Lower Manhattan exec set to move on
For much of the past 40 years, the World Trade Center and lower Manhattan was Charles Maikish's life.
Maikish, 61, worked as an engineer during the trade center's construction in the 1960s and managed the complex for the Port Authority. Decades later, he was pressed into service to oversee the rebuilding of lower Manhattan.
After a two-year commitment, he's moving on from his job as executive director of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which has 60 projects in the works.
One of the major projects to be finished soonest is the new South Ferry subway terminal, opening in August, 2008.
"All of the construction is up and running," said Maikish, who resigned July 20. "It's being done. Lower Manhattan is happening as we speak. If you've been down here lately you'll see it, it's a forest of crane booms."
The agency was established in November 2004 by Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to coordinate and oversee construction projects south of Canal Street that are worth more than $25 million.
Maikish said the idea wasn't merely to replace what was lost.
"It wasn't just about you know, let's just rebuild the trade center site, but let's create an environment down here that in unsurpassed anywhere in the world. And that's what's happening," he said.
Among the projects under way include construction of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower (to be completed in 2012); WTC 2 (2013); WTC 3 and 4 (2012); Tower 5 (no set completion date); the new Fulton Street Transit Center (2009), the PATH terminal designed by Santiago Calatrava (2009); the Goldman Sachs New World Headquarters (2009); and the World Trade Center Memorial (2009) and Museum (2010).
connections
"Every project that was in the conceptual planning stage a few years ago is now in the construction stage" Maikish said.
Despite all the progress in lower Manhattan -- considering the breadth of damage caused on 9/11 -- what Maikish is most proud of is the recovery after the 1993 attack on the complex.
After that attack, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000, Maikish was appointed by the Port Authority as the senior executive in charge of the recovery, reconstruction and repositioning of the World Trade Center.
"I think what I was most proud of then was that the bomb went off on the 26th of February, and we moved the governor back in and started to reoccupy the trade center on March 19th, three weeks later," he said. "And that there was an around the clock effort -- very intense -- to bring the trade center back as quickly as possible, and we were capable of doing that."
Robert Harvey, the agency's deputy executive director of capital planning and construction, will serve as acting executive director.
Maikish, who also worked for Columbia University and JP Morgan Chase, said he doesn't know where his life will take him next.
But he is sure that he always wants to be part of lower Manhattan.
"I am a resident of lower Manhattan, and as you said I've got 40 years invested down here ... I'll be in lower Manhattan and I'll be watching very keenly what's happening."
comments