It's likely to be the most distinctive subway entrance in the city. On Wednesday, the MTA unveiled its plans for the Fulton Street Transit Center, which is designed to make life much easier for downtown commuters. NY1 transit reporter Bobby Cuza reports.

Less than four years from now, a block of Broadway on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan will be completely transformed — home to a dazzling new transit center that officials say will be an easy-to-find landmark for subway riders.

"You'll be able to see it from significant distances," said MTA Director of Special Projects William Wheeler.

The design for the Fulton Street Transit Center was formally unveiled Wednesday at the Center for Architecture. It's marked by a 110-foot tall steel and glass dome rising out from a glass-box pavilion that will allow sunlight to seep underground, brightening what is now a dark and often bewildering convergence of nine subway lines. Some platforms will also be rebuilt.

"The concept here is to bring sunlight, all the way down to the 4 and 5 line platform level," said Mysore Nagaraja of the MTA Capital Construction Company. "It's going to be beautiful."

An underground concourse below Dey Street will connect with the PATH train and five other subway lines in Santiago Calatrava's new World Trade Center Transit hub.

There will be some retail along both Broadway and Fulton Street. But to make way for the project almost everything on the block will be demolished, as well as the building at the southwest corner of Fulton and John, where an entrance to the Fulton Center will be built.

"We have almost 300,000 people per day going through this complex," said Nagaraja. "The life of all those people are going to change quite a bit and it's going to be better."

Unlike other big-ticket projects like the Second Avenue subway or the extension of the 7 line, here there are no questions about where the money will come from. The entire $$750 million price tag will be paid for out of federal, post-9/11 aid.

A public hearing on the project will take place June 8.

— Bobby Cuza