THE Port Authority’s new, $2.2 billion-plus PATH terminal at Ground Zero won’t be finished until 2012 at the earliest – at least a year later than the PA claims, and at least three years behind the project’s projected partial opening – predicts Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Chairman Avi Schick.
“I don’t think anybody expects it to be done before 2012,” Schick told us yesterday. “That’s not a delay, it’s just reality.”
At a Crain’s Business breakfast last week, Schick said a planned cultural building at Ground Zero couldn’t be started until the new, Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH station was finished – which he said wouldn’t be “until 2012 or 2013.”
The bombshell somehow went overlooked by groggy early-morning guests.
Prior to this year, downtown rebuilding officials had said the dramatic new station – which is officially called the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and features bird-like “wings” that can open and close – would be finished in 2009.
More recently, the PA has said the terminal would “open in phases” starting in 2009.
The LMDC’s Web site also says that it will “open” that year and be completed in 2011.
When asked to clarify the timetable, PA spokesman Mark Lavorgna said yesterday that 2009 “is the operational, opening date,” with completion in 2011.
What does that mean?
“In 2009, at some point, I can walk down into the station and get on a PATH train,” Lavorgna said. “But other things like the wings won’t be done yet.”
In other words, it might be a long time before the new station starts to resemble the images first shown to the public in 2004.
Lavorgna declined to comment on Schick’s prediction the job wouldn’t be finished until 2012 or 2013.
Last February, The Post’s Tom Topousis reported the station’s initial $2.2 billion cost – more than the budget for the 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower – had swelled to $3.4 billion.
That prompted PA Executive Director Anthony Shorris to announce a major “value engineering effort to bring the project in close to its estimated value,” while still preserving main elements of Calatrava’s design.
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Venerable law firm Herrick Feinstein, based at 2 Park Ave. since 1957, must really love the place.
Legal world sources say the firm has quietly renewed and extended its lease until 2020 and added 72,000 square feet – one of the year’s larger expansions, upping their presence in the tower to 191,000 square feet.
The deal makes Herrick Feinstein the largest tenant in the 1 million square-foot address at the corner of East 32nd Street, which L&L Holding Co. bought in May 2006.
Terms were not available but the asking rent was believed to be in the $59 a square foot range.
Neither of L&K’s principals, David W. Levinson or Robert Lapidus, returned calls.
Newmark Knight Frank CEO Barry Gosin, who represented Herrick Feinstein, could not be reached.
The tower is virtually 100 percent leased to tenants that include Hartford Fire Insurance and United Way.
Popular restaurant Artisanal is the glammest retail tenant.
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On the heels of striking a deal to sell most of its tower at 375 Pearl St. to Taconic Partners for $172 million, Verizon is now putting a far west side development site up for grabs, too.
The company is taking offers on 349 W. 37th St., a garage it owns mid-block between 10th and 11th avenues.
A CB Richard Ellis team of Bob Alexander, Joan Meixner and Ned Midgley are sifting bids.
Meixner said that because the 10,000 square-foot lot falls within the rezoned Hudson Yards redevelopment area, it can support a new commercial project of over 200,000 square feet.
The site, a stone’s throw from the Javits Center, is “smack dab in the strategic center” of the area’s new development boom, Meixner said, citing large parcels assembled nearby by Rockrose and others.
Alexander wouldn’t say what Verizon expects for the property, but he said he’d seen “unsolicited” offers above $38 million even before an offering went out.
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It’s taken seven years, but the vacant theater at 701 Seventh Ave. between 47th and 48th streets has finally found a new tenant.
The question is, what will he do with it?
Walter & Samuels’ leasing chief Jud Ebersman confirmed that the former Mayfair Theater and an adjacent store have been leased, as a sign at the property proclaims. He declined to identify the tenant.
But Times Square-area sources say the deal is with Hersel Torkian, an investor who owns numerous buildings in the area and has also operated electronics stores.
The theater site, directly across from the Renaissance Hotel, has a storied history.
Eberman said Cecil B. DeMille once had his East Coast office in the building and that the 1956 film “The 10 Commandments” premiered there. It was most recently a triplex cinema.
Sources said that depending on how the two spaces are combined and configured, they could hold up to 50,000 square feet of floor space, but Torkian would likely design them for 25,000 square feet.
Torkian did not return our call.