Debate continues over Deutsche Bank demolition.
After being slowly dismantled, the former Deutsche Bank tower is now only 12 stories tall, and that means the end is finally in sight for the jet-black skyscraper — once 41 stories tall — that was mortally wounded in the 9/11 attacks.
But according to a new report from the New York Times, it looks like the building will still sow debate and disagreement even after it is gone. In a hint of the post-demolition aftermath, the construction manager for the dismantling, Bovis Lend Lease, is involved in a courtroom free-for-all over tens of millions of dollars with the state agency that hired it.
Bovis claimed in a complaint filed last month in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that it had been shortchanged at least $80 million for work it was ordered to perform at the site.
But in a court filing on June 23, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation excoriated the construction company for having the “gall” to seek extra compensation and profit, despite the project’s “being more than three and a half years behind schedule and despite tens of millions of dollars of costs and damages incurred by LMDC” from long delays and an August 2007 blaze in which two firefighters died.
“There are two Bovises,” said Avi Schick, chairman of the development corporation. “One that speaks with contrition and accepts responsibility for its safety lapses on the site, and then there’s the other Bovis with its hand in the taxpayer’s pocket.”
Read the full story here.
