9/11 Museum construction takes a $440m backward step

by Richard Spragg

Regular readers of the blog will remember my post last September on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks praising everyone involved in the design and delivery of the remarkable memorial at Ground Zero.

Three months is a long time in construction and the entente cordial is back in the rubble. The New York and New Jersey Port Authority is embroiled in a financial dispute with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation over millions of dollars and Mayor Bloomberg is stating categorically that the museum will not open on time later this year.  

Artists's rendering of the Museum (New York Post)

The Port Authority claims it is owed $300m in infrastructure costs, the Foundation claims it is actually owed $140m due to delays in the project. They are $440m dollars apart. Work has stopped. 

There’s very little comment coming from anywhere on the situation. Only the Mayor has made comments about it during unrelated press conferences and journalists from the Wall Street Journal and other major outlets have been largely unable to secure comments on the record since the story broke.

1 million people have visited the 9/11 memorial since September, putting it on a par with the Statue of Liberty and Empire State building as a pull for visitors. As with Ground Zero itself, some will be gawkers and some mourners but the majority are sure to be genuinely interested visitors unsure of what they will take from the experience.

The sooner those visitors have access to the museum exhibits, to add facts and back story to the open reflection of the monument, the more valuable an experience they will have.

Whatever the bureaucrats need to do to make this happen, they need to do it now.




Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.