New York City braces for construction chaos

NEW YORK — The bankers, traders and residents of Lower Manhattan are about to find out what it’s like to be in the vortex of the most concentrated construction zone in New York City’s history.

As many as 9,000 trucks a month will rumble through the district, hauling concrete, glass and metal. The amount of steel earmarked for the area will be enough to build Kuala Lumpur’s twin 88-story Petronas Towers more than six times.

Most of the supplies will be headed over the next five years for ground zero, the site of the destroyed World Trade Center that will be home to the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, five adjacent skyscrapers, a transportation center and a memorial to the victims of September 11.

About 50 Lower Manhattan projects, costing $20 billion, are planned or under way, including the ground zero construction, a new headquarters for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and new underground water pipes, subway stations, parks and residential buildings. Getting around will become a challenge.

“The amount of construction that’s ongoing in one square mile is unprecedented,” said Charles Maikish, 60, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. vice president who now heads the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center. “The Trade Center site itself is the epicenter.”

The command center is a city-state agency overseeing the neighborhood’s development, including any project south of Canal Street costing more than $25 million.

On Nov. 17, more than two years after the Adirondack granite cornerstone for Freedom Tower was laid, 70 trucks lumbered into ground zero to begin pouring the concrete base for the building.

The construction, involving a peak labor force of 7,100, will disrupt the lives of more than 438,000 daily mass-transit commuters for the next five years, according to LiRo Group, a New York construction management company working with the city command center.

Merrill Lynch & Co., whose headquarters overlook ground zero, already lists neighborhood road closures and demolition projects in its monthly employee newsletter.

“We get our employees and clients in and out,” said Mike Cowan, senior vice president for the world’s biggest brokerage firm. “And our employees are a pretty rugged bunch.”

Merrill Lynch is holding talks to move its headquarters to a new building on the World Trade Center site, according to two persons with knowledge of the discussions. Merrill spokeswoman Selena Morris said the company, whose lease expires in 2013, is “evaluating our options.”

Goldman Sachs plans to begin moving into its new $2 billion, 43-story headquarters a few blocks away by 2009.

This month, trucks began delivering 3,000 tons of steel beams for the base of Freedom Tower. The beams, each up to 40 feet long and weighing as much as 35 tons, were made in Luxembourg by Arcelor. The Luxembourg company has one of only three or four foundries in the world equipped to handle steel beams that size.

The beams were then sent to Lynchburg, Va., where they were trimmed and welded by another company, Banker Steel LLC, which handled the steel for the original twin towers.

The command center has coordinated details such as controlling the number of trucks rolling through Manhattan at any one time and determining what streets are wide enough for them, said Josh Rosenbloom, 28, director of city operations at the center.

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