Hours before the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, city and state officials reached a deal to resume construction on the stalled 9/11 museum at the World Trade Center. The agreement calls for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum Foundation to transfer $17 million to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and for the foundation to cover its full operating costs of about $60 million per year, the New York Post reported. The deal was hammered out by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the Daily News said.
Construction has been slow or non-existent at the site since the end of last year, because the Port Authority claimed it was owed millions from cost overruns at the site — a claim that Bloomberg vigorously countered. By last December the two sides were “on the verge of litigation,” according to Cuomo.
The deal doesn’t solve all the issues between the two parties, and a definition of their legal relationship has yet to be defined, according to the Post. The Daily News said even though construction would resume imminently, the museum is not likely to be complete by next year’s anniversary. [Post] and [NYDN] — Adam Fusfeld