Clock tower project ticking along nicely.

Construction teams are surging forward to resurrect Hoboken's original turn-of-the-century copper clad clock tower--the jewel of a $115 million renovation of the Hoboken Rail and Ferry Terminal--by keeping the 221 foot giant aligned with modern day construction costs and massive cranes in short supply in the industry.

"Our initial challenge was being able to do the project at all. Being a transportation entity, New Jersey Transit focuses most of its effort on things like passenger service and this was more of an asthetic historical project," said Randy Doliver, vice president of Tishman Construction and resident engineer for New Jersey Transit.

"We had to find creative ways of making it affordable, at the same time we had to find a good representation of the original tower, which had been missing for 50-some odd years." As workers hoist the first section of copper skin onto the building this week, they will be recreating the shape of the original clock tower, constructed by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad in 1907 and dismantled in 1950 after a fierce storm bashed in the tower.

The blueprints for the replica were created as the result of architects from Stantec and Beyer Blinder Belle squinting over grainy black and white photographs which presented the only evidence of Kenneth Murchison's original design in classic Parisian-bred BeauxArts architectural style, and entering into discussion with the state's Historic Sites Council. After much deliberation, Tishman Construction and New Jersey Transit realized it would be impossible to stomach construction costs and build the tower from scratch on site and entered into an agreement with Campbellsville Industries Inc to prefabricate portions of the tower offsite in Kentucky. These were shipped back to Hoboken in large sections, assembled in a staging area on the plaza and placed over the terminal.

Hoisting the tower sections requires heavy cranes which need significant lead time, and construction has often been scheduled around the cranes availability, Doliver said.

The structural steel that comprises the core of the tower presented another problem. After the roof in the clock tower was opened, engineers realized there was a two and a half inch variance in steel from one side of the original tower to the other.

"We realized that, if we built straight up from the structural steel, we would have had a little local leaning tower of Pisa," Doliver said.

The steel was thus leveled from footings placed on various levels of the plaza. The core will be supported by aluminum columns. The building's skin will also be supported by aluminum.

Fiber optics, rather than the original incandescent lamps, will backlight both the words Lackawanna on all four sides of the tower, and the clock face itself. And the clock will operate electronically, rather than with the costly gear and shaft of the original.

Though the final phase of construction isn't due to be complete until spring of 2008, project managers are confident in the authenticity of the clock tower that is being created.

"I think this clock tower is a major historic symbol for the waterfront along the Hudson and to put something in that didn't look like the original would have been a huge disappointment to a lot of people," Doliver said.