Rescue Mission

Sciame Takes a Major Detour to Make Sept. 11 Memorial Feasible

by Tom Stabile

Frank Sciame opened a new chapter for F.J. Sciame Construction on May 6 by promoting Joseph Mizzi as the new president.

While Sciame held onto the titles of CEO and chairman of the construction management firm he built in Lower Manhattan, Mizzi took over day-to-day operations, freeing Sciame to plan a two-month sabbatical - a worldwide excursion with his son, F.J., to deeply research a longtime interest in prefabricated housing.

About a week and a half later, Sciame's sabbatical looked much different. New York Gov. George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg both called on May 16 to ask Sciame to develop a plan to rescue the troubled, high-profile effort to build a memorial at the World Trade Center to the 2,979 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

There was only one answer to give them, Sciame said.

"It was like, 'The mayor and governor would like you to help,'" he added. "We started on May 17."

The task was to bring the budget to construct the memorial, which had bloated to $672 million, back to its original $500 million plan, and to trim $300 million in infrastructure costs not originally envisioned in the plan. They asked him to preserve central elements of the Reflecting Absence concept designed by Michael Arad of New York's Handel Architects, Peter Walker of San Francisco's Peter Walker and Partner Landscape Architects, and Max Bond Jr. of Davis Brody Bond of New York.

And they wanted him to keep the memorial on track to open by Sept. 11, 2009.

About a month later, Sciame's recommendations - crafted with the help of dozens - got close to the goal.

"[Frank] led a thoughtful and thorough process to bring the Reflecting Absence vision in line with the $500 million budget, and most importantly he ensured that the memorial to our nearly 3,000 lost heroes remains on schedule," Pataki said in an e-mail.

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Sciame at least was familiar with the memorial because his firm had teamed with Skanska USA Building of Parsippany, N.J., in a bid to build it. The contract eventually went to New York's Bovis Lend Lease, which began sitework in March but quickly found that the plans vastly underestimated the scope of the project.

Sciame launched weekly meetings with John Cahill, the governor's chief of staff and downtown redevelopment liaison, and Dan Doctoroff, a city deputy mayor, among others. They established a timeline to pull in information from all major players and churn out a report in about a month.

Sciame said he sought and got mountains of help, starting with critical staff at his firm, including Mizzi, John Randolph, Joe Colleta, Mark Pankoff, Michael Gordon, Keith Behnke, John Evans, and Lisa Severin. At the suggestion of Jack Rudin, chairman of New York-based Rudin Management, Sciame assembled a slate of advisers from various disciplines to help him make critical decisions [see box].

"We put together what I thought was a really elite group of advisers," Sciame said. "And nobody refused it. I made 13 calls and got 13 yeses, and it was all pro bono."

Sciame also made an early visit to the design team. Walker said the designers viewed the exercise skeptically at first.

"We were pretty deeply into working drawings when this happened - our portion was at 95 percent," Walker added. "We were fearful that Frank and his people were coming in at a late date."

Walker said he and Arad made a lengthy presentation about the history and thinking behind the design.

"We weren't really sure that [Sciame] really grasped what we were trying to tell him by the end of that meeting," Walker said. "But he did. He's a very quick study."

Sciame met with other designers, families of World Trade Center victims, members of the original memorial design jury, and officials from the city, state, and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site. He also met with a value-engineering panel that redevelopment officials had appointed a year earlier, led by Roland Betts, founder and chairman of Manhattan's Chelsea Piers complex, and Peter Lehrer, a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and former construction company executive.

"It was nonstop meetings," Sciame said. "We were listening and taking lots of notes."

Sciame worked mostly out of his South Street office, but said it might as well have been at the World Trade Center site.

"It was a sabbatical in the sense that I didn't spend more than 30 minutes a day on Sciame construction business," he said.

Sciame said the most poignant moment came when he hosted a barbecue at his office for the families of the victims.

"You could see how important a lasting memorial that would remember those lost on Sept. 11 was to them," he said.

But Sciame also filtered every hunk of information through the fiscal analysis.

"I was trying to keep that always in front of me, the need to align the cost with the vision," he added.

Sciame said his advisers played a crucial role, citing as an example the contributions of Richard Kennedy, senior director with Cushman and Wakefield of New York, in a decision to not pursue an idea to place the memorial museum inside the adjacent, 2.6-million-sq.-ft. Freedom Tower. That plan would have spawned sticky real estate issues, such as a possible recapitalization of the tower project and potential loss of rentable space.

Sciame said one of the most contentious decisions was the stark difference between Arad's preference to preserve underground memorial galleries at the site and remove a waterfall structure and the choice favored by others to keep the waterfall.

Sciame said that in his initial presentation to redevelopment officials, he described both ideas, and made clear that this was a critical break point.

"I pretty much knew where everyone was going to stand on it," Sciame said. "We knew we weren't going to please everyone, but we felt we would please enough of the stakeholders to get a consensus."

While the officials chose the plan to preserve the waterfall, everyone had to give, Walker said.

"We didn't like everything Frank >> did," he added. "We like the majority of it, and we respect it. He had to make decisions and choices among the competing interests in a way that doesn't destroy things."

Arad did not return a call requesting comment.

Organizations representing family members also did not get all that they wanted, but were satisfied that Sciame balanced their views with the big picture, said Anthony Gardner, who runs the World Trade Center United Family Group and is a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s family advisory council. Gardner's brother, Harvey, had worked for General Telecom on the 83rd floor of the north tower and was killed that day.

Several family groups opposed parts of the original design, such as locating mechanical systems on the Twin Tower footprints and listing victims' names below grade, Gardner said. Sciame recommended bringing the names to street level and relocating most mechanical systems.

"One drawback of the plan is how it limits the museum space," Gardner said. "But the redesign is a vast improvement. Frank understood the historic significance of the site."

Overall, Sciame's report succeeded. Within weeks, redevelopment officials formally adopted most of the recommendations, including a call to have the Port Authority assume project management for the memorial because of its experience on such assignments and its ongoing efforts to build the transportation hub on the same 16-acre World Trade Center site. The authority will now oversee Bovis.

Funds for the construction effort will come from $250 million in LMDC monies available for the site's redevelopment, as well as $260 million that the memorial foundation plans to raise through donations. It had raised $133 million as of early fall. The Port Authority will cover the $178 million in infrastructure costs as well as a cost overrun fund as part of a $200 million contribution to the project.

The participants have since been revising and repricing design documents. As of early fall, most of the changes were in line with the report's estimates, Sciame said.

While he called the experience a mix of an "emotional roller coaster" and "minefields," Sciame said he is proud of the final result.

"I think it's going to be a tremendous memorial when you understand the plaza, when you understand the waterfall and how it's going to shield the noise, and when you think about the void of Reflecting Absence," he said.