New York’s World Trade Center has been at the forefront of global attention ever since Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed two planes into the iconic Twin Towers in an unprecedented attack, causing both 110-story buildings to collapse and killing 2,753 building occupants, first responders and airplane passengers. Since then, the area has been the site of extensive reconstruction to remake the former bastion of the city’s financial district while honoring those who lost their lives on that day. In the past quarter-century, the area has seen the rise of main building One World Trade Center; several adjacent World Trade Center office buildings; the Oculus Transportation Hub and retail center; the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum commemorating the victims of the attacks; and Liberty Park, a 1-acre elevated green space that offers views of the memorial and museum.

For more than 20 years, Ozone Park, N.Y.-based Five Star Electric Corp. has worked on much of the electrical and systems contracting on a variety of World Trade Center projects, where designs have prioritized safety and security features and incorporated sustainable building practices and materials. Based on its experience in the region and strong relationship with its project client, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, Five Star Electric was awarded the “World Trade Center Vehicular Security Center & West Bathtub Vehicular Access” project underneath One World Trade Center and adjacent structures. Since the successful completion of the job in 2025, the complex will now provide security, connectivity and efficiency for years to come.

Creating secure access

Robert Reilly, Five Star Electric’s vice president of operations, said that his firm’s relationship with the World Trade Center began more than two decades ago.

“We started working at the World Trade Center a few years after 9/11. Our first project there involved electrical support for a temporary Port Authority Trans-Hudson station—[a] commuter train service connecting New Jersey and New York City—in 2004, through the middle of the rubble,” Reilly said. “As other rebuilding activities unfolded after that first project, a lot of opportunities presented themselves across the 16-acre World Trade Center complex, and we secured numerous jobs based on our strong industry reputation and quality work. Five Star Electric has since performed over $1 billion of electrical work at the World Trade Center, and the ‘Vehicular Security Center & West Bathtub Vehicular Access’ project was our last remaining job there.”

Five Star Electric crew members installed conduit racks
and feeders as part of the ‘World Trade Center Vehicular
Security Center & West Bathtub Vehicular Access’ project.

According to Reilly, the scope of that project for Five Star involved all electrical work to support secure vehicle access for truck delivery and underground parking at One World Trade Center, the entrance to which is on Liberty Street. This checkpoint is also fully connected to the entire complex of World Trade Center buildings requiring vehicular services. 

“The word ‘bathtub’ was an old term for the foundation built for the original Twin Towers, which were designed in a deep basin shape to keep the Hudson River from flooding those buildings,” Reilly said. “The bathtub foundation is still part of the new building and one of its walls is even on display at the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum.”

With as many as 60 crew members on-site at the height of the project, Reilly said that the team’s activities included installing conduit; pulling wire and installing lighting fixtures, fire alarms and security devices; and testing and commissioning those products so all systems throughout the entire complex communicated clearly with each other and functioned properly.

A decade of challenges

While Five Star’s electrical responsibilities on the project were fairly straightforward, a host of other circumstances proved challenging for the team.

Among them, Reilly said, “The contract for this job was actually awarded to Five Star Electric in 2015, and we started working on it in earnest in 2017. Residual damage caused by Superstorm Sandy in late 2012 ended up delaying the start of the job for us, and then the middle of the project got impacted by the pandemic in 2020, when the Port Authority significantly curtailed all operations on the project for two years. We didn’t fully return to work on the job until 2022.”

Reilly said that the many starts and stops along the way were tricky to manage. 

“Some team members we’d planned to use as foremen in the beginning changed jobs over the course of the project and were no longer available to us,” he said. “We were fortunate in that we found another foreman with strong experience to fill a key role, but only three to five crew members were there for the entire duration of the project, so there was a big learning curve on the job and a lot of starting from scratch with new team members over the years.”

In addition to scheduling delays and labor concerns, Five Star Electric faced global material shortages and supply chain disruptions.

“Some of the products that had originally been specified for our job became obsolete during the course of the project, and certain switchgear and security products were a little more challenging to acquire due to global supply chain issues,” Reilly said. “Thankfully, we did our best to plan ahead, and we regularly store basic material like pipe and wire, so supply chain issues were less of problem for a company of our size.”

Midway through the project, a significant pandemic-­driven schedule change involving construction of the Perelman Performing Arts Center, located above the Vehicular Security Center & West Bathtub Vehicular Access project, added other concerns to the company’s docket.

“Though the performing arts center was originally scheduled to be built after we completed our job underground, the two projects ended up having to be done concurrently as a result of the delays introduced by COVID, and we had to coordinate around it,” Reilly said of the design and location changes to the structure’s power and fire alarm system that Five Star Electric had to navigate. But the team successfully saw everything through in time for the Perelman Performing Arts Center to officially open in September 2023.

“We’re in the process of wrapping up a punch list, but the project was substantially completed in mid-2025, is fully in use and the Port Authority is very pleased with the product,” Reilly said “It was a long process, but we just stayed focused as a team and grinded it out every day.”

A proud part of a historic rebuild

Looking back on this and their many other projects at the World Trade Center over the years, Russell Lancey, Five Star Electric’s president and CEO, noted that, because of the complex’s global prominence and the tragedy that occurred there in 2001, the highly classified nature of the work was unlike other project they’d been involved in.

“The rebuilding of the World Trade Center was one of the most important construction projects in the world at the time, and one that was constantly in the media, and we’re excited to have been part of it,” Lancey said.

Reilly attributed much of Five Star’s success on the project to its ability to work hand-in-hand with the Port Authority to positively address big-picture goals as well as the daily ups and downs. 

“I’ve been involved in Port Authority jobs for 16 years, and we work well together,” Reilly said. “We spoke with our client on a daily and weekly basis to ensure that we kept the project moving along, and they were always very understanding of what we were up against with all of the delays and never put us under the added pressure of a time crunch or an unreasonable deadline.” 

Exterior, street-level access to the project

“The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey is a great client and we have a tremendous amount of respect for them,” Lancey said. “Everything was planned well and our use of 3D BIM modeling and coordination with other trades helped ensure clarity and efficiency on the job.”

“To this day, we’re always invited back to the annual 9/11 ceremony held at the World Trade Center, and Five Star Electric is honored to help run the ‘Tribute in Light,’ a yearly memoriam that shines 88 light fixtures in two columns into the sky and can be seen from 50 miles away,” Lancey said.

The Port Authority recently awarded the company another project involving electrical upgrades to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a midtown Manhattan-based landmark that serves more than 65 million people a year. While Five Star Electric is excited to kick off this new project, its work at the World Trade Center complex will always remain close to the heart of the company and employees.

“Our clients recognize and respect quality workmanship and a company that does the right thing; we’ll continue to hold those values high and are honored to have great agencies like the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey as clients,” Lancey said. “After being a presence at the World Trade Center’s reconstruction for over 20 years, Five Star Electric is extremely proud to have been part of it all.”  

STOCK.ADOBE.COM / MARIANARA, Five Star Electric Corp.