Metro

Deal is a real museum ‘peace’

(Reuters)

Construction on the stalled 9/11 museum in lower Manhattan will resume next week after officials hammered out a deal late yesterday, hours before the ceremony commemorating the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

The bureaucratic infighting that put the long-awaited project — which was supposed to open this year — on hold was finally settled in a furious round of negotiations at City Hall.

The “agreement is yet another milestone in our work to finally complete the site as a place where people from around the world can come to work, visit and remember,” Gov. Cuomo said last night.

The deal paves the way for a $17 million transfer from the 9/11 Memorial and Museum Foundation to the Port Authority, and a commitment from the organization to handle all of its own operating costs — expected to total about $60 million per year.

According to a memorandum of understanding, the foundation, which also operates the outdoor memorial in lower Manhattan, will allow PA officials to review its financial records.

And two new working groups will be established to arbitrate disagreements that could arise in the future between the foundation, the PA and the city.

Even with the deal, some key disagreements remained unsettled last night. One is the legal relationship between the foundation and the PA, which owns the 16-acre World Trade Center site.

“It does kick a few things down the road,” said one official involved in the talks. The 9/11 foundation opened the memorial on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. At the time, officials said they planned to open the museum by the following anniversary.

But that plan deteriorated into a political battle between Mayor Bloomberg, who leads the foundation, and Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who jointly control the PA.

Additional reporting by David Seifman