(Mark your calendars: RealShare New York, Oct. 12, 2011 in New York City and RealShare New Jersey, Sept. 13, 2011 in New Brunswick, NJ)

NEW YORK CITY-In a rallying cry before the grand opening of the 9/11 Memorial just two weeks away, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s executive director Chris Ward urged city and federal officials to put partisan politics aside and begin building big once again, calling for continued investment in new infrastructure throughout the region. “If we are going to construct the next generation of critical projects, we need to restore the critical constituency and come back to our pragmatic center,” Ward said at the New York Building Congress’ Tuesday afternoon luncheon at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park Hotel in Lower Manhattan.

“As a nation, a city, and of builders, current politics cannot endure,” he added. “We will not only lose the great public works projects that made us great, but we will lose our democratic center that has fundamentally bound us as a nation.”