Giant projects such as the reconstruction of 1 World Trade Center, or Freedom Tower (pictured), always end up costing more than the original estimates because “that’s just part of the way the world works,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
“It would be really naive on any big project to say it’s never going to come in for more,” Bloomberg said.
“It always does. I don’t know how many times you have to watch it to understand. That’s just part of the way the world works, and I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with it.”
The mayor’s comments came in response to a report in The Post that the Port Authority failed to include the $1 billion cost of moving tenants into 1 World Trade Center in its original 2008 estimate of the construction tab.
Bloomberg has been a staunch defender of the Port Authority under its previous director, Chris Ward, and the mayor said nothing’s changed his view.
“The big story was that there was an expense of $1 billion that they put into for fitting out for clients and that should have been in the budget,” Bloomberg said. “But that should have been in the budget a long [time ago]. The real world is nobody knows what the costs are for complex things, whether it’s a building or a computer system or building a building or educating kids.”