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NEW YORK, NY April 02, 2005 —Government agencies like the FBI and police departments aren’t the only ones dealing with a security clampdown in the years after the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Those involved in designing building security are also affected. As they strive to make our infrastructure safer, some say they’re finding it harder to share information about the sensitive subject.

WNYC’s Beth Fertig has more.

The 35-story office tower at three-hundred Madison Avenue was still under construction when the World Trade Center was destroyed. And it’s located just a block away from another landmark – Grand Central Terminal. So after the attacks, its owners went back to the drawing board to reassess their security plans.

Today, the building’s lobby is one story above street level with reinforcements to the structural steel columns on the outer shell. These stronger columns are supposed to help the base of the building resist a truck or car bomb, says Lawrence Graham, executive vice president of development for Brookfield Properties. And in case of an explosion, he also says the windows on the whole lower section of the building have two layers of glass – with the inner one laminated like a car windshield.

GRAHAM: Most of the blast would be absorbed in the outer one that would crumble, the inner one would bend, absorb the rest of the blast but not break and so hopefully the façade of the building would stay intact.

Graham says it makes good business sense to talk about what steps his company is taking to protect its tenants.

GRAHAM: It’s good for people to know these protections have been put in place, so that they feel better in the building.

While Graham’s company has been very public in discussing its plans, there are several real estate developers who decline to comment about the subject. Eva Lerner-Lam of the Palisades Security consulting group in New Jersey says architects and engineers also worry about information falling into the wrong hands.

LERNER-LAM: Information being exchanged among professionals is a very serious problem.

Last month, Lam organized a tour of Grand Central Terminal for a group of architects and engineers who were in town for a conference on building security. They were expecting to see the new chemical detectors, video surveillance and lighting systems. But the tour was cancelled due to security concerns.

Lam says that wasn’t the first time security concerns interfered with those whose job it is to design security. She heads an infrastructure task force for the American Society of Civil Engineers. And she claims she’s cancelled about a half a dozen meetings in the past year, because some members didn’t want to anger a client by sharing information.

LERNER LAM: You now have your boss coming in and telling you wait a minute this is a security issue don’t attend that meeting.

Lerner-Lam worked on a report card for the nation’s infrastructure, and wasn’t able to grade security because there wasn’t enough information.

There are professionals who say they have NOT encountered such problems. Todd Rittenhouse has worked on embassies and office buildings, as a principal at Weidlinger Associates here in New York. He won’t say which projects, however. When giving lectures or attending conferences, he says he uses common sense.

RITTENHOUSE: Talk about ranges of threats that being a bomb size from a satchel bomb to a small car bomb to a large car bomb, etc. But we would never say this building at the corner of X and Y when subject to a 500 pound bomb will experience this loading because I believe you’re then challenging people to say hmm, let’s see if he’s right and put a 500 pound bomb there.

Some professionals say industry guidelines would help. Albert Samano is President of Fortress Inc at VHB, a transportation security company. He says the Defense Department has policies for handling sensitive information by giving contractors different layers of security clearance. He’s proposing something similar for people who design building security so they know what they can say.

SAMANO: What do we post on websites, what do we not post, what do we share? At the bottom line there’s a missing standard, there’s a missing common and consistent way to handle materials that I think is probably forthcoming from the federal government.

So far there have been no such proposals. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.