality is we're going through a downturn; we can't escape that."

Silverstein said he would study the Port Authority's new schedule. "This will allow us to gauge the impact on our part of the World Trade Center rebuilding effort," he added.

The agency has missed some deadlines for turning sites over to Silverstein and had to pay him stiff fines as a result. But Silverstein also committed to a series of deadlines when his deal with the agency was renegotiated.

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Several major subways run through the site, in addition to PATH trains that link Lower Manhattan with New Jersey. The rail links were supposed to keep running during construction, but the No. 1 subway line and PATH train services will be limited due to the construction.

The hub, expected to cost $3.2 billion, will not be ready until the fourth quarter of 2013 or the second quarter of 2014. Its cost has spiraled by hundreds of millions of dollars, partly due its complexity, and it will be simplified further by adding columns to the soaring open mezzanine envisioned by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

Plans for a performing arts museum are on hold, and the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building, just south of the site, is far from finished.

The building must be torn down to build a $633 million vehicle security center. But work was delayed last summer when a fire broke out, killing two firefighters.

The federal government has bowed out of the security aspect of project, and the center will open in the first to third quarters of 2012, Ward said.

(Editing by Dan Grebler)