Fulton Center


Fulton Center is a subway and retail complex centered at the intersection of Fulton Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The complex was built as part of a $1.4 billion project by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a public agency of the state of New York, to rehabilitate the New York City Subway's Fulton Street station. The work involved constructing new underground passageways and access points into the complex, renovating the constituent stations, and erecting a large station building that doubles as a part of the Westfield World Trade Center mall.
The project, first announced in 2002, was intended to improve access to and connections among the New York City Subway services stopping at the Fulton Street station. Funding for the construction project, which began in 2005, dried up for several years, with no final approved plan and no schedule for completion. Plans for the transit center were revived by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The project used to be referred to as the Fulton Street Transit Center, but was re-branded the Fulton Center in May 2012 because of a heightened emphasis on retail. The complex officially opened on November 10, 2014, along with the adjacent Dey Street Passageway.
Through the Dey Street Passageway, the complex connects to the PATH's World Trade Center station, as well as to the Chambers Street–World Trade Center/Park Place/Cortlandt Street and WTC Cortlandt subway stations. The World Trade Center, including the remainder of the Westfield World Trade Center mall, is also accessible via the passageway.

Components

The Fulton Center features a high-visibility Transit Center with entrances on Broadway between Fulton Street and John Street, and it connects the via the underground Dey Street Passageway running east–west under Dey Street. Ove Arup and Partners served as the prime consultant of the entire project. The Fulton Center cost US$1.4 billion, almost twice the original budget of $750 million.
The major elements of the Fulton Center project included the renovations of the Fulton Street stations along the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line and the IRT Lexington Avenue Line. During the latter's renovation, new entrances were opened at the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane for the northbound platform, and at Cortlandt Street and Broadway for the southbound platform. The mezzanine serving the Fulton Street station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line, which previously consisted of several ramps on either side of Nassau Street, was straightened. During these renovations, the entire complex was made ADA-accessible. Ten escalators and fifteen elevators were installed, as well as two ADA accessible public restrooms on the concourse and the street levels.
A new station building, the Fulton Building, was constructed along the east side of Broadway between Fulton and John Streets. The new station required the demolition of the Girard Building and the former Childs Restaurant Building, and incorporates the landmark Corbin Building at the corner of Broadway and John Street. It was nearly canceled at one point, but was saved through funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This portion of the project was part of a master lease to lease over 60,000 square feet of space.
In addition to work on the four linked Fulton Street stations, the Dey Street Passageway, located outside the subway system's paid area, was built under Dey Street. It connected the Fulton Street station complex to the Cortlandt–Church Streets station, serving the. A new entrance building was constructed on the southwest corner of Broadway and Dey Street, providing direct access to the Dey Street passageway.

Constituent stations

The Fulton Center project initially included upgrades to five subway stations:
The World Trade Center PATH station, as well as the New York City Subway WTC Cortlandt station on the on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, are connected to the complex via the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.
Despite the presence of a passageway linking the Fulton Street complex and the Chambers Street/Park Place/Cortlandt Street station, there is no free connection between the two stations. There are still paid transfers to the Fulton Street complex and the two Cortlandt Street stations. From the Fulton Street complex, signs within the passageway indicate the presence of the, . The connection is still possible via an out-of-system transfer through the WTC Transportation Hub. According to the MTA's Final Environmental Impact Statement, the Dey Street Passageway is intended to provide a seamless connection from the Fulton Center to the WTC Transportation Hub and Brookfield Place without the need to cross Church Street and Broadway, both of which are busy traffic arteries in Lower Manhattan. By keeping it outside of the paid area, it would maximize pedestrian flow.

Context

Need and funding

After several pieces of transit infrastructure in Lower Manhattan were destroyed or severely damaged during the September 11, 2001, attacks, officials proposed a $7 billion redesign of transit in the neighborhood. This included the Fulton Street Transit Center, the South Ferry/Whitehall Street terminal further downtown, and the reconstruction of the West Side Highway. The most important of these projects was the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's proposed terminal for PATH trains at the World Trade Center site, which was destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed. A preliminary plan for the new terminal included situating it under Church Street, near the site of the former Hudson Terminal and close to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority 's Broadway–Nassau/Fulton Street station. The new terminal would also contain direct connections to the subway; previously, World Trade Center had been served by three different subway stations at Cortlandt and Greenwich Streets, at Cortlandt and Church Streets, and at Church Street between Chambers and Vesey Streets. Plans for an integrated transit hub in Lower Manhattan were announced in January 2002. As part of this initiative, money was also to be allocated to study the feasibility of commuter rail service to Lower Manhattan. This would later become the canceled Lower Manhattan–Jamaica/JFK Transportation Project, which would have created a railway line between Lower Manhattan and John F. Kennedy International Airport via the Long Island Rail Road and AirTrain JFK.
As part of the rebuilding process, the Port Authority considered putting the PATH terminal at Broadway and Fulton Street. By April 2002, New York state and city officials notified members of the United States Congress that the project could cost as much as $7.3 billion; at the time, president George W. Bush had pledged only $1.8 billion for transit improvements in Lower Manhattan. The Port Authority ultimately decided to put the PATH terminal near Greenwich Street, two blocks west. The MTA's project to connect the different subway stations at Broadway–Nassau/Fulton Street was approved, despite the fact that the PATH and MTA projects were separate. These stations would instead be connected by a series of underground passageways, which would stretch from the World Financial Center in the west to the Fulton Street Transit Center in the east, spanning over half of Manhattan's width at this point. The Fulton Street Transit Center would also contain a large retail building at Broadway and Fulton Street, serving as the main entrance to that complex. The Fulton Street project would include new passageways, entrances, and elevators to provide transfers between the area's subway stations and increase the capacity of the existing station complex at Broadway–Nassau/Fulton Streets.
In February 2003, New York Governor George Pataki announced a $5 billion plan for rebuilt transit infrastructure at South Ferry, Fulton Street, and the World Trade Center. By April 2003, the MTA had released preliminary plans for a $750 million transit hub at Fulton Street, connecting six subway stations. At the time, the Fulton Street station was extremely hard to navigate, as the four stations in the complex had been built by different companies at different times. The MTA initially contemplated razing the Corbin Building on John Street to make way for the transit center's main building, but the agency had agreed to preserve the building by that October. In December 2003, the Federal Transit Administration allocated a combined $2.85 billion to the three Lower Manhattan transit projects. The PATH station received $1.7 billion in aid, while the Fulton Street Transit Center received $750 million and the South Ferry Terminal received $400 million.

Planning and cutbacks

Compared with other subway stations' renovations, the Fulton Street Transit Center's funding was secure because the project was financed using money from the September 11 recovery fund. After funding for the transit center had been secured, the project's environmental impact statement was released in 2004. That year, a group of architecture firms, including Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners and Lee Harris Pomeroy Associates, were hired to design the Fulton Street Transit Center. The project was still undergoing revisions as of mid-2005, and was to be completed by October 2005. Construction was set to begin later that year.
Funding problems began in June 2005, when the original plans were cut back. The projected cost of the Fulton Street Transit Center had grown by $75 million, to $825 million. The design had been delayed to May 2006, and the proposed completion date was now December 2008. In March 2006, the land under the Corbin Building was taken for the proposed transit center by eminent domain. A block to the north, the MTA began the process of evicting and relocating 148 store owners near the site of the transit center's main building. The budget of real-estate acquisition also rose from $50 million to $157 million. This cost increase was a key factor in the ballooning costs of the transit center over the next several years.
By May 2006, the budget was nearing $850 million, and the planned completion date was delayed to June 2009. Despite the $45 million budget overrun, the MTA denied that the Fulton Center plan would be curtailed. In November 2006, the MTA announced the creation of a free transfer between the Cortlandt–Church Streets and World Trade Center stations, which would cost $15 million more. By February 2007, the projected cost had risen to $888 million, and the MTA pledged to pay for the $41 million gap with its own money. The completion date was now projected as October 2009.
Meanwhile, the costs of other MTA Capital Construction projects were rising as well. The issue peaked in January 2008, when the MTA announced that three other capital projects were facing a combined cost overrun of $1 billion. To remedy the overrun, plans for the Fulton Center's main building had to be downsized: instead of being a structure with a large dome, the headhouse would now be a simple stainless-steel building with a smaller dome. The project, excluding the main building, was now expected to cost $903 million. The main building would cost another $250 million, if built. The cost overruns were attributed to the fact that the MTA had received a single, $870 million bid for one phase of construction, more than twice the $408 million the MTA had originally set aside for that phase. The date of completion was now set for 2010, and the MTA had ordered a 30-day review of the Fulton Center plan. Around the same time, the neighboring World Trade Center Hub's costs also rose from $2.2 billion to $3.4 billion.
The funding reductions also resulted in several design cutbacks. The free transfer from the Cortlandt–Church Streets and World Trade Center stations was dropped from the plans, but was later restored using MTA funds before being dropped and restored again. The passageway underneath Dey Street was narrowed from. The MTA deleted the main building from the plan to reduce costs. In March 2008, the MTA announced that it would spend $295 million on an as-yet-undetermined structure at the location of the main building. One proposal included constructing the main building with a performing arts center, rather than a dome, on top. By this time, the MTA lacked several billion dollars in funding for its 2010–2014 capital spending plan. The MTA did not rule out the possibility of converting almost the entire plot into a public plaza and constructing a simple subway entrance from the plaza. New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo called the project "The Folly on Fulton Street", a word play on "Fulton's Folly", which was used to describe Robert Fulton's steamboat 200 years before. In June 2008, Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, prepared a report for New York Governor David Paterson regarding the Fulton Street and World Trade Center projects' cost overruns.
Despite the Fulton Street Transit Center's financing deficit, the Federal Transit Administration refused to fund the cost overruns associated with the Fulton Center. However, the MTA used 2009 federal stimulus money to help fund the project. In January 2009, the MTA received $497 million in additional stimulus money, bringing the total cost of the Fulton Street Transit Center to $1.4 billion. As part of an exhibit on the city's major public construction projects, the MTA described the status above ground: "Final details are being worked out for the above ground building. The 115-year-old Corbin Building, at the corner of Broadway and John Street, will be restored and incorporated into the transit center entrance design. The transit center will be a focal point with a vibrant design and a visible portal to downtown and the transit system below".