[NYguy]

Oh, enough positive news. Let's get back to some good, old fashioned WTC fighting...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...cP1LxzfDM98xEM

Holy war pits Greeks vs. PA

By STEVE CUOZZO
December 14, 2010

The Greek Archdiocese of New York, which plans to file a lawsuit to force the Port Authority to honor a disputed agreement to build it a new church across the street from the World Trade Center site, might need a prayer before the case even goes to court.

The proposed church building would rise at 130 Liberty St., site of the former Deutsche Bank tower, to replace St. Nicholas Church at 155 Cedar St. nearby, which was destroyed on 9/11.

But steel the PA has already ordered for the Vehicle Screening Center to be built beneath 130 Liberty St. can't support the church structure which the archdiocese wants to erect above it, engineering sources said.

Not only the amount of steel which the PA ordered over a year ago, but also the way it's being fabricated to house the underground "helix," is inadequate to hold up the church, which would be larger than the original and was to include public meditation space and other facilities.

In fact, according to our sources, the way the VSC has been designed beneath 130 Liberty St. now makes it impossible to construct the church, which the archdiocese hopes to compel the PA to help it build and partly fund.

Since a breakdown of talks between the agency and the archdiocese last year, the PA has endorsed building a replacement church at the 155 Cedar St. location.

The VSC will serve as a security-clearance facility for trucks making deliveries and providing services to all buildings at the WTC site. Construction of it will begin once the Deutsche wreck is dismantled.

Asked to comment on our sources' claims, PA spokesman John Kelly said, "Designs are complete and contracts have been awarded [for the VSC] that assume a church structure on the original site, 155 Cedar St."

Mark Cunha, a lawyer for the archdiocese at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, was not moved. "It sounds like baloney," Cunha said. "They didn't order enough steel, order more steel. Anybody in litigation can say they can't do something."

However, an engineering source who is affiliated neither with the PA nor the archdiocese told us, "It's over. To redesign the VSC and re-order steel would add tens of millions of dollars to costs and set everything at Ground Zero back by two more years, and Larry Silverstein would have new grounds to blame the [PA] for not completing infrastructure on time."

The PA and the archdiocese have had a bitter war of words since last winter, when the church blamed the PA for reneging on a "binding" 2008 agreement to build a new facility at 130 Liberty St. Last week, the archdiocese filed notice of its intent to sue, alleging "fraudulent conduct" by the agency and accusing it of illegally appropriating its land at 155 Cedar St.

The PA, while unwilling to comment on pending litigation, previously has blamed the church for making "escalating demands" on top of terms already agreed to which the PA said led to the breakdown in talks last year.