UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations kicked off the long-delayed renovation of its landmark headquarters complex Monday led by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wearing a hard hat and wielding a shovel to break ground for a temporary conference building.
Ban was joined by 16 others with shovels who represented the U.N.'s many constituencies for the ceremony on the U.N.'s north lawn.
"Today we turn the soil which the United Nations stands on to mark the rebirth, or renovation, of our headquarters," the secretary-general said before lining up for the groundbreaking. "Over the next five years, we will make our facilities safer, greener, and more modern and efficient."
The temporary building, which will be erected on the north lawn in the coming weeks, will be the first piece of a $1.9 billion project to overhaul the 56-year-old complex designed by many leading architects of the late 1940s and early 1950s, including Switzerland's Le Corbusier and Brazil's Oscar Niemeyer.
The glass-and-steel headquarters overlooking the East River has not had a major overhaul since the buildings opened in 1952 and now violates several key New York safety and fire codes. The buildings are packed with toxic asbestos and lack a sprinkler system to resist fires.
"Our challenge is to respect the original design, the iconic experience of these buildings, while bringing its performance and safety into the 21st century," said American architect Michael Adlerstein, executive director of the modernization project known as the Capital Master Plan.
Patrick Kennedy, the U.S. government's undersecretary of state for management, welcomed the secretary-general's efforts "to green the headquarters," noting that the new complex "will see a 40 percent increase in overall energy performance and reduce water consumption, generating savings and significant resources for all."
The renovation was delayed for years by bureaucratic and political wrangling.
The General Assembly gave the project a green light in December 2006. After Ban took over as U.N. chief in January 2007, he proposed an accelerated plan to complete the overhaul by 2013 instead of by mid-2016 by emptying the entire 39-story Secretariat building rather than making renovations several floors at a time.
Adlerstein said the first two floors of temporary structure will initially be used for conferences and later by the General Assembly while a small third floor section will house the offices of the secretary-general and senior U.N. staff.
"This is a five-year building and at the end of the project it will be removed and the lawn will be restored," Adlerstein said of the temporary structure to be built.
"The U.N. will look just as it does today five years from now," Adlerstein said. "However, it will be a greener, more sustainable building. ... It will be much safer for the diplomats, for the visitors and for the staff.'
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