130 Liberty St - Post 9/11 Demo - Deutsche Bank Building - by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon

[Gulcrapek]

That sucks there... have you consulted a nasal surgeon BR? Or is it neural?

[BrooklynRider]

We had signed onto the WTC Health Registry, but they are just a statistical op. It's interesting because we can pinpoint when the problems started, but there is no medical diagnosis for "9/11". My problems aren't as bad as his. But mine gets exaggerated by air-conditioning - so here comes my lousy season. He has to wear "breathe rights" at night and has definite damage. I think it has just become part of the fabric of life. So many died and we have this. That kind of "relativity". I run 5 miles daily. When I can't do that, I'll look for more serious solutions. The inhaler solves the problem when it arises.

[NewYorkYankee]

Should I be worried being so close to the site? I'll be about 4 blocks away. Im thinking no, but I just wanted to ask.

[NoyokA]

Should I be worried being so close to the site? I'll be about 4 blocks away. Im thinking no, but I just wanted to ask.

Nothing to worry about.

[mkeit]

I would be worried about it. If you read the RFP for the scaffold contract and many other documents on the Lower Manhattan site, the extent of contamination is very scary.

Basement levels are saturated with Diesel fuel byproducts. The entire building is full of various contaminants including asbestos and many heavy metals. The existing netting over the building is considered contaminated and must be removed and disposed of correctly. The building has to be washed down BEFORE demolition-hoping that the water doesn't go into the subway vents.

The original contracts for the dmolition did not specify that the building had to be surrounded by scaffolding or that explosives were not to be used. The new version clarifies this. It was always my feeling that they would try to use explosives-the original demo subcontractor was CDI-a company that specializes in blowing up buildings-always featured on those Discovery Channel shows. In fact, their web site never mentions any other type of demolition.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Should I be worried being so close to the site? I'll be about 4 blocks away. Im thinking no, but I just wanted to ask.

It all depends on how the building is dismantled. If not done correctly, there is potential for significant contamination, the effects of which may not be evident for 15 or 20 years.

The environment is not asbestos-free. It is everywhere, and exposure is cumulative.

If you are concerned, see a physician and arrange a baseline pulmonary function test. I had one several years ago as a work requirement, and since I was caught in the WTC collapse, had another one in early 2002. It gave me peace of mind to know that there was no statistical difference.

[krulltime]

Where Time Is Stopped at Sept. 11




The Deutsche Bank building at
130 Liberty Street.



The Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street. Beneath its netting is a huge gash from the collapse of the
trade center and a witch's brew of pollutants from the disaster that are delaying its demolition. Workers today
wear hazmat suits.


By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: June 20, 2005

The 34th floor is still hushed, a privileged cocoon of mahogany paneling, brass wall sconces, a meeting table longer than a limousine, carpeting the color of money and a men's room paneled in marble and granite.

In the bright-white data center five floors above, air-conditioners big enough to cool a battery of computers still command views of Upper New York Bay.

Smoothie prices ($2.85 for 12 ounces, $3.35 for 16 ounces) are still posted in the fourth-floor cafeteria, a maze of Vulcan ranges, EmberGlo grills, Groen soup vats large enough to bathe in and stainless-steel serving islands offering "Rice & Noodle Bowls" and "Chop Chop Salad."

But the escalators to the lobby are frozen. At 130 Liberty Street - originally 1 Bankers Trust Plaza and more recently the Deutsche Bank building - the clock stopped on Sept. 11, 2001.

It never started again.

The building's life effectively ended when the World Trade Center collapsed across Liberty Street, carving an enormous gash into the facade and filling the 41-story structure with a tornado of hazardous contaminants.

Now, demolition awaits. Almost every furnishing, fixture and file has been removed. Much of the tower is shrouded in black netting. But the building is not empty. If you stand long enough in the board room or data center or cafeteria, you can almost hear the voices.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which acquired 130 Liberty Street expressly to raze it, permitted this reporter and a photographer - in respirators and double layers of polyethylene body suits - to visit sealed-off areas on eight floors of the building.

During this four-hour tour, no attempt was made at any assessment of potential environmental hazards. Rather, the point was to convey some sense of the building's final days.

"If there was a trademark of 130 Liberty Street, it was the energy," said John Foos, who worked there 26 years, as global director of security for Bankers Trust and then regional head of corporate security for Deutsche Bank. "That I remember and associate with it: the pace. How quickly people moved."

Even stripped down, 130 Liberty Street carries poignant traces of the 4,200 people who filled it every day. Mailbox cubbyholes on the 39th floor are still set aside for P. David, J. Gary, R. Livermore, M. Mongello, F. Rivera and J. Robinson. There are still personal mementos, like a calling card, lightly stained and slightly crumpled, on the carpet of the executive suite: "Michael Philipp. Member of the Board of Managing Directors."

Immediately above the executive domain, the global research center once shared space with a trading floor. Some analysts wore noise-reducing headphones to block the traders' bellowing, recalled Gregory B. van Inwegen, who worked in the research center.

The best views were from the data center on the 38th and 39th floors. Because the south side of 130 Liberty Street is unshrouded, it is still possible to appreciate the commanding harbor panorama.

"The techies had the last laugh," said David Ridley, a project manager at the development corporation.

Above the data center, the mechanical rooms still appear to be the musculature of a functioning building. The giveaway is the silence.

No air courses over the blades of the 20-foot-high intake fan on the 40th floor or through the three-foot-diameter exhaust ducts rising out of a six-story-high pipe gallery. Hundreds of backup batteries sit uselessly nearby. So does a yellow 675-kilowatt Caterpillar standby generator on the 41st floor. Dials long ago dropped to zero.

Another battery of silenced equipment fills the cafeteria kitchen and serving area on the fourth floor, which still look as if they could accommodate a crowd of impatient diners. "Lingering over lunch in the cafeteria - I don't think that happened often," Mr. Foos recalled. "It was: Grab a salad, grab a sandwich and run back to your desk."

But Dr. van Inwegen also remembered diners tarrying on the elevated plaza, which was connected to the World Trade Center by a pedestrian bridge. "You'd see boyfriends and girlfriends getting friendly in a corner," he said.

The plaza was destroyed in the attack. Throughout the building, even now, signs of that calamitous morning abound. Though the executive floor is remarkably intact, there is a conference room facing north whose window frames are filled with plywood barriers. Some 1,700 windows were blown out on Sept. 11, 2001.

A glass office partition lies in pebbly piles on the 10th floor. Nearby, parallel claw marks around a doorknob suggest that a prying tool was used by a search team.

Mr. Foos was on the 10th floor when the first plane hit.

He rushed downstairs. "I see this large piece of an aircraft in the middle of Liberty Street, a chunk of the fuselage," Mr. Foos said. "It's polished aluminum with pinstripe painting and I remember saying, 'My God, this is an American Airlines plane.' "

A bank executive who had once been a firefighter looked at the blaze near the top of the north tower and said, "There's no way this can be put out," Mr. Foos recalled. "Through an abundance of caution, we evacuated."

Dr. van Inwegen left with only his briefcase. After reaching the plaza level, he paused at a large window to look up at the south tower. "The next plane went right over our building, right over our heads," he said. "I just saw this huge, 'Towering Inferno' explosion at the top of the building. I was lucky that the glass I almost had my nose pressed against didn't shatter. It would have been like a guillotine."

A section of the collapsing south tower crashed into 130 Liberty Street, opening a gash 15 stories high. A 20,000-gallon underground diesel fuel tank was pierced and set ablaze. A bank guard, Francisco Bourdier, is believed to have died in the lower basement. Another Deutsche Bank employee, Sebastian Gorki, perished in the trade center. All others were evacuated.

Mr. Foos was allowed to return to 130 Liberty Street shortly after the attack. His visit took him to the executive dining room on the third floor.

"People who were there having breakfast got up and left as if they were going to step away for a couple of minutes and come back," he said. "There were remnants, beginning to deteriorate rapidly, that were in the rooms literally as they were left 10 days before. One person was having eggs Benedict."

Deutsche Bank declared the structure a total loss. Two of its insurers, the Allianz Global Risks U.S. Insurance Company and the AXA Corporate Solutions Insurance Company, maintained that it could be cleaned and salvaged. They battled in court.

Under a 2004 settlement, the development corporation acquired the property. Demolition has since been delayed as the scope of needed environmental safeguards and contaminant cleanup has grown. Consultants to the corporation have confirmed that the tower has excessive levels of asbestos, dioxin, lead, silica, quartz, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chromium and manganese.

The corporation is now seeking bids for exterior scaffolding, cleanup and demolition. It expects work to begin this summer. But along with what officials regard as a blight on the Lower Manhattan skyline, the view that Dr. van Inwegen enjoyed from his 35th-floor cubicle - sailboats and liners, tugs and ferries - will also disappear.

"It was great working by the water and thinking of the history of Manhattan: trade, commerce, shipping," he said. "You still got that feel looking out the windows at New York Harbor. That's all gone. A memory."


The fourth-floor kitchen at 130 Liberty Street has soup vats large enough to bathe in.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[BigMac]

NY1
August 9, 2005

Demolition Of Deutsche Bank Building At Ground Zero Finally Moving Forward



Construction crews are taking the first steps toward demolishing the Deutsche Bank building, which was badly damaged in the World Trade Center attacks, almost four years ago.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has gotten permission from the Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies to begin construction of sidewalks and fences in preparation for the demolition.

Real work can not be done on the building until the EPA deems the site clean of harmful debris, mold, and construction materials.

Copyright © 2005 NY1 News

[mkeit]

The LMDC was big on listing open contracts-for the scaffolding and demolition, but they have not announced any awards. If they are starting work, one of the contracts has been awarded.

[NoyokA]

I would assume this is the first time in history that class A space was abandoned in an entire office building.

[lofter1]

I would assume this is the first time in history that class A space was abandoned in an entire office building.

And the first time in history that a bldg of that sort was destroyed by the debris of a falling 1000' foot tall tower that resulted in contamination from asbestos + untold number of chemical residues + mold.

[Alonzo-ny]

Everything about that day is hard to believe. It was hard to believe it was happening at the time and its hard to believe it acyually happened when we look back now

[BigMac]

New York Times
August 12, 2005

Bovis Is Awarded Deal to Demolish a Tainted Tower at Ground Zero

By DAVID W. DUNLAP


Protective netting on the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, as seen from within the severely contaminated structure.

Bovis Lend Lease, a construction company that arrived at ground zero on Sept. 12, 2001, and stayed more than 10 months as part of the excavation and debris removal project, was awarded a $75 million contract yesterday to clean and dismantle the contaminated former Deutsche Bank tower at 130 Liberty Street.

The two-year contract was approved by the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which acquired the 41-story building opposite ground zero to raze it as part of the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. Last month, the corporation awarded a $13.1 million scaffolding contract to a joint venture of the Regional Scaffolding and Hoisting Company and the Safeway Environmental Corporation.

The deconstruction project should take 16 months after completion of a final plan, said Irene Chang, the corporation's general counsel.

The estimated time and cost of demolishing 130 Liberty Street have steadily increased in recent months as the extent of contamination has become clear. Consultants to the corporation have confirmed that the tower has excessive levels of asbestos, dioxin, lead, silica, quartz, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chromium and manganese. An earlier $45 million deconstruction contract was canceled in May.

"It's more difficult to tear down a building than to build a building," said Roland W. Betts, a member of the corporation board.

Last month, the corporation reached a settlement with two insurers of the Deutsche Bank building, the Allianz Global Risks U.S. Insurance Company and the AXA Corporate Solutions Insurance Company, under which the corporation would pay the first $50 million of the deconstruction costs and the insurers would pay 75 percent of the additional costs.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[BrooklynRider]

They ought to just hand the contract Al-Quaida. They'll have it down in a day.

[TLOZ Link5]

They ought to just hand the contract Al-Quaida. They'll have it down in a day.

Boo!