Downtown Community Lauds Fiterman Plan

NEW YORK CITY-Downtown’s business and residential community on Friday welcomed the Bloomberg administration’s plan to construct a classroom building on the site of the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Fiterman Hall. Rendered unfit for use in the collapse of the original 7 World Trade Center on 9/11, Fiterman Hall will be razed and replaced with a $325-million, 14-story structure.

In a statement, Elizabeth Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, says her constituents are “thrilled that Fiterman Hall is coming down after casting a physical and symbolic pall over Lower Manhattan for more than seven years. Fiterman Hall is a symbol of what was, not what is, and the deconstruction and reconstruction of this building is vital to Lower Manhattan’s and BMCC’s future growth.”

The plan, announced on Thursday, calls for Fiterman Hall to be demolished next year and for the 390,000-square-foot classroom building that replaces it to be ready for occupancy in spring 2012. The new structure will also be named Fiterman Hall, after the philanthropists who donated the original building to BMCC, a unit of the City University of New York. It will contain both classrooms and offices of various academic departments, helping to relieve overcrowded conditions at BMCC’s existing facilities, according to a release from the mayor’s office. The $325-million cost includes $48 million for all pre-construction costs, $202 million for construction of the core and shell and $75 million for the fit-out, according to a BMCC release.