For Fabricator, Steel Price Spike Helped Turn Out The Lights
At least 8,000 tons of steel sit silently on a trailer and on the ground in a yard in central New Jersey. While some of it is raw and some fabricated, each piece is marked with the number 2402 and was set to frame the structure of a soaring new midtown Manhattan headquarters for The New York Times Co., estimated at $350 million. Now, the steel is going nowhere, the subject of a bitter legal contest between project prime contractor AMEC Construction Management Inc., a trustee liquidating the assets of the jobs main fabricator and erector, Interstate Iron Works Corp., and a bank owed lots of money.
Interstate shut down three days before last Christmas, with most of its state-of-the-art fabrication shop and real estate set for auction on March 23 and 24. The Times project steel is unlikely to be included in the sale. In court filings, New York City-based AMEC claims it has paid for and now legally owns 4,259 tons of the fabricated steel. But Valley National Bank is staking its claim to the steel, while Interstate contends it has been under-compensated for the shipment.