“Demolition would neither save time nor money,” the project’s Web site proclaims. “The hazardous materials would have to be removed first, the buildings would have to be demolished floor by floor, and every single function would have to find a temporary home elsewhere.” Despite the cost savings by not rebuilding from the ground up, the project still comes with a seemingly staggering price tag, which is being paid by the 192 U.N. member states, with the United States picking up by far the largest portion of the bill, about 22 percent. (The member states are being assessed the costs either over a five-year period or a one-time payment upfront.) Hesham Mohamed Eman Afifi, a U.N. diplomat from Egypt, once quipped that the only facet of the project that regularly met its deadline was the billing of member nations for construction costs. John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a frequently harsh critic of the organization, recently told FOX News that that amount is roughly equivalent to the cost that the United States pays each year for U.N. operations. “The easy thing to do was give us 22 percent of the bill, which they were happy to do,” Bolton said. But during that interview, Bolton conceded that the renovations would bring much-needed security improvements to the old buildings.“It doesn’t have many of the modern things you need to be sure about security,” he said. The Bush administration, which has sporadically criticized many facets of the United Nations over the past seven years, also had some major misgivings about the project. But the administration now seems resigned to the cost and time involved, and has generally been supportive as the construction gets under way. “The Bush administration, after investigating every nook and cranny of the CMP, now seems to be firmly behind it,” said Davis of the U.N. Information Center. The CMP effort actually marks the third attempt in a decade to rehabilitate the aging U.N. headquarters. According to the New York Times, “The first plan was halted in 2005 when the New York State Legislature, angry about diplomats’ unpaid parking tickets, mismanagement of the Iraq oil-for-food program and what lawmakers viewed as the United Nations’ anti-Israel bias, refused to pass enabling legislation to construct a new annex on an underused city playground next door.” The second time around, veteran architect Louis Frederick Reuter IV resigned after growing frustrated with persistent objections from Congress and the U.N. bureaucracy. U.N. officials hope the third time is the charm with Michael Adlerstein, a Brooklyn-born former National Park Service architect who devised the CMP. According to Adlerstein, the challenge of the renovation will be to respect the original design, while bringing its performance and safety into the 21st century.“Our opportunity is to make this complex a model of energy efficiency and sustainable design,” he noted. Adlerstein has been involved in the preservations of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, New York Botanical Garden and the Taj Mahal — and he has more than two decades of experience dealing with Washington lawmakers, a necessary credential for the U.N. job. Congressional critics, often spurred on by Republican Sen.Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, were for years vehement in their opposition to the renovation, and especially the cost to U.S. taxpayers. “As a generous contributor to the United Nations, the American people and their elected representatives have a right to demand that the world body spends their tax dollars wisely,” Coburn said in 2006. “Congress should withhold funding for this renovation, which has already been mismanaged, until the United Nations casts more sunshine on its budget practices.” Not all of the Capitol Hill critics have been silenced, but Congress has approved the U.S. share of the project. “There are still some critics on Capitol Hill, but we’ve worked extensively to address their concerns,” Davis said.“The FY 2008 appropriations bill containing the funds for the U.S. contribution to the CMP passed through both chambers of the Congress successfully.” The renovation project has endured its share of delays, cost overruns, bad publicity, public doubt and even ridicule from some quarters. But proponents of the massive undertaking are hopeful that the worst days are behind them and that the world will embrace the newly refurbished structure when it reopens in 2013. According to Davis, “We’re going to finally have a building that is up to health and safety codes, will be massively more energy efficient, and will serve as a fitting place to carry on the ever-growing demands placed on the U.N. by its member states.” Michael Coleman is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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