Excavation Activity for WTC Tower 3 Wraps Up

Steady progress on the World Trade Center continues as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey brings excavation work for WTC Tower 3 to a close, about a month after excavation for WTC Tower 4 reached completion. With the conclusion of the work for both towers, the Port Authority turned the sites over to WTC redeveloper Silverstein Properties. Excavation activities for the buildings on Greenwich Street involved 400,000 tons of concrete, soil and rock. Additionally, the Port Authority built a new 80-foot-deep foundation supported by 240 steel tiebacks. Silverstein is now in a position to move forward with the development of the two office towers, which will add about 5 million square feet of premier commercial space to the Downtown market. . “Today marks an important milestone in Downtown’s revitalization,” Janno Lieber, president of Silverstein affiliate World Trade Center Properties L.L.C., told CPN today. “The Port Authority has done a tremendous job in preparing the World Trade Center site. Now the baton has been passed to us, and we can now begin building 150 and 175 Greenwich, two magnificent office towers, as well as the retail and public concourses within them.”Carrying the address of 175 Greenwich St., Tower 3 will feature approximately 2.5 millon square feet of office space, as well as five floors of retail offerings. Designed to hover 71 stories above the city, Tower 3 will be the third tallest structure on the WTC site. The 64-story Tower 4, sited at 150 Greenwich St., will offer 2.3 million square feet of office space with five floors containing approximately 120,000 square feet of retail space. The Port Authority will make its home in two thirds of the building. With the wrapping up of excavation activity for Towers 3 and 4 comes news of additional WTC progress. The foundation and footings for the Freedom Tower are approaching completion, and foundation construction for the WTC Transportation Hub and Memorial has gotten underway. Silverstein intends to waste precious little time in taking the next steps to bring Towers 3 and 4 to fruition. “In order to hit the ground running, we have already deployed a large amount of construction equipment onto the site,” Lieber said. “We will be in full construction mode in a couple of days, and within the next few weeks, we expect to have 50 workers and 30 pieces of heavy duty construction equipment working onsite. We’re determined to maintain the schedule of our projects so Downtown can be fully rebuilt by 2011.”