The saga of poor Cortlandt St. on the BMT Broadway line is a decade-long one. Seriously damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, the station remained closed for a year before opening again in 2002. For three years, the station remained open as work at the WTC site stalled out. When the MTA began to prep for the Fulton St. project, the station closed in August 2005, and it has remained a work in progress since then.
With the tenth anniversary of those terrorist attacks just two months away, the MTA has vowed to reopen the two Cortlandt St. stations, and work on the R line is coming down to the wire. Christine Haughney examines the station in a Times piece today, and while workers are patching up the walls, the station may not be entirely ready by early September. “There are two pieces to the puzzle. Some of it is cosmetic and some of it’s structural,” Michael Horodniceanu, head of MTA Capital Construction, said. “This part of the work is much more time consuming because finishes always take longer.”
The station, Horodniceanu said, will be open to the public on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, but it won’t be finished. The Dey Street connector will not be ready until 2014, and escalator repair and elevator installation won’t happen until after the grand re-opening. Still, it will good for Lower Manhattan that passenger service on the southbound platform will be restored to Cortlandt St. Ever so slowly, the pieces are being reassembled.
6 comments
Ha! It’s funny that the Times article mentions the W train.
You don’t think Times writers actually ride the subway, do you? The reporter probably moved here last year after graduating from college. I’m surprised she didn’t call it “the yellow line” :0
Her Times profile says, “Christine Haughney covers transportation for the metro desk.” She *must* be an expert.
While the various agencies are pointing with pride to the visible progress on the 1 WTC and 4 WTC buildings,
can Ben or anybody else here tell us anything about the Calatrava Center?
I was down there last weekend, and it looked like absolutely NONE of it has even begun to rise above ground level.
Yes, no part of Calatrava is above street level yet. Wired NY has a good forum to follow the progress of the main hub and the east-west passage to the WFC
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/.....8;page=169
They can probably at least get an entrance opened by 9/11. As fas as the walls go, it really wouldn’t be much diferent appearance-wise than what the south end of Bleecker on the 6 looks like right now.