Uh-oh: It’s starting to look like deja vu all over again at Ground Zero — with its endless delays and staggering cost overruns.
It’s time for someone to take charge.
And seeing as how Gov. Cuomo eliminated former Port Authority boss Chris Ward, the fellow who got things more or less shipshape, it’s now up to him to get the project back on course.
As Annie Karni noted in Sunday’s Post, work at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum is at a virtual standstill.
Even as the meter keeps running — with costs escalating by the millions.
Worst of all, no one in a position of real authority seems to care.
Yes, the memorial-museum has long been the definition of a white elephant — pegged to cost a mind-boggling $700 million in 2006, it’ll certainly come in at far more.
Even though no one can say exactly how much more — or where the extra money will come from.
Meanwhile, its cavernous space — covering eight acres, fully half of the entire World Trade Center footprint, and dropping all the way to bedrock — will actually dwarf the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.
And its extravagance — the parapet with the 9/11 victims’ names includes (get this!) a $4.3 million heating/cooling system, so it’s pleasant to touch in summer and winter — would make a Kuwaiti emir look cheap.
The museum is locked in a $150 million funding spat with the Port Authority over “shared” infrastructure costs, and most of the work has come to a halt.
As a result, the project — once scheduled to be done in 2009 — won’t be ready for this year’s 9/11 anniversary, fully 11 years after the event. No one knows when (if?) it will ever be done.
Unless the logjam is snapped, the unfinished museum itself might stand as a monument to the early days after 9/11 — when much of Ground Zero stood idle, thanks to bureaucratic sclerosis under then-Gov. George Pataki.
Thus earning the site the tag “Pataki’s Pit.”
Remember, this $700 million (and growing) boondoggle will sit next to another obscenity: the $4 billion PATH train hub, meant to serve just 60,000 commuters. (You could buy each rider a $50,000 Mercedes instead and save money.)
And plans call for another cash fiasco: the Performing Arts Center. Barely more than a (bad) idea at this point, it’s already expected to cost several hundred million. That’s money that could be shifted, perhaps, to the 9/11 museum — or, better yet, back into taxpayers’ pockets.
So what does Cuomo think of all this?
Only that “the project needs to move forward in a prudent manner.” You think?
It’s no secret that Cuomo bitterly resents the gargantuan problems he inherited at Ground Zero.
But Ward had gotten his arms around some of them — even (miraculously) managing to get the memorial portion opened by 9/11’s 10th anniversary.
Now he’s gone, and Cuomo owns the problem.
Next up, Cuomo’s Cavern?
Time to crack the whip.