New U.N. Renovation Plan Also Could Face Delays

By Benny Avni
New York Sun 
October 24, 2007
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/65122

UNITED NATIONS — The new executive director of the $1.9 billion United Nations renovation project, Michael Adlerstein, this week is trying to tackle a clash of cultures often encountered by his predecessors: the can-do approach of New York developers versus U.N. obstructionism.

In meetings that began yesterday and will be held throughout the week, Mr. Adlerstein, a former vice president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, is attempting to sell a new version of the project known as the Capital Master Plan to a host of U.N. ambassadors, all with conflicting sensibilities and political agendas. The plan is designed mostly to cut costs.

As implementation of the plan the United Nations approved last year was delayed, its budget ballooned, adding $219 million to the original estimate. According to officials involved in the project, each lost month adds $10 million to the budget. Extensive deliberations over approval of the new plan, however, may delay its implementation further, erasing the savings proposed in the new strategy.

We hope for a quick approval, but this being the U.N., we are not sure, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the delicate negotiations that began yesterday at the U.N. General Assembly body charged with budgetary issues, known as the Fifth Committee.

According to Secretary-General Ban's latest report, which detailed Mr. Adlerstein's new strategy, the project is over budget mostly because of time slippage. The new strategy, if approved and implemented quickly, would bring the plan back within its original budget of $1.876 billion.

Scheduled to start next year, construction under the new plan would be foreshortened and completed in mid-2013, instead of 2016, as the old strategy envisioned. The new plan also calls for renovating the 39-floor building all at once, rather than reconstructing 10 floors at a time.

But like the last plan, whose budget ballooned because U.N. member states bickered endlessly prior to finally approving it, the new plan requires the Fifth Committee's approval. A rise in the costs of building materials and billable work hours add to the budget, U.N. officials say. The plan involves temporarily relocating staff members to swing spaces from their offices. New York City's rising real estate prices are therefore an additional contributing factor in the ballooning budget.

The United Nations recently signed a new lease for a building at 505 E. 46th St., where 750 employees would move once the renovation begins. Also, several facilities on the existing campus would be temporarily transferred across the East River, to Long Island City. The world body is aiming to sign more leases for more office space in Midtown and Lower Manhattan as well, according to Mr. Ban's report.

The report says the long delays could have occurred in part because planners did not take into account the complexities of decision-making at the United Nations. Mr. Adlerstein's predecessor, Louis Frederick Reuter, quit in mid-2006, before the plan was finally approved in December, citing frustration with the organization's inability to make decisions.

Some diplomats following yesterday's Fifth Committee deliberations said they were impressed with the new plan, while others said the change of strategy would not be approved quickly. We voted to approve a plan last year, why do it again? one ambassador, who asked not to be named, said.

The current possible stumbling blocks have to do with process, the Indian ambassador to the United Nations, Nirupam Sen, said. They are changing course, so we have to look at it. But the new course seems good, so I don't see many problems in its approval.

The General Assembly's advisory committee on administrative and budgetary questions has tentatively endorsed the plan. Yesterday, it said in a report to the Fifth Committee that it sees merit in the accelerated strategy.

But two Western diplomats yesterday predicted at least some problems. Last year's plan had to be revised several times before final approval to address committee members' concerns. Several countries injected international politics into the discussions, going as far as to suggest that the host country, America, should finance the whole project. Under the current plan, each country contributes to the project according to its share of the U.N. budget. America, the largest U.N. contributor, is slated to pay $396 million over five years.

We certainly have no interest in the politicization of this process, the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations, Peter Maurer, said.

Like America, Switzerland hosts a number of U.N. organs, and Swiss officials have said they hope that once the New York renovation is done, the U.N. buildings in Geneva, some of which date back to the League of Nations, will be renovated.