John friggin' Galt. Yeesh.
Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.
This so-called company was hired by Bovis Lend Lease, which in turn was hired by -- wait for it -- Rudy Giuliani, the self-appointed Saint of 9/11. Bovis had received hundreds of millions in contract work from the City of New York during the Giuliani years. Giuliani had tried to push Bovis aside in favor of -- wait for it again -- Bechtel -- but finally backed off.
The John Galt Company is as big an enigma as the character for whom it's named:
The John Galt Corporation of the Bronx, hired last year for the dangerous and complex job of demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, where two firefighters died last Saturday, has apparently never done any work like it. Indeed, Galt does not seem to have done much of anything since it was incorporated in 1983.
Public and private records give no indication of how many employees it has, what its volume of business is or who its clients are. There are almost no accounts of any projects it has undertaken on any scale, apart from 130 Liberty Street. Court records are largely silent. Some leading construction executives in the city say they have never even heard of it.
That may not be as surprising as it seems. John Galt, it appears, is not much more than a corporate entity meant to accommodate the people and companies actually doing the demolition job at the emotionally charged and environmentally hazardous site at the edge of ground zero.
[snip]
The arrangement involving Galt — achieved after multiple companies that had bid on the Deutsche Bank contract were eliminated for one reason or another — is nonetheless odd for such a momentous job, one that is expected ultimately to cost roughly $150 million.
The arrangement, never fully publicly disclosed, was proposed by the general contractor charged with overseeing the demolition, Bovis Lend Lease, and approved by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns 130 Liberty Street.
Yesterday, Bovis announced that it had declared Galt in default on the bank building contract, saying the outfit Bovis had selected had failed “to live up to terms of its contract with respect to site supervision, maintenance and project safety.” One person who has spoken to Bovis executives, but who was not authorized to speak for the company, said it was likely that Galt would be formally fired within the week.
When officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation approved Galt’s participation, they even allowed two former senior Safeway executives to join the operation at the Deutsche Bank building on several conditions, including that they cooperate with an investigation being conducted by the city’s Department of Investigation.
In the 17 months since Galt took shape — and as problems mounted at the demolition site, including repeated safety violations — city and state officials have made announcements about the work and problems at 130 Liberty referring to John Galt as if it were a fully established corporation, and never mentioning by name the more controversial and less than perfectly qualified people and companies doing the work.
(John Galt, by the way, is a central character, an engineer, in Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” The book begins with this line: “Who is John Galt?”)
John Galt’s stationery puts its headquarters at 3900 Webster Avenue in the Bronx, near Woodlawn Cemetery, the same address as Regional Scaffolding’s. The two companies also share many of the same officers.
Greg Blinn, who is shown in city records as the president of the John Galt Corporation, said in a telephone interview: “I’m not really sure how I can help. My contract precludes me from talking to the media. I have to refer all questions or inquiries to the L.M.D.C.”
Daniel L. Doctoroff, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, who was a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation at the time it approved the Galt contract, said through a spokesman this week that safeguards had been put in place to make sure that the former Safeway executives did nothing inappropriate — like funnel money back to Safeway.
The Deutsche Bank building has provided fodder for conspiracy theorists for six years, and a sudden fire right before the 9/11 anniversary that finally prompts faster demolition is certainly an occasion to don le chapeau tinfoil. Some people are wondering why the building burned for four hours and didn't collapse.
And when you throw in "The John Galt Company", which SOUNDS like a shell company and takes its name from an Ayn Rand novel, well, things are very strange indeed
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