UN building upgrade ‘could cost more than $1.8bn’

By Mark Turner
November 17,2005
Financial times
Original Source: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/57578f68-57b2-11da-8866-00000e25118c.html

A new plan to refurbish the UN’s iconic New York headquarters in several phases will cost almost $1.6bn, and take until 2014, the United Nations revealed on Thursday.
Additional associated costs could raise that amount to more than $1.8bn, it said.
The revised figures follow the New York state legislature’s rejection of plans to build a temporary new home for the UN Secretariat in the neighbouring Robert Moses playground.
They also reflect rising construction prices and difficulties in securing alternative offices on the commercial real estate market.
An earlier costing had come to $1.2bn, although Louis “Fritz” Reuter, the official in charge of the project, warned in October that a revised estimate could reach $1.5bn.
In a report to the UN General Assembly, which is invited to approve the plan by the end of this year, Kofi Annan, secretary-general, warned that the “capital master plan” had reached a “critical juncture”.
The refurbishment was needed to reverse “unacceptable deterioration, building and fire code deficiencies, deficiencies in modern security requirements and environmental problems” in the seven-building UN complex, including asbestos hazard.
His report laid out three strategies, after rejecting the possibility of staying within $1.2bn, for completion by the end of 2011.
One option, to move as much as possible in one go to several commercial spaces in mid- and downtown Manhattan, would cost $1.6bn but would disperse UN staff and make it more difficult to function.
Another would construct a permanent new headquarters on the UN’s north lawn, and cost $2.1bn. While that option had the advantage of moving the secretariat in one go, it involved serious changes to a world-famous architectural site.
The UN favoured its last strategy: to lease 10 floors of office space in midtown Manhattan, which would allow staff to be moved in and out of the UN headquarters in four phases.
On top of those estimates, all strategies could be subject to a further expenditure of $161m for “additional security, sustainability and redundancy”, plus a possible new conference hall at $64m.
The UN called for a quick decision, warning that all its cost estimates were vulnerable to delays of even one month.
Insiders joked that the phased plan justified US ambassador John Bolton’s famous quip that you could remove 10 floors of the UN and nobody would notice.