It has blighted lower Manhattan for seven years since 9/11, and the doomed and darkened Deutsche Bank building is likely to be around for at least another year.
All work on the eyesore will halt tomorrow to mark the first anniversary of the deaths of firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia in a blaze at the site, sources told The Post.
On Tuesday, the usual 300 to 400 workers laboring on back-to-back 10-hour shifts six days every week will return to their task of ripping out what’s left of the scorched and pockmarked interior.
But even with the marathon effort, workers can barely get through two floors a month under the watchful eye of multiple inspectors, an inside source told The Post.
Jumpy city agencies, worried about more problems at what has turned out to be a jinxed site, are triple-checking every move the workers make and enforcing all safety rules and regulations.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. says the top 10 floors, from the 26th to the 16th, have been cleaned and gutted. Floors 15 through 6 will be debris free by the end of November, said LMDC spokesman Michael Murphy.
Floors 5 through 1 were previously gutted. With all the major work done before Christmas, the final odds and ends of the abatement effort should be finished by January 2009, according to the LMDC.
When the building has finally been reduced to its studs, true demolition can begin – but only after state and federal regulators have approved the LMDC’s deconstruction plan.
“We’re hoping to have the building completely down by summer 2009,” said Murphy.
The entire project, purchasing the damaged building and then razing it, is expected to cost about $272 million, the LMDC says.
A source familiar with the site said that the precautions being taken “are ridiculous” and that workers are hampered by such “unheard-of” stipulations as random drug testing of hardhats, from supervisors to laborers.
“There’s so many watchers being watched by other watchers,” said one veteran hardhat. “This is probably the safest job in the city, but it’s also the slowest moving. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
Normally, a building of this size could be pulled down in about five months, one crew member said. But work on the orphaned structure has progressed in fits and starts since the LMDC assumed control in August 2004.
Searches for more human remains and community concerns about health hazards delayed initial efforts.
A fast-tracked abatement on the building began in February 2006; the structure should have been down by July 2007.
But on Aug. 18, 2007, already well behind schedule, demolition work stopped completely on the site at 130 Liberty St. after a fire, believed to have been sparked by a dropped cigarette, ripped through some of the upper floors.
Work resumed in February, headed by the same construction company, Bovis Lend Lease.
The abatement work has been subcontracted to LVI, however, a company that specializes in hazardous deconstructions.
LVI was brought in to replace Galt, an obscure company with no track record demolishing hazardous buildings.
Galt has been linked to former executives of Safeway Corp., a company taken off a different contract at Deutsche prior to last Aug. 18. One Safeway official, Harold Greenberg, was identified as a Gambino crime-family associate.
Now, under the vigilant eyes of city and federal inspectors, abatement crews in double-layered suits and filtering masks hack away at the building. They use special tools that won’t produce sparks or spew dust, but take much longer to get the job done.
One worker said current equipment takes up to an hour to cut a 10-inch pipe, whereas a traditional demolition saw would slice through it just a few minutes.
The workers are pulling out insulation, air-conditioning conduits, flooring, ceiling and walls, and every piece of material has to be wiped down and put in a hazardous-waste box.
Inspectors from the city Department of Environmental Protection and other agencies are at the site weekly, testing for asbestos and other toxins that could still be in the building, which was gashed open by falling debris on 9/11.
But no test has ever turned up evidence that the building contains hazardous materials, according to a source with knowledge of the results.
Two firefighters are stationed inside the building at all times.