"It will be a cemetery, a tourist attraction and a hodgepodge of second-rate "cultural facilities", but it will never again epitomize the commercial dynamism that built New York." R. Jaffe, NY, letter to the NYTimes Mon 9-22-03. BUT, as I just read in a letter to the editor [DailyNews 23-1-06] There is no reason to treat a mass-murder site like a cemetery! DO NOT build a memorial showcasing the killers' success!
"Without meaning to, I'm sure, Childs has based his design for Freedom Tower on a symbol of conquest over the Arab world. It gets worse. In modern Europe and the United States the Obelisk is often something else; a funerary monument. The World Trade Center will already be getting a below-ground memorial. The last thing it needs is a quarter mile high tombstone."[-Justing Davidson NYPost 6-30-05 "A high-profile compromise"] - - "The new obelisk-shaped tower..evokes a gigantic glass paperweight with a toothpick stuck on top."[-Nicholai Ourousseff, "A Tower of Impregnability, the Sort Politicians Love" NYTimes 6-30-05] Also see Ourousseff "A Tower That Sends a Message of Anxiety, not Ambition" NYTimes 2-19-2007.]
Massive urban destruction, masses of citizens deliberately killed. True horror. Rebuild there? Oh NO. Oh YES. Read my lips -Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden-Coventry-Berlin-London-Tokyo. Not to mention- 19th cent US- Yeah ATLANTA and other burned southern cities, even RENO-CLINTON's WACO [where is the memorial?] and COLUMBINE [so should they close it?] H.S. in your face!...to those WTC families who have been so infected with political correctness over "sacred footprints".
Overly ambitious completion dates, just plain wrong from the start, [Bagli, NYTimes 7-1-2008->] "..set at a time when former Gov. George E. Patraki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Port Authority wanted to convey the sense that this most politically, economically and emotionally significant of project would be completed quickly." Why? It's two dozen projects, "[n]ineteen public agencies, two private developers and 101 construction contractors and subcontractors are involved." Besides pressures of dozens of family groups, the community groups, the..."stakeholders" who will be "heard" in the "inclusive" process.
[Fred Siegel, "Stalled at Ground Zero" Wall St. Journal 9-7-2007->] "Despite lofty rhetoric about confounding the terrorists by rebuilding quickly, what followed under the aegis of Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg was a quick return to business as usual. In the absence of strong leadership, New York's political culture of ferrociuously clashing interest groups and waltzing elephantine bureaucracies produced, subway repairs aside, almost nothing for five years. PORT AUTHORITY fouled up so badly it said they need into fall 2008 just to redo a budget and timetable which reflects reality for the WTC project for *first* time.
The Towers: It's back WTC 1 [AKA 'Freedom Tower'] rising, cost gone up from $2bil to $3.1bil 2013 completion? : APR 2009 Doubt about need and financing of all the towers, "Renegotiations that could put off the final trade center tower until 2030-NYTimes 4-15-2009.
DBank demolition: JPMorgChase, Merrill etc. Tower 5 plans for that site are abandoned. Dismantling of DBank to be finished not earlier than JAN 2010? at cost almost doubled.
Larry Silverstein Tower 2, 3 and 4 sites: MAY 2009-in funding trouble. POLs and Port Auth met to re plan retail 'podiums' for these sites. Tower 4 can be compeleted first SIlverstyien says he will have to halt const soon [fall2009] because he has to wait for Port Auth infrastructure to advance. delayed into 2012-13 at least [one delay for example was a 40ft wood/steel retaining wall thru it which he needed PortAuth to remove and they NO because it is just a few FEET outside of tower footprint and so they should not even pay Silverstein a penalty for that. [-see Feiden, DailyNews 10-9-2008] For a bail out Silverstein who is about to run our of insurance money, PORT AUTH is demanding the tribute of giving back rights to one of Tower 2 or 3. Port Auth had owed fines to Silverstein since it missed JUNE 30 2008 deadline for 'delivering' Tower 2 site which was still being excavated [OCT 2008]. -Penalties paid to him OCT 2008 total was $43.8mil [ulimimately from our $$] . Construction of south "bathtub" for truck security entrance and screening was also delayed. Towers 2 and 3 may be delayed to as late as 2030.
Transit Facilities: PATH and NY MTA-Subway: Umm, pardon the expression, are going down the tubes.
After a couple of years of PORT AUTH announcing maintaining major form of the Calatrava plan [cut in scope and quality, increase in security, cut moving part of roof], end of JUN 2008 they may be throwing in the towel as coming in new report [OCT 2 2009] asked for by Gov. Patterson. Cost overruns of original passed 50%. PA only funded $300mil of it.. and the rest is from the FEDs and probably riders and drivers in higher fares and tolls. Announced in MAY 2009 new completion date is Oct 2014, FED "FTA" finding is it could will be early 2015! $1.4bil from us thru Feds as "stimulus" money still may may leave it short funded! When 1st announced the new PATH station was to be completed in 2006!
Every few months Port Authority and MTA announce more cost increases and MTA cuts back scope of the Fulton Transit Centre. It seemed to be going out of existence. The Fulton-Broadway bldg was announced "cancelled" in early 2008 in face of rising costs; rumour was the site was to be paved over, or speculate one of the WTC planned cultural components might take it over. It looks like it is back, with cutback of dome/skylight.
The Memorial and Museum: Delayed but site work under way. Cost escalated to $1billion+! The WTC Memorial does NOT include the words or info "SEPTEMBER 11 2001" anywhere! It does NOT include the US flag ANYWHERE! Reflecting Absence, indeed! -press hardly reported this and other such details of the santization of the attack! TODAY the existing "9/11 Timeline" posted along the Church St side is politically corrected and neuters the event! It does NOT include words "attack" or "terrorist /hijacker" etc. DEC 2006 the Mayor sticking his 2c [and million$ toward the memorial plus as chairman] said Police and Fire could be listed together by unit [no rank] and civilians the names are to be engraved RANDOMLY around the tower they died in on wall around the edge of the waterfall pits. It STILL is NOT satisfactory to a group of some of the family members and a TV ad and web protest site is set to begin JAN 24 2007.['google' Christy "Do you know who I am!" Ferer to see a 9-11 widow from hell and what trouble some of them cause..]
Deconstruction: DBank and Fiterman: FITERMAN Hall decontamination delayed for years started [SEE MORE->] in 2008, stalled then underway towads late 2009 completion. The City Univ was looking for full $325mil [are $71mil+ short] for the new grander replacement [-Cuozzo NYPost 8-18-2008 called it a "shakedown], don;t know what was worked out. DBank is still in midst of a worse morass, costs rising, and delayed beyond what anyone could have predicted. Criminal charges to contactors, City of NY could be result of summer Grand Jury [scroll box below]. Where were the 4 Bovis inspectors at the time of the fire? Why isn't the Commissioners HEAD rolling over ignored "smoking gun" memo , demolition workers smoking there, removal of standpipe [painted wring color!] MAR 22 2005 memo re FIRE FIGHTNG PLANS for the building? "Half a dozen" agencies -"Regulators, led by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, sent back more that 20 pages in early 2005 filled with suggestions for changes to the first [2004 Dbank deconstruction plan] draft. Six months later, after a second draft was drawn up to meet their specifications, they came up with more than 40 pages of comments and suggestions."[-S. Garland. 9-7-2007, "Negotiations Over Tower Demolition May be Tricky, NYSun] 14 floors taken down by AUG 2007 fire, two firemen dead.
St. Nicholas Church relocation and rebuilding negociations "ended" early Mar 2009" and evoling July 2008 offer is rejected. That Port Authority "generous offer" for new site $$$ came with too many strings attached including the height "not to exceed that of the memorial" while the Port Auth claimed the Church was being greedy and wanted confidential info on the plans for the garage. The Church's existing site and nearby substitute site offered both are partly or wholely over new vehicle screening ctr. The Church apparently plans to rebuild on its own land and the Port Auth will take underground building rights by eminent domain, compensating them. [-see Bagli, NYTimes 3-19-2009]
| More of the Muddled Project History and Politics | |
A rebuilt but refined, safer and maybe bigger World Trade Center could have been a LIVING MEMORIAL!... This project is not- should not be- a bunch of buildings of whatever size and plan *plus* a memorial...OCT 2006, Mayor Bloomberg quietly donated $10Mil to the Memorial Foundation and was officially nominated to chair it 10-5-2006.A must-read was NYPost 11-28-2005 editorial that cut through all the bull___ "IT STINKS re the Memorial with museum, and whole WTC site scheme. The revised memorial, footprints and all, eats up most of the space and is an unfocused huge sad underground maze [with a design implying bodies settled neatly down into the tower bases] that so far has largely been a sacred cow. And yes, family persuaded them to include private room[s] at the north tower base that will house thousands of unidentified body parts, while the public will see a symbolic [empty container] "contemplation vessel"-announced JAN 2005.
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Gov Pataki's Lower Manhattan Dev. Corp. had it's first meeting in late Dec. 200 *before* these 6 schemes were released. PORT AUTH tried to take solo control of the development process with issuing a request for proposal end of APRIL 2002, but no one knows what came of that. But May 22 2002 the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority selected the firm Beyer Blinder Belle to coordinate the rebuilding six proposed schemes unveiled at the end of June 2002, after a rushed and confused selection process with stiff requirements that guaranteed fat-cat establishment firms could only survive the selection. These are pictures of models of the scheme -directly to the left]. But instead look Liberty Square, a retro alternative in the pre-war NYC tradition, down below to the right. Beyer is NOT doing the architectural design. Not the designers, Patakis committees orchestrate such a labyrinth of rules, look at we we have gotten so far. The Lower Manhattan Dev. Corp. is composed of members mostly appointed by the Gov. of New York, with some by the Mayor. The Port Authority is a bi-state entity with a board appointed by the Governors of NY and New Jersey. It owns the site, with the bldgs. on long-term lease to L. Silverstein. Muschamp, Times arch. critic says, and I couldn't have said it better about the firm and the process.
Ah, FREEDOM TOWER, the big Phase 1 building one had an original completion date in 2008! The GOV was a wise-ass to it call it Freedom Tower..now that is UNdone, which is worse, being P-C and not having the balls to calll it WTC or in this new Obamanation, to retreat from the name of Freedom Tower? -[-The height and name and filling it with government agencies at the start make for a good target, as so many whiners claim any tall tower there would be.] Pataki conferred a meaningless 1776 ft ht on the spire [NO I am NOT making fun of "1776" - using the number in this way IS!] Anyway, this new final Tower was unveiled JUNE 29 2005 (reduced down to 1,368 ft tall before any mast). Bloomberg cut out early, NO ONE from the Port Authority was there. It is a "slender glass obelisk rest on a steel skinned cube." [-69 floors, offices start at 20th fl height above the blast-resistant base]." Slimmer and rotated so it could be set back further from the street and is main mass is as tall as the orig WTC is just high-concept David Childs. What does it have to do with THIS place, its burdens and its potential? "...[T]he quality of the master plan has been sacrificed to the governor's insistence on preserving hollow symbolic gestures."[-Ourousseff, NYTimes 6-30-05]. Note Pataki also forced the renaming of Newark to [Newark] Liberty Airport.The designs for towers 2, 3, 4, along Church St. were unveiled 9-7-2006, looking like a bit of Chicago in NYC. The architect of Tower 2 was named on 12-15-2005, Sir Norman Foster. The architect for tower 3, was named MAY 3 2006, Lord Richard Rogers and Funihiko Maki was named for tower 4, it was a fantasy that construction could begin in 2007!
The new PATH centre was supposed to break "above"-ground JUNE 2006, will in be 2011?. he official ground breaking was 9-6-05 site work started, Umm the contract for the Calatrava bldg is expected to be awarded by early 2006. Construction of temp tracks started NOV 3 2005 for shutdown of some existing tracks in 2007 while terminal above is constructed [and these also go into the footprints]. Santiago Calatrava's [picked as architect in mid 2003] wonderful design for a combined PATH transportation center was unveiled 1-22-04. T It is the most joyous portion so far of anything to be seen of the new WTC et al. "It will cast out the defeatist attitude that has clogged New York's architectural arteries since the destruction of the old Pennsylvania Station."[-Herbert Muschamp 1-23-04 NYTimes] and we are fortunate that a rendering released 9-17-02 for a huge airport-style transit terminal for the west side of the site is not to be. Designs for the underground shopping mall are in dispute as that part of the WTC site were in flux and or due to technical infrastructure considerations, but the latest designs for the future towers along Church St were unveiled NOV 2005 as "podium" bases to be constructed that will house retail. The Port Authority was especially concerned about covering $120 million year lease plus PLUS there is a share of the $1 billion [estimated] basement level infrastructure that the Port Auth. wants him to pay as builder of the 1st tower, which seems to be assured with the Dec 2004 decision.
The Revisionists and P-C Battle to Control Thought
The WTC Memorial Foundation was created in DEC 2004. Its board includes David Rockefeller and the Chairman of AMEX] will eventually oversee the new cultural and memorial facilities is fundraising $500+ million for and assume some of the functions of the LMDC. The board met for the first time 1-5-2005 in secret. NOTE there WAS [denied] taping of the meetings for a proposed documentary, but they got NY Supreme Court to make them private [-see NYTimes on the history of the new WTC and Mem progress, 9-11-2006]. It is a private corporation. ON July 11 2005, the SECY of the Foundation Stefan Pryor resigned who was also the President of the LMDC!-the Daily News had just questioned the propriety of that and need to clarify connections between the Foundation and the LMDC. Memorial Foundation was to receive minimum of $300Mil in govt funds. 3rd meeting July 12 2005. The scheme evolved and was changed over time but escalated in estimated cost that is now in LIMBO! It just kept its resemblance to the original scheme above the ground, as the underground facilities grew in complexity and the original designer was removed from participation. A lawsuit by various family MAR 2006 to prevent construction of the memorial centered on concerns over new construction touching the footprints[!] was dismissed MAY 11 [decision was released MAY 16!]. This was a modified version of the third public version 12-16-04. M. Arad's "Reflecting Absence" was the winner announced Jan 6 2004 out of 5,300 entries chosen Jan 5 2004. Its first revision was the one released to public JAN 14 with trees added to the blank plaza and the cultural and museum bldgs put back into the overall scheme. The 13-member jury and landscape architect P. Walker "surrounded Mr. Arad's work with a tropical rain forest." Two of 4 access ramps were eliminated and the underground labyrinth of museum and memorial facilities grew. The original design was said to be "..[p]robably the most dignified and legible of the eight that were made public in November. [W]ithout relying on machinery or texts or special effects...that minimalism has largely been betrayed, in a way that is typical of every step of the rebuilding process" and further "..am I the only observer to have been struck by the similarity between the stone container for unidentified remains at bedrock level and the Kabaa in Mecca? Look at it.."[-James Gardner NY Sun 1-15-04].The architects for the cultural bldgs were announced OCT 12 2004 - Frank Gehry for an arts center to include the Joyce International Center [dance] and Signature Thea Center [site at Fulton-Greenwich St between "Freedom Tower and 7 WTC], and Snohetta of Norway for what is left -an orientation-visitors centre- since the International Freedom Center museum and Drawing Ctr are removed from the project. A prelim public release of their new plan came in Spring 2005, but as we see in 2008, these part of the plans are FUBAR. POSTER child for FUBAR is the Fulton St Transportation Ctr. from cut backs in NOV 2006- $150Mil over budget, when they are talked about $15 shortage forcing elimination of underground passage to PATH! - MAY 24 2005 cut it back in scale to stay on its $750 budget was announced lowered the height of dome over entrance bldg and cut back in width[!] of underground DEY ST passage to 29 ft from 40 ft. to 2008 cut of the Fulton St building above station level entirely! [The start date for the first modification to existing infrastructure is the N-R-W Dey St passage to Bway started late AUG 2005.]
LMDC board members bit the hand that umm created them on some memorial features. Other resistance battled the politically correct, won some points but lost the battle on the whole memorial scheme, ultimately. They helped push the Governor to cancel the IFC which featured a "Freedom Walk" depicting, OK the US Declaration of Independence but then a cast from Gandhi to MLKing and an examination of issues to include the war on poverty as a central theme or excuse for well, I say they mean revolution and violence-- AH one excuse for the attack on 9-11! The NY OBSERVER said [cover date 10-17-05] tsk tsk the Gov firmly made a bad decision and then, you see Agnes Gund, Henry Kravis, and even Barbara Walters resigned from Memorial Foundation - how can you raise the hundreds of million$ required if you p-o rich [they would not use the word rich] and influential people like them?? FEH! NY Times afterwards [OCT 7] had story after story about the board and politicos and intellectuals who condemned removing culture and debate from the WTC "memorial quadrant". Somehow Mr. Whitehead must be delusional when he said the process that led to the site plan and creation of the IFC etc was done with "full public approval" ["Officials Rip IFC Removal" NYPost 10-7-05] Mr. TOFEL, Pres and CFO IFC as is so far, cried that "short term" POLITICAL CORRECTNESS and evil relatives killed his necessary project. TUES Aug 16 2005-the NYC Firefighters org [UFA "union"] withdrew its support for the WTC site memorial.
The huge above-ground IFC- INTERNATIONAL FREEDOM CENTER was to be the visible centerpiece of the Memorial. In AUG-SEPT 2005 IFC was under pressure to tame anti-American tendencies out its exhibitions of freedom and oppression [? we don't really know EXACTLY what the hell they would show, and that is part of the problem, its INAPPROPRIATE] or face possible cut out of the site. How could anything have made the hard-core internationalists-PC of the IFC change their stripes? The families protested 6-20-05 the "tolerance" museum basis of this IFC at the memorial. By its mission statement "harness the power of history and use it as a springboard for contemporary dialogue and debate" on the meaning of freedom, an inappropriate politically direct display of lessons of tolerance and diversity, directed by a panel of appointed scholars and consultants with the attitude of Michael Moore but the using the ASPEN Institute to develop programs, with actual involvement of George Soros, and a cabal of -blame US academics-, so the NYTimes can say they are not "White House lackeys! The Times editorialized 7-1-205 against the "take back the memorial-er", against appeasing' one "small, vocal group of protestors" "If ground zero cannot be a place of life and creativity, of true artistic and political freedom, then it will not be successful even as a place of grief." NYTimes for "political freedom" at the WTC site! Ha, they do not really have that at the UN - or CITY HALL -OR the NYTimes!! NEWSDAY says the GOV and LMDC are backing down from "artistic freedom" and believes need for the master plan cultural facilities as BUFFER between "MERCANTILE" aspects [of offices, shops] and the MEMORIAL [-what a crock]. They were set off by the announcement that the DRAWING CTR is looking for a new bldg off site instead of as part of those cultural facilities. Oh, and how were THESE particular institutions CHOSEN? That is also NOT public. PS-Prince Bandar of Saudi, is [or was] on the Board of the Aspen Institute.
New York is OVER in So Many Ways [but so is YOUR Town!]
In NYC are one of the greatest concentrations of talent and wealth in the WORLD, yet the new WTC is so-so [and still non-existant]. BUT this private sector can sure git-r-done, elsewhere. Western architects designed facilities that are unprecedented works of engineering and art for the Beijing Olympics. "Developers in [fast growing commercial centres from Moscow to Shanghai] want to build something that really makes an impact, a super-high-rise tower.".."that's why they pick us [over local firms..[president of a Manhattan based engineering company] -Marks, "NY builders cash in big overseas" CRAIN's NY Business DEC 4-10 2006. The US is third in the number of skyscrapers going up, but nowhere near the tallest buildings in the world.. The Bin Laden group is finishing what became tallest building in the WORLD JULY 11 2007 as it reached 1,680 ft./141 fl., but expected to have some spire way over 2,000 st, the Burj DUBAI U.A.E., is due for 2008 completion/ occupancy. It exceeds Petronas Centre that was already bested in Taiwan by Tapei 101 as tallest in the world. Buildings 500 to 1000 ft. "officially" classified as "skyscrapers" and over 1,000 ft are "super-tall." [Summer 2007] 240 Skyscrapers or super-tall bldgs are under construction in Asia and the Persian Gulf, DUBAI in a boom with 62 of these."If Pataki wants to avoid the embarrassment of a moribund Ground Zero in the midst of the Republican National Convention, he'd better make the LMDC and the Port Authority decide fast [on who IS going to build]-Steve Cuozzo NYPost 6-18-03 "WTC Shell Game, All politics, no building." Could this improve or just muddy the whole concept which I find impressive for a few moments, finally clearly see as a rather ill-conceived complex. After the debacle of first six schemes shown [on the side, below], the process was opened up to and 404 applications for architects all over the world were received. What happened to these plans, unseen by the public and prob. their peers?! Privatize! Get the NY STATE and NJ Governors [via PORT AUTH. ownership] -and most of do-gooders who know nothing about planning or architecture *OUT* of the Planning Process -sell it all to new owner[s] who dream big and are true clients The same bureaucracy created to oversee the process picked semifinalists in September 2002, the LMDC unveiled the handful of finalists DEC 18. 2002. Though the PORT AUTHORITY was said to have its own architects draw up new WTC plans, none of that was made public. 500,000 sq.ft. will return to the site by a new agreement with Westfield LLC which kept right to negotiate one though they closed out last deal for ol WTC retail that Port Authority announced Sept 15 2003 they bought Westfield which gave the PA control over a larger portion of the site plus a good amount of insurance money; Westfield *rejected* the Libeskind plan Mar 14 2003 in a letter to the LMCD, It didn't have the room underground for them, and threatened legal action to force plan revisions, NYC wants street life in the schemes and opposed an underground shopping center. Later a new deal for the new retail areas was reached. Port Auth also have development rights from the US Govt [the Customs House which moved to NJ] too.
"[But] who has been protecting the process from political considerations?...What we saw yesterday was no so much an architectural or urban plan as a tribute to the public agencies that managed to see eye-to-eye as the design process unfolded. Blind-spot-to-blind-spot might be more apt." re "Revised World Trade Center Master Plan" An Appraisal, by Herbert Muschamp, Architecture Critic of the Times 9-18-03.
On Sun 11-23-2003 PATH WTC reopening, about 100 incensed protestors voiced outrage that the station was named STILL World Trade Center and NOT World Trade Center Memorial or such - P-C in the victim's families is nearly a cancer. [GOV comment was public JUL 1 2002-]'..we won't build anything on the footprints of the towers- set the size of a memeorial and so shaped the whole project and gave a "veto" power the "families". [but Port Auth plans tourist wanted a bus garage underneath, though the Gov said in early JUNE 2003 he was against it...]- directly resulted in schemes consisting of pits of a memorial surrounded by towers. Pataki shaped the actual bldg. and site designs more than *anyone* by political machinations and playing to constituencies de jour such as WTC victims' families. MOST damaging and uncalled for activity of these do-gooder golden victims was their fall 2004 lobbying to push thru the unfortunate Intelligence Reform Bill which may turn out to greatly RAISE national insecurity. The architects nearly achieved leaving the footprints untouched on revised plans announced 9-17-03 by the Gov et al., by moving a delivery facility to site of DeutscheBank bldg and a relocated [no place found though] bus facility. OH - a PATH line runs- and did run in the base of a tower -but some of "these people" say it *OK because it was there before the towers* -[they are f__ wrong because new PATH platforms and trackage to them was built as part of WTC complex and started while the ol Hudson Tubes ran into Hudson Terminal. That old station was turned into a secure vault in the late 1980s or so].
The First Round Schemes Made 'ol WTC Seem Brilliant
The revised plans feature somewhat more conventional towers and reworked underground concourses. But PATH is disputed- Even if they are temporary, they are a violation of the sanctity of the site," said Anthony Gardner, chairman of the WTC United Family Group which is part of a pressure group called Coalition of 9-11 Families [-NYTimes, Metro 7-9-03, "Relatives Say Plans Infringe On Twin Towers Footprints" originally, facilities almost exactly as these were part under WTC2]. They pressed for legislation to codify their *nothing on footprints down to the bedrock stance* and threatened the Port Authority over PATH emergency exits and equipment even as PATH line to the temp WTC station ran test trains Oct 22 2003 readying for *NOV 2003* opening. The activists are also used R Giuliani among others to campaign for the Fed govt to take over memorial development preservation of all land in WTC "bathtub" from "bedrock to infinity" yeah an underground deathpit as memorial [not in their opinion somehow!] which is more than half of the total site, including land where ALL redevelopment schemes include bldgs and the PATH line and station are being rebuilt NOW.[-NYTimes 7-1-03]. The2005 lawsuit of about now 1,000 families seeking removal of ALL WTC debris from the Fresh Kills landfill for search for remains for "dignified burial" -[oy its ashes mixed with ashes of the bldgs] may be dismissed as NYC wishes MAR 2008, as judge finally said "be satisfied with a memorial there" 'your' constitutional right are not being violated; NYC took care to sift for remains with smallest sieve of 1/4-inch. They families might settle for relocating all the stuff to a part of Fresh Kills that was not used for garbage. Militant "WTC Families for Proper Burial" pressured NYC in court for removal of up to 1/2 millions tons of debris BACK to WTC site, they a bit of it to be brought back..I did hear much more about that.
Jerky Jerseyites?
They call the site a cemetery but NO ONE is BURIED in or connected to the basement concrete floor of the WTC. After the collapses WE BREATHED DEAD POEPLE!.They were mostly squished, ground up and burned along with asbestos, steel and concrete. We all know even though the media self-censored most of it that people jumped rather than burn at the upper floors of the towers. Body parts were found even found INSIDE many nearby APARTMENTS -[so, tear THEM down![?]. The Memorial "competition" added requirement of a facility to house unidentified remains, [an "ossuary"] which is to be incorporated into the memorial schemes. "the NJ Governor shouted Aug. 28 2002 no plans to be made by LMDC "over my damned body." [Former] Mayor Giuliani said SEP. 1 or 2 2002 that the WHOLE site should be a memorial. By all their logic, we should *NOW* tear down a big chunk of Park Slope near 4thav 3-5 st because that IS sacred ground..the first battle of the Revolution in AUG 1776 "Battle of Long Island" where hundreds of men, many Marylanders died, losing actually but buying time for George Washington and troops to get away to fight another day. There are other battlefields too, even in NYC. *late JUNE 2003 *[More crazy New Jerseyans Some family members of the killed want Families for Proper Burial filed suit against NYC, Port Auth and LMDC 10-14-04 to bring the ashes from the landfill RETURNED to WTC site memorial. They demonstrated there again SEPT 10 2006 to "demand" return of their loved one "bodies" or remains from Fresh Kill to the WTC site, even though only ashes are left and any unidentified fragments are being held in special preservation at a center at Bellevue for the long run until identified by any means possible and other fragements are to be placed at the site. NJ State Assembly members Linda Stender and Neil Cohen introduced a bill to return 9-11 victims' remains which, *there* are really ashes] from Fresh Kills to Ground Zero." [-NY Post 10-20-2002, too. In late DEC 2003 Gov McGreevey of NJ signed very misguided legislation "..that would direct the Port Authority..to collect the trade center ash from Fresh Kills - which the legislation states, "contains remains of the victims of Sept. 11 , 2001" -and transport it in containers to a future memorial at ground zero. Since this would mean not only digging up more than a million tons of hazardous debris buried on a site owned by New York City, but also passing an identical measure in New York and getting the city to accept the debris, statehouse observers say New Jersey would find such legislation difficult to implement."-NYTimes 12-30-03 Would they really want sifted WTC debris they dug up in 2001-2002 put back?Hope you don't live on an Indian burial ground! If you're so very liberal you should go home to Europe. Boerum Hill, Bergen St. Brooklyn homeowner dug in his basement Nov 2 2004 and found bone fragments from an Indian burial. Part of Washington Sq IS a paupers burial ground and execution place! Give all that land back to some damn "Native Americans" to open a casino and sell tax-free cigarettes.
'Marginal Role for Architecture at Ground Zero'
-a blunt critique in NY Times Metro 5-23-2002, by Herbert Muschamp David Childs as architect to actualize Libeskind's scheme doesn't change that - his buildings hum, but they don't sing; witness his Worldwide Plaza at 8av50st, 7 Times Square, and new AOL-Time Warner Center."The selection...confirms once again that architecture will play no more than a marginal role in the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. While the firm's remodeling historical structures has earned high praise, its original work has been lackluster...It is not a crime to lack imagination...accountability..rests with the Port Authority..and the Lower Manhattan Economic Development Corporation.." Though Muschamp seemed pleased with the THINK lattice towers proposal, I think this criticism still is somewhat valid for the 'final' round of quite bizarre and brutalistic [tho' shiny] conglomerations.
The process as *I* and many development-savvy NYers have feared will be IS..."..carve up a project into components, hire different consultants for each, bring architects in at the last possible moment to design a building skin that will look nice in renderings, then bring in a construction manager to slice the budget and ensure that the poor building will stand up for the ribbon cutting ceremony. This is no way to build great cities..." Note due to PORT AUTH. control of the site, as back in the 1960's, New York City has *NO* say over zoning, land use or environmental reviews. To the right below, Liberty Plaza by Frank Lohsen McCrery of D.C. with sculptor Alexander Stoddart -note the monumental figures in the plaza, published in CITY JOURNAL vol. 11 no. 4- is still much better than any of the six schemes [by various architects well-connected to the Port auth, WFC, and Larry Silverstein..] released in July 2002, and the Libeskind plan. The no. 1 requirement of the LMDC was that proposals MUST contain equal office and retail space that was destroyed..LET's get politics [as much as possible] and the PORT AUTHORITY and the Gov. of NY and his appointees out of this altogether - the 99-year Contract with Larry Sliverstein is the problem.
START, back to 9/11.
