World Trade Center Developments [Archive] - Page 2

NoyokA

September 22nd, 2003, 11:34 AM

In regard to the site plans.... is anyone else concerned that subway tracks will run underneath the WTB? It just seems to me, an easy oppurtunity for the terrorists.

Anyways....

Arts groups submit downtown Manhattan plans

By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press Writer

September 16, 2003, 8:29 AM EDT

NEW YORK -- An opera house, a community center and a theater complex showcasing talent from throughout the country are among the ideas submitted by cultural organizations seeking a presence at ground zero.

Groups had until Monday to send their proposals to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which is overseeing the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.

While the agency has not announced who has submitted proposals, some groups have been lobbying for their plans.

A proposal for a theater complex that would feature productions from regional companies around the United States has garnered support from Meryl Streep, Arthur Miller and others.

"There is a presumption that the best of everything gets to New York, and that just simply isn't always true," said actress Blair Brown, who performed at a fund-raiser for the proposal last week. "We don't have any venue for getting the best in American theater."

The project, called the American National Theatre, would have an annual budget of up to $20 million and would choose the best productions from about 150 regional theaters, said Sean Cullen, an actor who is spearheading the campaign.

"Hopefully, one of the strengths that this idea has is that it will have an appeal nationally," Cullen said.

The complex would include three theaters _ one with 800 seats, one with 700 and one with 400.

The New York City Opera was originally considered a front-runner for the cultural center, but rebuilding officials questioned whether there would be room for an opera house.

The City Opera announced Monday that it has submitted a proposal for a 2,200-seat opera house estimated to cost $291 million, two-thirds of which would be secured by the opera company.

The proposal calls for 19 weeks of opera, similar to City Opera's current season at Lincoln Center, and 24 weeks of musical theater.

"We wish to create an iconic, active and meaningful symbol of hope and culture for the city, the region and the world, an exciting destination where visitors will experience the cathartic and emotional power of opera and the celebratory spirit of Broadway-born American music theater," said Paul Kellogg, artistic director of the City Opera.

Initially cool to the idea of an opera house, some downtown residents approached the Upper East Side's 92nd Street Y, famous for its lecture series and its nursery school, and asked the organization to submit a proposal.

Sol Adler, executive director of the 92nd Street Y, said its proposal was based on community interest in a preschool, a senior center and after-school programs as well as lectures and performing arts.

"We're mindful of our need to really understand what the community needs and wants," Adler said.

He said his board is spending more than $1 million on a feasibility study and a business plan for a downtown version of the Y, where multitasking New Yorkers can work out at the gym while listening to lectures via closed-circuit TV.

Architect Daniel Libeskind's master plan includes a cultural center as well as a museum commemorating the attacks of 1993 and 2001.

Arts groups submitting ideas were asked to provide documentation of a proven track record and a description of experience with capital projects.

More than 70 groups submitted proposals by the 5 p.m. deadline Monday, said Joanna Rose, a spokeswoman for the development corporation.

Sarah Henry, deputy director for programs at the Museum of the City of New York, said the museum was part of a consortium of institutions including the New-York Historical Society, the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress _ all of which collected artifacts from the terrorist attacks _ that submitted a joint proposal for the museum.

"It would be looking at the events in the context of New York City history," she said.

Madelyn Wils, a board member of the development corporation and the chairwoman of Community Board 1, which has championed the 92nd Street Y idea, said the LMDC may combine proposals. She added that some facilities could be built outside the 16-acre boundaries of the trade center site.

"We're going to try to mix and match people and get them together," Wils said. "Some may be off the site."

dbhstockton

September 22nd, 2003, 02:51 PM

In regard to the site plans.... is anyone else concerned that subway tracks will run underneath the WTB? It just seems to me, an easy oppurtunity for the terrorists.

Show me how a terrorist can get a Ryder truck full of explosives onto a Subway car, and I might start to get concerned.

:wink:

tribeca

September 22nd, 2003, 07:24 PM

Alright, might be stating the obvious here...but isn't the reason for the 1,776 ft. tower is that it's the year of independence...the declaration of etc.? Perhaps this was already discussed. If so, pardon my oversight...just a NYC loving Canadian!!! :wink:

tribeca

September 22nd, 2003, 07:31 PM

Hey Stockton...no one ever expected these wackos to slam a couple planes into the towers...they have ways of creating all kinds of havoc! There's gotta be a million metaphors...."necessity is the mother of invention"..."will there's a way" etc. Don't underestimate the resource of these scumbags. I'm sure security throughout the construction process will be top of mind for everyone...NYC rocks!

TonyO

September 22nd, 2003, 08:49 PM

tribeca, you are correct. I am sure that those putting their money and hard work up to build the new 1776 tower will be thinking all the angles.

Kris

September 23rd, 2003, 11:14 PM

Incorporation of Adjacent Parcel Opens Up WTC Site (http://www.lowermanhattan.info/news/incorporation_of_adjacent_parcel_14919.asp) (LMDC)

Kris

September 25th, 2003, 02:07 AM

The World Trade Center

Premature Hand-Wringing: Ground Zero's (Non-)Revisions

By Martin C. Pedersen, Metropolis Executive Editor

http://www.metropolismag.com/images/wtc_images/WTC-redefineplanopen.jpg
The "redefined" WTC site master plan.

So, is Daniel Libeskind's World Trade Center site plan in danger of being modified beyond recognition--as the New York Times and New York Newsday suggested last week--or has it remained virtually intact? This was the question the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) tried to answer at a recent press conference.

A day before the event, the agency sent out an email release with a rather intriguing headline: "LMDC to Present Revisions to the Master Site Plan." The word "revision" in this context seemed to cynical observers (i.e. everyone who follows the process closely) like the ultimate red flag. It may also explain why LMDC headquarters was standing-room-only the following day. A bank of TV cameras (I counted fourteen) lined the back of the conference room. Even Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic of the New York Times, showed up, sniffing news.

And what did we learn? I feel odd writing this, but based on the evidence offered--a dreary PowerPoint presentation that even the perpetually effusive Libeskind couldn't enliven, a revised Ground Zero model, and comments from high-ranking Port Authority and LMDC officials--it appears that most major elements of the plan remain (gulp) intact.

"The single most important thing to note today is that the plan Daniel Libeskind presented to the world is unchanged," said Roland Betts, an LMDC board member and one of the organization's most influential voices. "There are revisions and improvements, but the fundamental plan has gotten cleaner, clearer, better."

While I wouldn't go that far (Who knew about the mammoth waterfall that was recently added to the scheme as an "acoustical barrier"?), it is fair to say that "Memory Foundations" (Libeskind's cornball name for the plan) still possesses the same signature elements introduced in February: a 1776-foot tower, a below-grade memorial area, a section of the slurry wall exposed to bedrock, ten million square feet of office space, a cultural building for an unspecified group that is to be used as a physical buffer between sacred ground and bustling street, and Greenwich and Fulton Streets routed through the site (the last courtesy of former LMDC VP of Planning, Design and Development Alex Garvin--and by way of Jane Jacobs).

Most of the announced revisions involved below-grade infrastructure: truck ramps and security posts were moved out of the memorial area and the Port Authority added an extra track to its temporary PATH station. Retail has been dispersed onto five levels: one at grade, two below, two above. (Never mind that above-grade retail has a poor track record in the United States, or that Westfield, the mall developer formally attached to the site, pulled out last week.)

The New York Times didn't exactly get the story wrong the following day. Edward Wyatt spun his piece to accentuate changes to the plan: slimmer, taller office towers (which won't be designed by Libeskind anyway), a new park on the southern end of the site, and a revised retail scheme. Wyatt had his facts right, but I think he failed to understand a fundamental truth about site planning: Change is part of the process. No project of this size and complexity, with this many competing interests, can possibly remain static. Libeskind was quite forthcoming about future revisions. At one point, a reporter pressed him on whether the amount of slurry wall exposed to bedrock (a symbolic issue for family members) was "set in stone," and he replied, "Nothing is set in stone but death."

Even if Libeskind is wildly successful in preserving core elements of the plan, there are still literally hundreds of compromises ahead. And they won't necessarily doom his plan. If the plan is strong, it will survive revision. In fact, a measure of its ultimate strength will be its ability to accommodate change.

This doesn't mean that the plan is perfect--it's still the product of a flawed program, driven by lease agreements signed prior to 9-11--or that there aren't real threats to it. Nevertheless, the idea that the Libeskind plan has been revised beyond recognition is nonsense. For me, the scale model was convincing proof. "Jesus, that's the same model that's been hanging around their studio for the past three months," said a close observer of the process, when the visual device was hauled into the conference room. Exactly. And I think that was the real story.

http://www.metropolismag.com/images/wtc_images/WTC-refineplan092003.jpg
The redefined ground-floor plan for the WTC buildings.

http://www.metropolismag.com/images/wtc_images/WTC-Feb2003.jpghttp://www.metropolismag.com/images/wtc_images/WTC-Sept2003.jpg
Can you spot the differences?

www.metropolismag.com

Kris

September 26th, 2003, 01:27 AM

Time Granted in Dispute Over Insurance for 9/11 Site

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

The developer Larry A. Silverstein, who controls the commercial leases at the World Trade Center site, and the Port Authority have one month to settle their dispute with a lender over insurance proceeds needed to rebuild the complex.

At the urging of Justice Herman Cahn of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corporation agreed to release about $25 million in insurance money for rent due Oct. 1 while negotiations continue among the company, Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the site. Justice Cahn asked the parties to return to court on Oct. 21. If they fail to reach an agreement, a lawsuit by GMAC against the Port Authority and Mr. Silverstein presumably would proceed.

Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority have recently said that they wanted to buy out GMAC's loan on the commercial leases at the trade center. Mr. Silverstein and his partners still owe about $549 million on the $563 million loan, although a settlement could involve a premium for early payment.

"We are in agreement with the Port Authority that paying off the GMAC loan will accelerate rebuilding," Mr. Silverstein said in a statement released yesterday. "We are working closely with the Port Authority to come to an agreement to pay off the GMAC loan."

GMAC sued Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority over the loan earlier this month, proposing to freeze all payments to the developer, a move that Mr. Silverstein said would have "catastrophic" consequences on the rebuilding effort. Over the past nine months, GMAC has refused to release any insurance proceeds for Mr. Silverstein's architects.

Meanwhile, Mr. Silverstein is waging a separate court battle with his insurers, claiming that the destruction of the trade center was the result of two distinct and separate attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, entitling him to a double insurance payment of nearly $7 billion. The insurers contend he should get only $3.5 billion.

So far, the insurers at the trade center have put about $1.9 billion into an escrow account controlled by GMAC; about $600 million has been spent. GMAC has wanted Mr. Silverstein to agree to segregate some of the money to cover the loan. Its attempt to freeze payments to Mr. Silverstein forced the issue. GMAC says it is not demanding that the loan be completely repaid, although it is not opposed to that, either.

The loan was converted to a security and sold to investors, who must approve any deal.

H. Peter Haveles, a lawyer for GMAC, said: "As of right now, GMAC has not received any proposal from either Silverstein or the Port Authority as to how to resolve this matter. GMAC consented at the suggestion of the court to release one month of expense money to see if Silverstein can come forth with a proposal to resolve the matter, as they've repeatedly told the press they wish to do."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Kris

October 1st, 2003, 08:37 AM

The Money Pit

Cost of rebuilding the World Trade Center skyrocketing

By Graham Rayman and Katia Hetter
STAFF WRITERS

September 29, 2003

When federal, state and local government officials agreed to spend billions to rebuild the World Trade Center site, they signed on to repair damage to infrastructure and transportation in an effort to spark private reinvestment in the area.

Over the past two years, that original scope expanded to include a range of other expenditures that could reach $1 billion. In the past two months alone, the Port Authority has agreed to spend a sum that could climb above $500 million just to buy out major players in the planning process, including:

Westfield America, for $140 million. The retail company was told it couldn't build a huge underground shopping mall at the site.

Deutsche Bank, to allow a fifth tower to be built on its terrorism-damaged site. The cost is unknown, but demolition alone has been estimated at $230 million.

The owners of the Milstein property, for an unknown cost.

The Port Authority has also said it would consider buying out the $563-million mortgage loan Larry Silverstein took out to lease the trade center complex.

The irony of the expenses, observers say, is that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Port Authority was trying to get out of the real estate business. Given the recent history, it's not out of the question that, for some time to come, government will be ponying up money for unforeseen expenses.

"They now seem to be in the process of having to come up with the money to pay off everyone," said Beverly Willis, director of the Architectural Research Institute.

Dan Doctoroff, the city's deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, and a board member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., said the hope is short-term public investment will yield long-term gain.

"Our role in lower Manhattan is to make the investments from the public sector to stimulate the largest possible reaction in the private sector," he said. "We made a fairly compelling case that it would trigger the private market. On the housing side, it's extraordinary: 2,000 units are under way, and another 3,000 units are under discussion."

Angus Kress Gillespie, the author of a history of the World Trade Center, sees parallels between the current rebuilding and the original project.

"The sheer bigness of that project was not just a rational economic decision. It was a political decision to inspire and stimulate growth," he said. "Now we're faced with the task of rebuilding, history repeating itself. It can't just be an ordinary office building. It's got to have some symbolic punch ... Now the question is, who's going to pay?"

The federal government has promised to supply $21 billion toward rebuilding, but as city Comptroller William Thompson Jr. recently reported, much of that money has yet to be allocated.

The Port Authority may have to kick in more money if, for example, the Federal Transportation Administration opts not to fully fund the construction of a massive transit hub planned for the area.

In addition, government may have to contribute substantial sums toward the rebuilding if Silverstein loses his battle with his insurers over whether he is entitled to a $3.5 billion or $7 billion payout, depending on whether the courts rule that the destruction of the towers constituted one or two terror attacks. Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the case should go to a jury - a decision that should drag out the dispute.

"If he only gets $3.5 billion, there isn't going to be a whole lot of money for rebuilding the towers," said Jeremy Soffin of the Regional Plan Association.

And conceivably, the Port Authority could still buy out Silverstein.

In the past two years, two other big-ticket transportation projects that arguably have little to do with the site have been under consideration: having the planned Air Train link the Queens airports as well as lower Manhattan, and building an extension to the Long Island Rail Road.

Despite the Bush administration's pledge, Gillespie said significant cost issues will soon affect the redevelopment.

"The cupboard is bare," he said. "The state of New York has its problems, the state of New Jersey has its problems. So those cupboards are bare. A lot of people are looking at the Port Authority to bail this project out."

The scope of rebuilding has also been broadened under the Liberty Bond program, a federal tax incentive program originally intended to spur new development in lower Manhattan but since extended to other parts of the city. Critics have suggested that financing commercial projects outside of lower Manhattan through the bond program, especially in midtown, actually could hamper lower Manhattan's recovery.

While several lower Manhattan projects, like Silverstein's new 7 World Trade Center, have received Liberty Bond financing, a proposed Bank of New York building in Brooklyn also was recently approved. In addition, a proposed Bank of America building at West 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue appears close to receiving $650 million in the bonds. And developer Bruce Ratner is seeking Liberty Bond financing for the New York Times building at Eighth Avenue and 40th Street.

Once the planning process for the trade center site is completed, talk will turn to the construction budget. The current estimate for the construction of the buildings is unknown, but early estimates are typically low. The original estimate for the construction of the Twin Towers was $575 million, but the final cost wound up at $1 billion, according to Jameson Doig, a Princeton professor who has written a book about the Port Authority.

Gov. George Pataki's emphasis on speeding rebuilding may also cost government more because an accelerated construction schedule always means a bigger budget.

Once construction is under way, the buildings will need tenants, and it is likely that government will be one of the site's biggest clients. Pataki has already committed to housing the offices of a number of state agencies in the Freedom Tower, the signature 1,776-foot tower planned for the site.

This dynamic, too, recalls the history of the original trade center. In the 1970s, state agencies, including the Port Authority, leased space in the towers. Federal agencies stepped in as well.

Some critics contend that the subsidies for the original trade center hurt the commercial market in lower Manhattan.

"It's been well-publicized what the towers did to the market," Soffin said. "The same thing is possible now if you're putting a lot of subsidized space on market."

Another unresolved question is how much the city will receive in payments from the site. When it was first built, the World Trade Center was exempt from city property taxes, but the state agreed to make payments to the city, which totaled about $28 million a year.

When Silverstein took over, the city sought to triple that income, but the Port Authority balked. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued just before the attack, and the issue was never resolved.

With the site in its current condition, the city has been losing money. In the recent adopted budget, the city says it expects just $1.7 million per year in revenue from the site through at least 2007.

Doctoroff said the city is now discussing "an enhanced pilot payment" with the Port Authority.

Meanwhile, the city will not pay for the buyouts of the Deutsche Bank and Milstein properties, Doctoroff said. Though the sites will likely receive Liberty Bond financing, Doctoroff said the owners of the new buildings will pay full city taxes.

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

ZippyTheChimp

October 1st, 2003, 11:45 AM

From the Downtown Express http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_23/rampeonbuses.html

Rampe on buses, Deutsche and Park Row

By Josh Rogers

The president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. said he has not ruled out building a tour bus garage under the World Trade Center memorial, but he thinks there will be enough room for buses at the preferred site across the street from the site.

“We will not, and have not ruled out underneath the memorial area,” Kevin Rampe, L.M.D.C. president said Monday at a lunch meeting with Lower Manhattan community reporters.

Rampe said Gov. George Pataki, who hired Rampe with the mayor’s approval, remains committed to keeping the buses away from the memorial, but all of the alternatives are still on the table. Rampe repeated his pledge not to allow commercial or retail space in the memorial section of the W.T.C. site

He disputed estimates by the Port Authority that a bus garage underneath the Deutsche Bank site would only accommodate 40-50 buses and Rampe said that may turn out to be the best location. The Port has said previously they want enough space for 120 buses transporting visitors to the W.T.C. memorial.

Last week, Anthony Cracchiolo, the director of capital projects at the P.A., estimated there would be space for 40 to 50 buses at the Deutsche building on Liberty St. Madelyn Wils, an L.M.D.C. director said Port and L.M.D.C. officials told her the same thing.

After Rampe’s comment, Greg Trevor, a Port spokesperson, said Cracchiolo’s estimate was preliminary and the environmental studies about to get started will determine the correct number.

Many family members of the Sept. 11 victims have agreed to allow the PATH commuter tracks to cross the “footprints” of the Twin Towers as they used to, but they have objected strongly to a bus garage anywhere underneath the memorial area and under the footprints especially.

“We have been told the bus terminal will not be there,” said Lee Ielpi, whose son was a firefighter killed on 9/11. “ If they try and put it back, that would be atrocious.”

Pataki has told family members that a garage under the memorial would be “awful.”

Andrew Winters, the L.M.D.C.’s vice president of planning, said last week that a garage under the memorial would be studied as part of the environmental impact statement process, but it was not under serious consideration because of objections from family members.

Wils she would be in favor of any garage that is big enough and not too expensive to build. “If it could work safely and environmentally and financially, it would be best to not put it under the memorial,” she said. “If it can’t work, then under the memorial area and over the PATH tracks may be the best place.”

Site 26 in Battery Park City, which is immediately northwest of the W.T.C., is the third option under consideration for the underground garage. This site would require the construction of a second “bathtub” or slurry wall to protect the garage from the Hudson River.

Rampe said he does not yet know the costs of the three sites under consideration. He said if Site 26 were selected, there would definitely be an underground entrance to the garage, because he doesn’t want diesel buses near the neighborhood ballfields. “We did look at an at-grade alternative and that just does not work,” Rampe said.

Buses could get to the Site 26 garage either through the proposed Liberty St. truck entrance way and a tunnel under Vesey St. or from a possible tunnel under West St., Rampe said.

Ielpi said he sympathizes with residents who want to get the buses off the street and thinks Site 26 may be the best solution. “I don’t think Deutsche Bank is a viable site size wise,” he said. “Site 26 is more viable. I think that’s going to be the one.”

Rampe said discussions with the government entities about acquiring the Deutsche site and the Milstein Properties’ parking lot are proceeding well, although no decision has been made as to whether it will be the Port who will pay to acquire the sites.

“All of the players are working together for the acquisition of the site and demolition of the building,” he said of the Deutsche. “It gets rid of a building that has been a blight on the neighborhood.”

Deutsche remains locked in a legal dispute with some of its insurers who want the bank to repair rather than demolish the building. He said once the dispute is resolved and the building is acquired, demolition will take anywhere from one to three years to complete.

He said Gov. Pataki’s idea of replacing the building’s black netting with a giant mural of architect Daniel Libeskind’s W.T.C. design is likely to be scrapped because it will cost between $500,000 and $1 million. “We may not. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on a mural if we’re going to take the building down,” Rampe said.

He said next month there will be an announcement about opening up some of the streets surrounding the New York Stock Exchange on Wall and Broad Sts. He said the Big Board originally said the security measures couldn’t be loosened, but that after the L.M.D.C. hired an independent security consultant, exchange officials and police agreed to move the barriers closer to the building. “On Broad St. we’re moving a lot of that in so it’s closer to the exchange,” he said. He said the new plan will turn the area into better-looking, pedestrian-friendly streets.

He said the exchange example could help convince the city to agree to reopen Park Row, which has been closed to pedestrians and cars since 2001. “I think we are constantly putting pressure on them,” Rampe said of the city. “We’d like to see them reopen it.”

The street, which runs by police headquarters, is the main connection between Chinatown and the Civic Center, and residents and businesses on both sides of Police Plaza have said the closure has had a severe effect on them.

Rampe said Libeskind’s proposed 150-foot waterfall adjacent to the memorial would be taken out of the design if the 13-member jury decides it does not fit in with whatever plan is selected. Exactly 5,200 artists or art teams made submissions for the memorial, which will be selected later this year. The guidelines told designers to assume the waterfall would be included, but Rampe and some juror members also made statements encouraging artists to be daring and break the rules.

Rampe said the proposed cultural facilities around the memorial may be adjusted to accommodate the selected design. “Cultural buildings may have to move, museums may end up moving,” he said. “The key is to provide a context for the memorial.”

On transportation, he said a link to J.F.K. airport and the Long Island Rail Road was a key priority and spoke highly of one of the more expensive options – a direct airport connection without a transfer. “One seat is what we’re focusing on,” Rampe said. “You can’t just build a connection. People are going to have to want to use it.”

Rampe said calls to expand the L.M.D.C.’s jurisdiction above Houston St. to 14th St. were not wise. “The lines were drawn to have some bearing on the impact of Sept. 11…. I do think Houston St. is a rational line.”

Josh@DowntownExpress.com

Kris

October 1st, 2003, 03:39 PM

An interview with Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation

September 30, 2003

ARCHITECTURAL RECORD: Are you afraid you won’t be able to fill office spaces at the World Trade Center?

Kevin Rampe: Our vacancy rate downtown is 12.5 percent, and that’s equivalent to midtown. For an area that suffered the worst terrorist attack in history, that’s pretty damn good. I have no fear whatsoever that we won’t fill the buildings. We’re building a 21st-century complex with state-of-the-art buildings and transit, all located near a site that is without equal. Within the decade, we’ll have a direct connection to Newark and Kennedy Airports. We’re putting $750 million into a telecommunications network. Lower Manhattan is poised to be the place to be.

AR: What is the status of a proposed museum and cultural center downtown? How many square feet will it be? Will it include City Opera?

KR: We have asked cultural institutions from around the world to share their interest and ideas. We have over 600,000 square feet. We’re continuing to work with the opera to see what opportunities there are. Nobody’s been assured a spot on the site, and there has been no commitment to anybody.

AR: How will you prevent overcommercialization on the site?

KR: I think the Libeskind plan does an excellent job by framing the memorial area with cultural buildings. We want to build a strong 24/7 community. Strong retail is important to that. There could be up to 1 million square feet of retail on the site. I think what’s important is that we provide a separation between the memorial areas and the retail areas. We’re working to make sure that happens.

AR: Could a transportation hub harm existing landmark buildings?

KR: We’re working closely with the community to maintain the historic character of Lower Manhattan. There are buildings that are going to be knocked down. But unless you consider architecture from the ’70s to be historic, it’s not a problem. We are trying to incorporate a landmark building, the Corbin Building, into the design.

AR: Do you worry about conflicts between Daniel Libeskind and David Childs?

KR: I think there’s going to inevitably be issues and conflicts, because they both have very strong ideas about what should be the concept for the Freedom Tower. But I think that’s what this process has been from the beginning. Conflict of ideas and the resolution of that.

Sam Lubell

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/wtc/archives/030930rampe.asp

LF22

October 2nd, 2003, 05:16 PM

[quote="Christian Wieland"]The World Trade Center
Can you spot the differences?

The office buildings are taller? By the way, what will be office stories height.

Kris

October 8th, 2003, 01:14 AM

JMGarcia

October 9th, 2003, 12:57 PM

WTC rebuilder willing to reopen settlement talks
Reuters, 10.08.03, 8:50 PM ET

NEW YORK, Oct 8 (Reuters) - World Trade Center rebuilder Larry Silverstein said on Wednesday he was willing to reopen settlement talks with his insurers as an alternative to what promises to be another bruising court battle over whether they owe him $7 billion or half that amount.

Getting the bigger sum is vital if the full 10 million square feet of office space that was destroyed is to be replaced. Silverstein says he needs virtually all of the $7 billion insurance pay-out he believes he is owed to re-create lower Manhattan's financial anchor.

But insurers, led by Swiss Re and Travelers Property Casualty Corp. (nyse: TAPa - news - people) say they owe no more than $3.5 billion. And Swiss Re's head of its U.S. unit on Wednesday, citing the present value discount for cash, pegged the range at how much insurers were willing to pay at $2.2 billion to $3.5 billion.

Pressure on the two sides to settle their differences over whether the lethal Sept. 11, 2001, air attacks were one event -- in which case the insurers owe Silverstein $3.5 billion -- or two occurrences -- which means Silverstein is owed $7 billion -- has grown recently. For example, the New York Times, in an editorial on Wednesday, urged the warring parties to settle out-of-court so that the "architectural star power" that has been hired can be put to work.

Gov. George Pataki wants the first cornerstone to be laid next August. But money is a huge consideration. Silverstein, who leased the World Trade Center in July 2001 and thus has the right to rebuild, must pay the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey monthly rent. And he already has spent $100 million on a variety of costs, ranging from court fights to lobbying fees to hiring architects, engineers and planners.

Howard Rubenstein, the spokesman for Silverstein, said his client was willing to try again to reach an out-of-court settlement although the insurers, in earlier talks, "produced no meaningful offers."

Rubenstein explained: "Mr. Silverstein always is willing to discuss a settlement with the insurers so long as it leads to a full rebuilding at Ground Zero that realizes Daniel Libeskind's master plan, which New Yorkers expect and deserve."

Libeskind is the Berlin-based architect whose plan for an underground memorial to the nearly 3,000 people who were killed that preserves the twin towers' vast footprint and a 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower was favored by Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Since Libeskind's design was chosen, Silverstein has added four more prominent architects to the team.

Jacques Dubois, chief executive of Swiss Re's U.S. unit, made it clear that the insurers believed their case was strengthened by a recent decision by a federal appeals court. It denied Silverstein's request for a summary judgment and ruled a jury will have to decide whether the attacks on the towers were one event or two.

"The court ruling made us feel even better about our position," Dubois said. "We've always said we'd be willing to have a settlement discussion within the framework of one occurrence...This is the policy he (Silverstein) wanted us to use."

A Travelers spokesman was not immediately available.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

Kris

October 10th, 2003, 02:10 AM

October 10, 2003

Pataki Wants Insurance Settled so Trade Center Work Can Begin

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Gov. George E. Pataki is attempting to forge a settlement between the developer Larry A. Silverstein and his insurers in their long-running battle over how much money will be available to rebuild the World Trade Center.

The two sides have been locked in a bitter and expensive dispute in state and federal courts, with Mr. Silverstein, the site's main leaseholder, arguing that the two planes that flew into the trade center towers constitute two separate terrorist attacks, entitling him to nearly $7 billion in insurance payments. The two dozen insurance companies involved have said they are obligated to pay only the policy limit: $3.5 billion.

But with a revised master plan for the 16-acre site now in hand and a recent setback in Mr. Silverstein's legal case, downtown executives say that Governor Pataki wants the issue resolved quickly so that rebuilding can proceed without more money being squandered on lawyers.

At the governor's behest, Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, has met separately over the last 10 days with Mr. Silverstein and executives at Swiss Re, the largest insurer, to explore how the dispute can be resolved, according to executives who have been briefed. More meetings are planned.

In case the insurers and the developer cannot reach an agreement on their own, Mr. Rampe has also sought to assemble a group of business and civic leaders who could act as "honest brokers," or arbitrators, the executives said.

"The governor is committed to meeting the aggressive timetable he set out in April and in resolving any and all disputes quickly," said Molly Fullington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki. She declined to discuss the settlement efforts, as did Mr. Rampe. Mr. Pataki has said he wants the cornerstone for the first building at the trade center to be laid next August.

The two sides, however, showed no sign yesterday of embracing each other and ending the hostilities.

"The insurers are holding the high cards here," said Barry Ostrager, a lawyer for Swiss Re. "Silverstein has been flimflamming everyone with visions of multibillion-dollar windfalls."

Mr. Silverstein said yesterday that he favored intervention in the matter by Mr. Pataki or Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "To the extent you can have serious negotiations with the insurance companies that can lead to an expeditious conclusion, everyone will be better off," he said.

In the dispute, the insurance companies have depicted Mr. Silverstein as a rapacious developer, while he has portrayed the insurers, particularly Swiss Re, as desperate to escape their responsibility for "paying the full amount it will take to rebuild."

Many analysts suggest that it would cost more than $7 billion to rebuild the commercial complex and billions more for a new transit center, memorial and museum.

Fifteen months ago, Judge John S. Martin of the United State District Court asked the two sides to reach a settlement in a last-ditch attempt to avoid a trial. Swiss Re offered $1.8 billion on behalf of the insurance companies, while Mr. Silverstein wanted $5.7 billion. And last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Mr. Silverstein's argument that he was owed two insurance payouts as a matter of law, saying it was a matter for a jury trial.

Rebuilding officials, meanwhile, have adopted a revised master plan, pushing the financing issue to the fore. "We've spent a lot of time posturing for legal issues and no time on rebuilding," said a senior official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site. "We have to show some progress. I don't want to reach the third anniversary of the attack and it's still a big hole."

So far, the insurers have paid out $1.9 billion, $600 million of which has been spent on rent, debt service, legal fees and other items.

Jacques E. Dubois, chief executive of Swiss Re, said yesterday that his company remained "ready, willing and able to honor its contractual obligation to pay its share of the $3.5 billion as expenses are incurred." If Mr. Silverstein wants a lump sum payment, he said, the net present value of the claim would be about $2.3 billion. That is not a figure likely to win an agreement from Mr. Silverstein, downtown executives said.

In another effort to move forward with rebuilding, the developer and the Port Authority are also trying to clear up disputes with Westfield America, the company that ran the retail mall at the trade center, and GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corporation, which lent Mr. Silverstein $563 million in the trade center deal.

Last week, Port Authority executives told Mr. Silverstein that they were willing to buy out GMAC and Westfield, as he had urged, but only if the authority gained control of the retail operations. The authority does not want to turn over complete control to Mr. Silverstein, who would most likely sell the retail lease and pocket the profits.

"It makes no sense to let Silverstein buy out Westfield so he can profit and eliminate, scale back or enlarge the retailing based on his financial interest," one executive said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

JMGarcia

October 10th, 2003, 08:59 AM

Confirmation from the NY Post

NY POST

WTC TOWER WILL NOW TOP 2,000 FT.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

October 10, 2003 -- Ground Zero's signature Freedom Tower will soar above 2,000 feet - well beyond the previously announced height of 1,776 feet - under a revised design being worked on by architect Daniel Libeskind, a rebuilding official said yesterday.

Broadcasters who want to put an antenna on top of the tower have been pushing for a higher structure.

"I appreciate the symbolism of 1,776, but the reception is better at 2,000 [feet]," said Roland Betts, a director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. who met with Libeskind and developer Larry Silverstein's architect, David Childs, to discuss work on the tower.

"The issue of the height of the building is under discussion. It [the tower design] is evolving in a collaborative discussion with Libeskind and Childs."

Libeskind's new drawings show the building rising to at least 2,000 feet - and as high as 2,100 feet, sources said.

Silverstein, Childs and a coalition of broadcasters who want to pay for an antenna atop the tower have long wanted the building to rise to 2,000 feet or higher.

The height comes down to simple economics for the broadcasters - who once operated from the original World Trade Center - since the taller the antenna, the greater the number of households it can reach.

Adding to the height of the tower could also insure that it remains the world's tallest building for a longer period of time, even as other proposed sky-busting structures are built in the future.

Libeskind has previously portrayed the symbolic 1,776-foot height of the Freedom Tower as a key part of his Ground Zero plan.

But he has shown a willingness to alter elements of his master plan - most notably by moving the memorial area inside the trade center pit from bedrock, 70 feet below street level, to its current proposed location 30 feet down.

Libeskind, who has never built a tall building, tried over the summer to force Silverstein to make him the lead architect on the signature tower, but agreed in the end to give design control to Childs and act as his collaborator.

During a bargaining session with Childs and officials in July, Libeskind's wife and business partner, Nina, demonstrated the architect's attachment to the 1,776 symbolism when she threatened to have her husband walk away from the project, sources said.

BrooklynRider

October 10th, 2003, 09:03 AM

This process and the "news reports" surrounding it are about as exciting as watching grass grow.

NYatKNIGHT

October 10th, 2003, 10:23 AM

We need visual aid.

Zzed

October 10th, 2003, 10:31 AM

come on don't be so miserable! if a 2000+ feet office tower comes out of this process it will be EXACTLY the right response to the 911 atrocity.

nearly all the major antennas on top of buildings that i've seen are way more than 100'. i'd say 200-300' is the standard, so this "2100" feet seems a bit low; given the roof height of 2100 i can see a total height around 2300 feet or more ... now that's some tall grass.

tmg

October 10th, 2003, 11:47 AM

I believe the broadcasters wanted a 2000-foot antenna. At least that's what they were proposing in Bayonne. So the cited 2000-2100 foot height for the tower likely includes the antenna.

LF22

October 10th, 2003, 09:38 PM

I dont' get it. Is the freedom tower (the tall one anyways) going to be a office building or just a tower with a garden in the sky. If it's just a tower, how will it hold the WTB record.

Freedom Tower

October 10th, 2003, 11:55 PM

This is good. There is more confirmation that the tower will be taller than 1776 feet. I think the roof will be that high and then the antenna to 2100 or so feet. Or would the spire be to 1776 and the antenna on the spire? When I say the spire I mean the needle, not the thick spire. Wow, this Freedom Tower is getting awfully confusing. I don't think much can be known until some new, detailed, and finally renderings are released.

But if anyone has an opinion here is a question:

Do you think there will be a needle reaching 1776 feet and then an antenna on that? Or do you think we'll get a roof to 1776 feet(I hope) and antenna on that to 2100 feet or so?

kliq6

October 11th, 2003, 03:19 PM

The Freedom Tower will have 70 floors of commercial space

NyC MaNiAc

October 11th, 2003, 07:20 PM

I don't think they would build a spire on top of an antenna.

So will the roof go to 1776? Looks like it, but, let's wait for those renderings which should be coming out any day now...

Freedom Tower

October 11th, 2003, 08:21 PM

I meant an antenna on a spire, but it's all the same right? You're probably right though, it'd loook awful and they wouldn't do it. So now you have to wonder how the roof will reach 1776 feet if there are only 70 commercial floors and 2 floors for resteraunt and obs. deck. We'll just have to wait and see... I'm just so impatient I have to speculate :)

Kris

October 11th, 2003, 09:48 PM

October 8, 2003

Money Troubles at Ground Zero

There is an astonishing array of talent ready to rebuild the World Trade Center site. Six of the world's best architects have been asked to help design the project, with the possibility of other creative voices yet to come. What may not be easily available is the money for all their phenomenal creations.

Several of the large pools of cash or bonds that once looked easily available for Lower Manhattan's revival now seem in danger of disappearing. At the top of that list is the insurance payment to Larry Silverstein, who holds the World Trade Center lease. Mr. Silverstein recently lost the latest round in his effort to get $7 billion, instead of the $3.5 billion the insurance group offered. Mr. Silverstein argues that since two airplanes hit the towers, there were two "events," while the insurers want to treat the assault as a single attack. The case is now set for a jury trial, which could tie up the money for some time.

After this setback, however, Mr. Silverstein named three famous architects — Norman Foster of London, Jean Nouvel of Paris and Fumihiko Maki of Tokyo — to help map out long-term plans for the site. Mr. Silverstein called the timing a coincidence, but picking this renowned cast is also a signal that Mr. Silverstein wants to dazzle the public and presumably a jury about what could be built at the site.

Mr. Silverstein has already hired David Childs for two buildings in the area. Then there is Santiago Calatrava, another world-famous architect doing the new transit hub for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The designers of the memorial at the site's center will be announced sometime in the next few weeks. And Daniel Libeskind, the master designer for the site, has the unenviable task of coordinating all these creative energies, a job more daunting with every announcement.

It's time to start putting this architectural star power to concrete use. That means it's time for Mr. Silverstein and Swiss Re and other insurers to settle this case. Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, business leaders and others with power over the downtown rebuilding should start putting pressure on both sides. Instead of paying lawyers, more money should be going to architects, engineers and construction workers.

A second pot of money is the $1.2 billion in federal funds now at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The mayor's people want it for beautification and housing to revive all of Lower Manhattan. Business interests prefer using it as a down payment on a quick train from downtown to Kennedy airport. Governor Pataki and John Whitehead, chairman of the development corporation, need to keep this money safe until they figure out its best use for ground zero. That means holding onto it until next April, when transit experts should report on whether a quick route to Kennedy and Long Island is feasible.

There is also the increasingly vigorous debate about how best to use Liberty Bonds, for $5.1 billion in new commercial development, that Congress granted to help revive Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11. Instead of letting the bonds expire in 2004, New York's Congressional delegation should quickly convince colleagues in Washington that the city needs five more years, at least, to take advantage of the program.

Finally, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki need to start working on the same page when it comes to rebuilding Lower Manhattan. The city seems focused on readying the Hudson Yards commercial development on Manhattan's West Side, with an emphasis on residential building downtown. Both developments deserve plenty of mixed use, and plenty of vitality 24 hours a day. But after Sept. 11, the priority, for now, has to be ground zero.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
To the Editor:

Your Oct. 8 editorial "Money Troubles at Ground Zero" is right. It is time the insurers settle this dispute — but only if the settlement lets New York fulfill the vision of Daniel Libeskind's master plan.

Earlier attempts to settle produced no offers that would come close to this goal. Our only recourse as the main leaseholder on the property has been to litigate. With our partners at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, we hope that the prospect of a trial will make the insurers reconsider.

We welcome the intervention of Gov. George E. Pataki, and we hope that he can make the insurers understand that the future of Lower Manhattan requires that they negotiate seriously.

Mr. Pataki has set an ambitious timetable for rebuilding. We are on schedule for the Freedom Tower, and we and the Port Authority have brought in world-class architects to realize the balance of Mr. Libeskind's plan. The sooner the insurance issue is settled, the sooner this "architectural star power," as you call it, can get to work.

LARRY SILVERSTEIN

President

World Trade Center Properties

New York, Oct. 8, 2003

JMGarcia

October 11th, 2003, 11:53 PM

Oh dear. :roll:

Zzed

October 12th, 2003, 01:20 PM

The sooner the insurance issue is settled, the sooner this "architectural star power," as you call it, can get to work.

Clever move Larry. Invoking Pataki's timetable and the reputations of so many renown architects will surely add pressure to his insurance claim. Money rules baby.

Nick_in_Michigan

October 12th, 2003, 06:00 PM

I can't help but quietly curse Silverstein for his height limits and such, but I do think, for the most part, that what he decides is reasonable is probably better for the long-term health of New York than building super-scrapers on a weak market. Detroit made the mistake of building the Ren Center next to downtown to reinvigorate the district, but what actually happened is that tenents abandoned the existing office buildings, leaving the original investors of the RenCen in financial trouble as the district declined in overall value. Lower Manhattan is not and probably will never be in the despair that Detroit finds itself in, but I think if we build carefully in ground zero, and by carefully I mean by not flooding the market (which Silverstein is trying to avoid), we may see some real opportunities for more impressive development in the future when downtown is stabilized and in great demand again. I am young and I have patience (ok, some of the time), I want to see Manhattan one day build supertalls not out of speculation, but out of demand, that will pave the way for super duper talls :D

Btw, even though Washington promised NY money to help, don't count on it. Both the Feds and the city are currently running the biggest deficit we have ever had, we need to focus on the essentials.

DaCrystallineAngel79

October 12th, 2003, 06:11 PM

I think it should just be left alone and become a memorial.

TLOZ Link5

October 12th, 2003, 09:04 PM

I think it should just be left alone and become a memorial.

If that's your honest opinion then it should be respected. We ought to have difference of opinion.

Kris

October 13th, 2003, 12:08 PM

Critics: WTC Crammed

Revised master plan renews debate about site's density

By Graham Rayman
STAFF WRITER

October 13, 2003, 11:57 AM EDT

If the World Trade Center master plan were subject to New York City zoning rules, critics say, the bulk of the site with its four towers on three square blocks would far exceed allowable density limits.

The release of a revised master plan earlier this month has reawakened the long-running debate over whether the project has too many enormous buildings in too tight an area.

"The buildings will produce the most congested sidewalks in our history," said Eli Attia, a Brooklyn-based architect and frequent critic of the trade center design process who has designed 16 skyscrapers in the United States and Israel, including 101 Park Avenue and the Millenium Hilton Hotel.

Despite critics' concerns about the towers along Vesey and Church streets, site planners counter that the entire plan taken together actually is less dense than allowed by city rules, to which the site's owner, the Port Authority, is not bound.

Who's right depends on how you count it. Planners with the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. argue the correct method is to measure the entire site - the commercial blocks, the memorial block, the open space, the streets and the adjacent Deutsche Bank and Milstein properties (yet to be purchased), which would comprise a park and a fifth tower. Using that method, they come up with a floor area ratio - the square footage divided by the lot area - of 12.2, which is lower than the city maximum of 15.

"The property is one contiguous parcel, with a single owner," said Andrew Winters, a lead planner with the LMDC. "Each of the towers faces onto a large open area."

But to determine the relationship between each tower and the area immediately around it, you might calculate the bulk of each individual block. By that measure, the floor area ratio for each of the three commercial blocks easily exceeds the city maximum, experts said.

The 2.8-million-square-foot Tower 2, for example, at Church and Vesey streets, which contains a 600,000- square-foot hotel, has a 37.8 ratio, according to calculations by Attia.

The original trade center had a floor area ratio of 14. Rockefeller Center has an allowable ratio of 12 to 15. The area surrounding Grand Central Terminal has a floor area ratio of 15.

"The scheme will create some of the worst urban density in the city, and the country," said Attia, who used a computer-drafting program to determine the lot dimensions from the revised master plan. "These are not just abstract numbers, they have real impacts on the surrounding streets and on the people who walk them."

Attia also disputed the LMDC calculation.

"As long as city streets go through the property, then it cannot be considered a single zoning block," he said. "The rights go with the land, not with the owner. It used to be a single zoning lot, but now you have four separate lots." The original trade center stood on a superblock, without streets.

Joanna Rose, an LMDC spokeswoman, countered that the streets are not owned by the city, but by the Port Authority. "For planning purposes, the WTC site is a single block with a single owner," she said, adding, "We are not subject to city zoning."

Ethel Sheffer, an independent planning consultant and president of the American Planning Association, said the individual block calculations are as important as the overall figure. Each parcel, she said, is going to be developed at a different time for a different use by different architects.

"You can certainly describe it the way the LMDC is calculating it, but you also have to look at it in relation to the individual buildings - what is specifically surrounding them, how big the streets are," said Sheffer, who is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University. "They are calculating everything, which is valid, but you really have to do both."

The city's zoning resolution dates to 1916, when concern over the bulk of the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway convinced the city to set limits. The building is now owned by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein.

Under city zoning law, a "zoning lot" is defined as "a tract of land located within a single block or in single ownership." A block is defined by the streets around it or city boundary lines.

Planners and architects said the real-world effect of a high floor area ratio includes poor sunlight and air conditions, congested sidewalks, noise pollution, and traffic jams - as in the canyons of Wall Street, for example. The solution, they said, has been to create plazas around large buildings and set back the upper floors.

Given the large square footage requirements combined with the height limitations on the WTC buildings, it is unclear whether it will be possible to use setbacks, a method of creating open space on the ground and letting sunlight filter through.

Paul Goldstein, the district manager for Lower Manhattan's Community Board 1, said the planners simply have less space to place the same amount of office space than in the original trade center design.

"They are cramming a lot onto the site, and then you add people working, visiting the memorial, the museums, etc.," Goldstein said. "You have all these attractions and reasons to be there that just will make it quite a challenge for the planners to ensure that there isn't total gridlock."

In addition to the Attia analysis, the architects' group New York New Visions performed calculations in July also based on the individual blocks, and it came to similar conclusions.

Bruce Fowle, an architect who is a member of New York New Visions, offered this comparison: He said the average floor area ratio for the four buildings at the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway/Seventh Avenue, which he described as the city's densest multi-block development, is about 35. The designers were able to bypass city zoning rules there because, like the trade center, the project was backed by a state agency.

But, he said, the lot areas of those Times Square buildings are about one-third the size of the parcels along Church and Vesey, and the buildings are about half as tall.

"The thing that is really scary and what nobody has visualized is what it's going to be like to walk down these streets with these massive towers," said Fowle, a principal with Fox and Fowle Architects. "The ratio of height to width may exceed the situation in the Wall Street area, which made us establish the rules in the first place."

Winters said planners are working on how to arrange the circulation patterns around the individual towers to alleviate congestion. He said underground structures like the PATH station and the tunnel to the Fulton Street station will ease congestion.

Greg Trevor, a Port Authority spokesman, deferred questions to the LMDC. Silverstein did not respond to written questions sent to his spokesman, Steve Solomon.

The city Planning Department declined to respond to detailed questions, opting not to address the density debate for what is the largest downtown zoning plan in decades.

Deputy Mayor and LMDC board member Dan Doctoroff "has been involved every step of the way, and is extremely pleased with the process," said spokeswoman Jennifer Falk.

LMDC: It Fits

Planners for LMDC argue entire site should be measured as a whole, which puts density well within city standards.

FAR: 12.2

Lot: 890,000 sq. ft.

Office/Retail/Hotel/Other:

10.9 million sq. ft.

Includes commercial sites, memorial block, open space, streets, plus Milstein, Deutsche Bank properties.

By One Count, Too Big

The revised World Trade Center master plan reopened debate over whether the buildings are too big for the area. If projected floor area ratios - used to calculate a development's density - are measured separately for the lots surrounding each tower, the plan violates city standards, critics contend. Because the site is owned by the Port Authority, a state agency, it is not bound by city codes.

FLOOR AREA RATIO

Total square footage for a building divided by the square footage of land to be built upon. High ratios are blamed for poor light and congestion. The city maximum FAR in a commercial zone is 15.

Tower 2

FAR: 37.8

Lot area: 73,993 sq. ft.

Office / Retail / Hotel:

2.8 million sq. ft.

Freedom Tower

FAR: 25.8

Lot:104,496 sq. ft.

Office/retail : 2,697,300 sq. ft.

Towers 3 / 4

(To be built on one parcel)

FAR: 18.6

Lot area: 215,161

Office / Retail / Hotel:

4 million sq. ft

Tower 5

Specifics unavailable because of pending negotiations.

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/graphic/2003-10/9787370.jpg

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

Gulcrapek

October 13th, 2003, 12:25 PM

The obvious solution would be to consolidate and build taller. But that makes too much sense.

I like how the diagrams are the exact silhouettes of those at SSpage..

Nick_in_Michigan

October 13th, 2003, 02:48 PM

The sidewalks will not be jammed and the streets will not be gridlocked. Most office workers will descend directly underground to the path station while the other attractions will be spread throughout the site at ground level. Traffic will even itself out - if it is too busy many people simply won't spend time there if it is not necessary. The late twin towers, a more concentrated development, did not have this problem.

Jasonik

October 13th, 2003, 06:35 PM

As a matter of procedure it seems proper to omit the area occupied by streets from the FAR.

12.2 with streets included.

Although not beholden to the city restrictions, a good goal would be to keep it 15 or less -omitting the streets, using the whole site.

Is the PA giving land back to the city for the streets? Is there some relief due because of this?

IMO calculating the site as one plot would prevent it from being divided in the future and redeveloped as multiple lots. By considering it as four lots, the collective composition would not be guaranteed to remain as is because the individual blocks could be reappropriated. For the sake of the unified design and its longevity it should be considered as one plot.

Chris2005

October 13th, 2003, 08:48 PM

Man, I can't stand all this stuff about how big the buildings are, and that they exceed the standards! Doesn't anyone think that they'll just have to go back to the original twin towers? Because as far as I can tell, There's too much of demanding or measuring up to the standards that it's too crazy to go on before we actually start building again. I wonder how long this dispute is gonna take.

Jasonik

October 13th, 2003, 08:53 PM

Doesn't anyone think that they'll just have to go back to the original twin towers?
No.

Nick_in_Michigan

October 13th, 2003, 11:04 PM

This is simply a slow period to be building such large buildings (hey, even the twins suffered financially for quiet a time I believe), we should be lucky these squanderings are slowing down the progress somewhat. As the nation, and particularly NY, recedes from this last recession (assuming this current optimism holds up), the slower pace of development will push our chances of seeing taller buildings up as businesses move back downtown the next years.

Agglomeration

October 13th, 2003, 11:10 PM

If this FAR dispute reported by Newsday leads George Pataki to try to kick Silverstein out of his pedestal along with his plans for office space, then may God help us all (hey it could happen although I doubt it at this point in time). Whether you're a Yamasaki fan or a Libeskind fan, reading about this newly hateful urban utopianism will either baffle you or make your blood boil; trust me.

dbhstockton

October 14th, 2003, 12:03 AM

Manhattan is all about urban density. It has always been about urban density. People live there because they like urban density. Besides, the plan contains acres of open space in addition to the non-towering train station and performance hall.

Oh wait a minute. "The buildings will produce the most congested sidewalks in our history" quote is from Eli Attia, whose been a worthless gadfly throughout the rebuilding process. When the reporter says "critics," Attia is generally who he is referring to. The only other real critic he mentions is Bruce Fowle. Others he mentions are asking relevant questions, but they are not screaming foul like Attia.

"The city's zoning resolution dates to 1916, when concern over the bulk of the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway convinced the city to set limits. The building is now owned by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein.

Under city zoning law, a "zoning lot" is defined as "a tract of land located within a single block or in single ownership." A block is defined by the streets around it or city boundary lines.

Planners and architects said the real-world effect of a high floor area ratio includes poor sunlight and air conditions, congested sidewalks, noise pollution, and traffic jams - as in the canyons of Wall Street, for example. The solution, they said, has been to create plazas around large buildings and set back the upper floors."

-- This Graham Rayman is really showing his erudition here. He clearly is not well-versed in the vagaries of NYC zoning. He is unaware that the tower-in-plaza format has been out of vogue for decades, and that the 1916 law was completely revised in the postwar era. It seems like he's conflating the zoning of the two eras out of ignorance.

You really have to watch journalists sometimes.

Kris

October 14th, 2003, 12:06 AM

All the time.

TonyO

October 14th, 2003, 08:53 AM

I think its good that this plan get picked at from every direction. If these critics are not getting at something then their arguments won't stick. The debate will do a couple things:

- make this plan, which is not what most people really wanted, into something more like what most DO want.

- with the give and take it will make the plan better.

Who knows, maybe outcry will force the buildings even taller or get rid of that hideous pit.

ZippyTheChimp

October 14th, 2003, 09:24 AM

Old complaint: Barren, lifeless.

New complaint: Dense, crowded.

JMGarcia

October 14th, 2003, 10:23 AM

They are all forgetting that "street level" is not a single horizontal plane in this case. There are many levels underground that will relieve crowding. Times Sq. does not have this. Only Penn Station really has such a configuration in NY.

3DSigner

October 14th, 2003, 11:38 AM

I guess Liebeskind wasn't satisfied with Audi ads, now he's got a book proposal out there for his memoirs:

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/8062.htm

I would have thought he'd wait until he could reflect on the process once it was completed.

BrooklynRider

October 14th, 2003, 01:12 PM

He's more of a politician than an architect and, as such, this kind of whoredom, I would guess, comes naturally.

3DSigner

October 14th, 2003, 01:23 PM

"The book will deal with everything from Libeskind's accordion-playing childhood in Poland..."

Hmmmmmm

Kris

October 15th, 2003, 12:36 AM

Jasonik

October 15th, 2003, 10:24 AM

Swiss Re remains ready for trial and is confident that it will prove its case before a jury of New Yorkers.
Doubtful.

Some historical context:

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE LOBBYING
Insurers Push for Cap on Future Payouts

By STEPHEN LABATON with JOSEPH B. TREASTER
The New York Times, October 22, 2001

Late last month a senior executive from Swiss Re, the world's second-largest reinsurance company, paid an unheralded visit to the White House. He told top economic advisers to President Bush that his company planned to quit providing coverage to the property and casualty insurers for losses from future terrorist attacks.

The news from the executive, Jacques E. DuBois, was jolting, officials recalled. Only a few days earlier, they had completed work on a $15 billion bailout of the airline industry, and they were busy rebuffing desperate pleas for similar rescues from a host of other industries. The news from Swiss Re raised fears of a new economic crisis, they said, because insurance is crucial for industries like real estate, construction and manufacturing.

Mr. DuBois's visit was part of a broad lobbying campaign for what could prove to be one ofthe costliest bailouts in American history should there be more attacks like those on the World Trade Center. While other industries and labor groups have failed to gain any promises of assistance, the administration and some leading lawmakers have moved with unusual alacrity to help the insurers.

To advance their case, the insurance companies have relied on some executives with strong ties to the Bush administration and forged a broad coalition with other businesses. The insurers have combined forces with banks, real estate companies and investment houses, three of Washington's most powerful lobbying interests. They recreated the coalition that succeeded two years ago in achieving the most important banking legislation in 66 years, winning a decades-long quest to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had kept commercial and investment banking separate.

What has made the insurers' effort especially unusual is that the federal government has historically played virtually no role in regulating them. Moreover, the heavy losses from last month's attack, which could exceed $40 billion, are barely a dent in an industry that has assets in the United States alone of more than $3 trillion. The problem, insurers say, is not that they are in financial trouble now, but that future attacks could overwhelm them.

The industry still has some major political obstacles to overcome, most notably the skepticism of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans who say they will make the point in hearings this week that the insurers are still financially healthy and have failed to prove that they need federal assistance.

Under a proposal made by the White House last week, the government would pay the vast majority of any losses next year from terrorist attacks, and the industry's liability would be limited to $12 billion. Similar but higher caps would limit the insurers' liability in 2003 and 2004.

In recent days, lawmakers generally supportive of government assistance have said that the White House plan cannot be passed in its current form because the government would have to pay 80 percent of the first $20 billion in claims.

About 70 percent of the commercial insurance contracts come up for renewal at year's end, and lenders require such insurance to finance real estate and manufacturing equipment. Administration officials feared that banks would refuse to make new loans and that the $300 billion market would dry up for construction and real estate loans packaged as securities.

Shortly before the visit by Mr. DuBois, 15 insurance executives held a private meeting with President Bush and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans at the White House to inform them of the looming insurance problems and seek broad federal assistance for future attacks. The group included two executives who were hardly strangers to Mr. Bush: Maurice R. Greenberg of the American International Group and Robert J. O'Connell of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance.

In 2000, the two executives were on Mr. Bush's elite list of fund-raisers, a group known as the Pioneers. Members of the group have long had strong relationships with various senior administration officials, including Mr. Evans, who oversaw the campaign's fund-raising. Each Pioneer had to raise at least $100,000.

The insurers have gained valuable lobbying assistance from other financial institutions in trying to make the case that the issue has broader economic implications. ''This is not an issue only for insurers and insurance company shareholders,'' said a group of leading financial services executives in a letter to President Bush on Oct. 10. ''Rather, it is an economic issue. The U.S. economy cannot possibly recover without the full availability of insurance.''

Although the insurance industry is largely regulated by the states, its lobbying force in Washington is formidable. All told, the industry was the 10th-largest contributor to Mr. Bush, providing more than $1.6 million, according to the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics, which researches the role of money in politics.

The industry also provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to underwrite inaugural festivities earlier this year. In the last election cycle, industry executives contributed more than $40 million to political races, and about two-thirds of those contributions went to Republicans. So far this year, the industry has given nearly $7 million, most of it to Republicans.

Mr. Greenberg has been working the telephones to lobby the administration and Congress and rally other insurers. He has also been one of a handful of executives in what the insurers refer to as C.E.O. fly-ins, face-to-face meetings with members of Congress.

''We schedule a bunch of appointments with House and Senate leaders,'' one executive said.

One of the industry's most prominent figures, Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, has mostly stayed on the sidelines, leaving most of the work in Washington to Ron Ferguson, the president of General Re, Berkshire Hathaway's biggest insurance unit.

Mr. Buffett's strategy is to seek government help without promoting any one plan or seeming to overreach. Government help is vital, he says, but he is not opposed to the insurance industry's paying a significant amount in any terrorist attack.

''I think there is nothing wrong with having the industry lose a lot of money if something like this happens,'' he said. ''We just have to keep it within the ability of the industry to pay. The industry can pay for a $10 billion loss. It can't price for a $500 billion loss.''

When it comes to the question of a bailout, Mr. Buffett would like to redefine it as what he calls a government bail-in.

''We won't write coverage where we can't fulfill our policy,'' he said. ''So the industry won't bail-in. There's nobody that can bail-in except the government because nobody else has the resources.''

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

*****
Bailout baiting?

Kris

October 15th, 2003, 10:35 PM

October 16, 2003

BLOCKS

Unheard Voices on Planning New Trade Center

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/10/16/nyregion/bloc.184.jpg
Max Bond Jr. had hoped for a planning process with more participants of all kinds, among them poets, philosophers and artists.

What may have been lost in the transition are voices; voices that might have questioned basic assumptions about a program in which skyscraping commercial development is to accompany the memorial, cultural and open spaces; voices that might have asked whether a public domain under tight control is truly public.

"It does make a huge difference," said J. Max Bond Jr. of the architectural firm of Davis Brody Bond. "No one really took exception to the program, in a profound sense. If there had been a greater variety of people, someone would have questioned the program."

Studio Daniel Libeskind was chosen to plan the trade center site in a competition involving design teams that had been invited to participate by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. White men predominated among the teams, as they do in the architectural profession generally.

Mr. Bond, who is both black and an éminence grise in architectural circles, said he was not simply advocating a planning process that would have included more minority architects but one that would have included more participants of all kinds — poets, philosophers and artists.

"The rush to get to a building almost inevitably set up a process that was exclusive and elitist," he said.

His colleague Richard H. Franklin, the managing principal at Davis Brody Bond, who worked 17 years in the trade center with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said a more inclusive process would not have taken any more time and "could have been much more engaging and much more healing."

Public space offers perhaps the clearest example of how a different process might have yielded different results. Many designs for the site called for gardens, shops, museums, restaurants and viewing platforms on high floors or at the top of buildings. But Mr. Bond said any space under strict scrutiny was not universally welcoming.

"It's always been difficult for young blacks, for young Hispanics, for anyone who looks aberrant to get access to the upper realms of Wall Street towers," he said. "For a city of immigrants, the public realm is more than ever now the street. If I'm a Dominican kid and my immigration papers are not quite right, I'll never go up there because I'll never dare show my fake ID.

"All these public spaces are going to be like shopping malls: privately controlled. You won't be able to wear a T-shirt that says, `Down with Ashcroft' because that will be viewed as hostile or threatening."

Mr. Bond also questioned the premise of new skyscrapers. "There's a macho thing that keeps coming out: we should build a building that tall to show them," he said. "Not everyone shares that sensibility. It's a particularly male, Western sensibility.

"I'm not saying people of color are wiser. But women, people of color, gays, immigrants have all had to look at themselves. They have experienced the underside of society in a much more profound way.

"Architecture inevitably involves all the larger issues of society."

What frustrates Melvin L. Mitchell, who wrote "The Crisis of the African-American Architect: Conflicting Cultures of Architecture and (Black) Power" (Writers Advantage, 2003), is the failure to acknowledge this broader context.

"For black architects to be in on the World Trade Center, they've got to do it in conjunction with black political and cultural New York," Mr. Mitchell said. "They've got to make the case that they're the arm of a much bigger community that has to be involved in the economic and social development of Lower Manhattan."

THOUGH not often eulogized as such, the twin towers were regarded by some as beacons of diversity, in part because of the presence of so many small, port-related international businesses.

In his hometown of St. Louis, Mr. Franklin recalled thinking when he stepped into an elevator in an office building, "I'm the only one" — that is, the only black person in the car.

He contrasted that with his first visit to the trade center in 1985, when he was being interviewed for a project management position at the Port Authority.

"In this elevator, it was like I was at the U.N.," he said. "There were black women. There were white women. There were Chinese. It was like, wow, where am I? Every country in the world was in that car."

Roberta Washington, an architect whose office is on West 125th Street, fondly recalled her trips to the trade center. She was supposed to have been there on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, at a meeting with Port Authority officials. (Her colleague, Jumaane Stewart, went instead and managed to escape as the first plane hit the tower.)

"It was a place that was part of my life even though I live in Harlem," Ms. Washington said. "It didn't belong just to star architects. Everyone should have the opportunity to contribute to what happens on that site."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Harmonicaman

October 16th, 2003, 11:22 AM

More items about the WTC money pit:

CNN's take on the money woes issue:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/16/wtc.building.reut/index.html

Hey, some good news from Albany! (Click on the PA press release about the Lease Extension, it also mentions distributions for the WTC site.):

http://www.panynj.com/

http://www.lowermanhattan.info/images/news/56r_ttd_iloveny_sm.gif

Harmonicaman

October 17th, 2003, 09:17 PM

Grasso resigns from LMDC

October 17, 2003, 4:34 PM EDT

EW YORK (AP) _ Former New York Stock Exchange boss Richard Grasso resigned from the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on Friday, exactly one month after he stepped down from the New York Stock Exchange amid a public furor over his $187.5 million pay package.

There was speculation about Grasso's future on the board overseeing development at the World Trade Center site after he resigned as chairman of the stock exchange Sept. 17.

"Dick has been a valuable and hard-working member of the LMDC since our organization was first formed in the fall of 2001," said LMDC chairman John Whitehead in a statement. "He has contributed a wealth of talent and experience to a broad range of important issues critical to the rebuilding and revitalization of lower Manhattan."

Grasso, one of 16 LMDC board members, was given a spot on the board by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in November 2001. Efforts to reach him for comment were not immediately successful.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg had no immediate comment.

Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

Harmonicaman

October 21st, 2003, 02:19 PM

WTC Debt Settlement Near

Lawyers: Silverstein, GMAC, Port Authority near deal on repayment from destroyed site's insurers.

Link to CNN/Reuters news item:

http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/21/news/companies/wtc_settle.reut/index.htm

Derek2k3

October 21st, 2003, 08:18 PM

October 16, 2003

Roberta Washington, an architect whose office is on West 125th Street, fondly recalled her trips to the trade center. She was supposed to have been there on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, at a meeting with Port Authority officials. (Her colleague, Jumaane Stewart, went instead and managed to escape as the first plane hit the tower.)

In high school, a couple of people who were interested in architecture/engineering including me, would meet with Jumaane Stewart and a couple other architects and we would discuss stuff. We also tried to submit a design for the WTC memorial but we missed the deadline. It was called the ACE mentorship program by the way.

JMGarcia

October 22nd, 2003, 12:05 AM

Libeskind jokes of `forced marriage' in WTC architectural pairing
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer

October 21, 2003, 10:09 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- World Trade Center architect Daniel Libeskind joked Tuesday night that his collaboration with another architect may be a "forced marriage," but he dismissed concerns it would lead to problems with the rebuilding project.

Libeskind delivered an hour-long review of his design for the World Trade Center site at the National Building Museum, describing the inspirations and occasionally competing interests behind the design.

While emphasizing his desire to create a building that echoes the design of the torch on the Statue of Liberty, Libeskind also addressed the practical matter of another architect working on his original idea.

Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease on the trade center site, recently picked David Childs to develop the Freedom Tower with Libeskind.

"It's a collaboration," Libeskind said. "Who said that collaborations are going to be easy?"

Libeskind, referring to his orthodox Jewish heritage, noted others had compared the situation with a forced marriage.

"Look, I come from a Hasidic background. I know forced marriages, and they always worked for a long time," the architect said.

Throughout the presentation, Libeskind insisted he enjoyed trying to negotiate the competing demands of state, city and private interests, as well as the currently undefined memorial.

But he also insisted the Freedom Tower, the highest of the five planned office towers to be constructed at the 16-acre downtown Manhattan site, should rise to 1,776 feet to match the year of the country's founding.

"It's not just any tower, it's 1776," he said. "It's a symbolic height."

Libeskind said that a broadcast antenna would rise atop the tower but that the antenna's top would not be considered the top of the building, in accordance with building custom.

Libeskind's working plan, which also includes a sunken memorial, was chosen in February for the site, but no final design has been approved by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which was created after Sept. 11, 2001, to oversee the rebuilding.

Freedom Tower

October 22nd, 2003, 05:20 PM

"Libeskind said that a broadcast antenna would rise atop the tower but that the antenna's top would not be considered the top of the building, in accordance with building custom. "

THERE IT IS! WHAT A RELIEF! MORE CONFIRMATION OF a 1776 ft roof height and even heigher antenna height! Thats great. I am getting anxious for some new renderings, I'm sure you all are too.

NyC MaNiAc

October 22nd, 2003, 07:04 PM

Sure am.

Are they still projected for a release before the end of the Month?

Kris

October 24th, 2003, 04:13 AM

October 24, 2003

Marriott Ceding Property Where Hotel Stood on the World Trade Center Site

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

As much as it reinvigorated Lower Manhattan at a time when a hotel was still a novelty downtown, the sleek and silvery 3 World Trade Center — originally the Vista International New York, finally the New York Marriott World Trade Center — seemed to have a cloud over it from the start.

Just before opening day in 1981, a fire broke out on the seventh floor of the 22-story building, which was nestled in the corner formed by the twin towers. It took more than a year and a half to rebuild the hotel after the terrorist bombing of 1993. And then, at the age of 20, it was destroyed.

Yesterday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey started erasing the last legal traces of the 820-room hotel, when its board voted to proceed with an agreement under which the Host Marriott Corporation would "surrender the premises" and terminate a lease that was to have run until 2094.

Eliminating Host Marriott's interest would clear the southwest edge of the 16-acre trade center site for redevelopment as a memorial.

"This will relieve Host Marriott of its obligation to rebuild at the site," said Greg Trevor, a spokesman for the authority, "and will enable the rebirth of the World Trade Center site to proceed in a manner consistent with the master plan."

Under the terms approved by the Port Authority board yesterday, Host Marriott would pay the $65 million balance of the $141.5 million purchase price that was reached in 1995, when it bought the hotel. That money covers what are known as operational assets, including furniture and furnishings, electronic equipment and appliances. In turn, Host Marriott would be entitled to property insurance proceeds.

Host Marriott would be relieved of its rent obligation, which had been $1 million a year but was to increase to $1.5 million next year.

It would pay $1 million for the right to make the first offer to operate a new hotel on the site. The project plan calls for up to one million square feet of space for a hotel and conference center, roughly two-thirds more than the original hotel.

Calls placed to Host Marriott's investor relations department yesterday afternoon were not returned.

Although the authority owns the trade center site, its ability to redevelop is subject to several long-term leases, including the one held by Larry A. Silverstein for 10 million square feet of commercial space.

The authority is negotiating to buy out the retail lease held by Westfield America and the $563 million mortgage held by the GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corporation on Mr. Silverstein's property.

"We're getting closer and closer," Joseph J. Seymour, executive director of the authority, said yesterday after the board meeting, when asked about the progress of those talks.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the firm designing the Freedom Tower at the trade center site (in a sometimes tumultuous collaboration with the master planner, Studio Daniel Libeskind), were the architects of the Vista Hotel, which was originally managed by Hilton International.

At the time of its opening, it was the first new hotel Lower Manhattan had seen since the Astor House opened near City Hall in 1836.

"In theory, it would be possible to spend years at the World Trade Center without ever leaving," Angus Kress Gillespie wrote in "Twin Towers" (Rutgers University Press, 1999). "One could live and work and rest entirely within the complex by staying at this hotel."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Kris

October 29th, 2003, 01:26 AM

October 29, 2003

Mayor's Office Seeks More Retail Space at Ground Zero

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

After many months of playing a backstage role in planning the new World Trade Center, the Bloomberg administration stepped forward yesterday and declared that the master plan would have to include far more streetfront retail space and one more full-fledged street than it now calls for.

"The site must have a retail district that will be a regional destination while being respectful of the memorial," Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said in a letter to state officials that was released by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's press office. "In that district, people will find an exciting on-the-street shopping experience and unique anchor stores that do not exist elsewhere — prompting them to spend time throughout Lower Manhattan."

City Hall wants almost two-thirds more ground-level retail space — nearly 187,000 square feet — than is now shown in the plan, Mr. Doctoroff wrote. It wants Cortlandt Street restored as a thoroughfare between Church and Greenwich Streets, which would require the elimination of a concourse planned between Liberty Street and the future PATH terminal, parallel to Church Street.

Tomorrow, Gov. George E. Pataki is to give a speech on the future of Lower Manhattan. So the timing of the release of an Oct. 17 letter from Mr. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, seemed intended as a reassertion of the city's role in planning the site.

But Mr. Doctoroff said in a telephone interview that the timing was coincidental. The point of the letter, he said, was to "crystallize in written form where we think we have to go from here."

"The key thing that hasn't been addressed in detail — and it needs to be — is how this plan integrates with the rest of Lower Manhattan," Mr. Doctoroff said. "It's time to begin calling the question and reaching final conclusions about the issue of how people experience the plan on the streets."

The 16-point letter was sent to Joseph J. Seymour, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site. A copy went to Kevin M. Rampe, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is planning the site with the Port Authority.

On Sept. 17, the authority and the development corporation presented a "refined" version of the plan by Studio Daniel Libeskind, which they had adopted in broad outline in February.

It divides the old trade center superblock into four unequal quadrants along Greenwich and Fulton Streets. The memorial would occupy much of the southwest quarter, where the twin towers stood. The tallest new building, the Freedom Tower, would be in the northwest quarter. More office towers and a new PATH terminal would run along Church Street, on the eastern half of the site.

None of the points raised by Mr. Doctoroff were rejected out of hand yesterday by state officials, though it is not clear if the city's conditions, taken together, would yield a substantively different plan.

"The letter raises some important points and the Port Authority looks forward to continuing our positive discussions with the city," said Greg Trevor, a spokesman for the authority.

Andrew Winters, the vice president of the development corporation and its director of planning, design and development, said: "The refined plan did not stop evolving on the day we released it. We're going to continue to strive to improve it every day throughout the process."

Even as the master plan is changing, so is the design of the Freedom Tower. An impasse last week between Mr. Libeskind and David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects for the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, threatened to disrupt what will be a very tight construction schedule.

At a meeting with both architects yesterday, Mr. Silverstein underscored the urgency of arriving at a collaborative — and practical — design for the tower, one that would hew to a number of principles laid out by Mr. Libeskind, according to an executive who attended.

The developer extracted from both architects a renewed commitment to work in partnership on the project.

Mr. Doctoroff said little in his letter about the proposed 1,776-foot tower. Instead, he addressed the future of streets, sidewalks, shopping and public spaces. He proposed third-floor "sky lobbies" in the office towers along Church Street, to free up large blocks of space for retailers.

He commended the decision to expand the development site to include two blocks on the south side of Liberty Street, but he urged state officials to work with the city in devising a strategy for acquiring those properties soon.

Acknowledging that the plan will take years to build, he wrote: "The first phase must leave no voids on any of the site's parcels. There should be contiguous retail along the street walls of the site and these should accommodate a later phase when commercial towers can be built."

He also said that "no plan can be approved without detailed estimates of how much it will cost, who will pay for its components, and when each component will be built."

Madelyn Wils, the chairwoman of the Lower Manhattan community board, said, "The Port Authority should not just consult with the city, but be open to suggestions about how it's going to affect life outside the 16-plus acres."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Kris

October 29th, 2003, 03:31 AM

Mayor Wants In On WTC Plans

Bloomberg Demands Accountability In Rebuilding Process

By Glenn Thrush
Staff Writer

October 28, 2003, 7:52 PM EST

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants big changes to the World Trade Center rebuilding plan — and is demanding the Port Authority give him a detailed accounting of what it plans to spend in lower Manhattan.

Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg's deputy mayor for economic development, called for "a detailed, multi-year comparison of the uses and sources of funds must be produced" in a Oct. 17 letter to the authority's executive director, Joseph Seymour.

Bloomberg's staff released the six-page laundry list of gripes Tuesday, just 48 hours before Gov. George Pataki was due to deliver a major speech updating progress by the state and Port Authority on the trade center plan.

"To date, we are not aware of any estimates of the costs of the master plan," Doctoroff wrote. "Without these estimates, it is impossible to... ensure that sufficient funds exist for its successful construction."

The Bloomberg administration also wants security and safety systems at the new trade center to be reviewed by city police and fire officials — even though its Port Authority property is officially exempt from city codes.

The mayor has long argued that the site needs to be integrated into the surrounding neighborhoods, but this is the first time officials in his administration have aired their grievances so passionately or so publicly.

"I don't think [the timing] was a coincidence," said a state source. "It's basically a summing up of a month of bumps in the road between us and the mayor's people."

Doctoroff said the timing of the letter's release was "purely coincidental" and his staff had intended to release it last week. "There is no reason to believe we will not be able to come to some reasonable solutions among all the parties," he said.

Still, the letter caps months of behind-the-scenes wrangling over retail space. Doctoroff calls for the elimination of the port's planned underground galleria on Cortlandt Street, saying it "creates an intimidating 'superblock,' and invites people to stay indoors."

In its place Doctoroff proposes an integrated system of street-level shops that expands retail square footage from about 800,000 square feet to nearly 1 million square feet on the site.

Some of the increase would be achieved by moving lobbies from ground level to the third floors of three skyscrapers to be built on the site, according to a detailed schematic Doctoroff submitted to Seymour.

Port Authority spokesman Greg Trevor said, "The letter raises some important points and the Port Authority looks forward to continuing our positive discussions with the city."

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which is overseeing the design process, is whittling down 5,200 submissions entered in an international competition to design a memorial to those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. A winner is expected to be selected before the end of the year.

Pataki has said he wants to lay the cornerstone of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, the centerpiece of the new trade center, by next August.

Doctoroff also asked the port to relocate entrances of buildings from corners to mid-block locations to increase foot traffic needed to create an "exciting, on-the-street shopping experience."

The city also called for the elimination of an underground pedestrian passageway at Liberty Street because it reduces the amount of public space on the site.

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

BrooklynRider

October 29th, 2003, 01:39 PM

I am very much in Bloomberg's corner on this one. I find that he picks his battles carefully. He's a smart guy and probably one of the more visionary mayors we've had in decades.

kliq6

October 29th, 2003, 01:43 PM

Visionary is not the word i would use, Idiot would be. To close a budget gap by increasing overall city spending and raising the Property TAx by 18.5 %

BrooklynRider

October 29th, 2003, 01:55 PM

You're off topic. Tax whining should be posted in New York Guide for New Yorkers Forum.

NYatKNIGHT

October 29th, 2003, 03:10 PM

His financial success speaks for itself - the man is no idiot. It's good he wants a detailed accounting of the spending, and he clearly wants a vibrant neighborhood and business community with his desire for more retail. But he's also not an architect, so I have to wonder how Libeskind reacted to his desire to remove that underground concourse and galleria - we'll see.

Kris

October 30th, 2003, 07:03 AM

October 30, 2003

BLOCKS

Milestones . . . and Things Still to Do . . . at Tower Site

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

A WEEK ago, it looked as if Gov. George E. Pataki would have some explaining to do in the speech he is to deliver this morning about Lower Manhattan.

As the man with the most power over the World Trade Center site, Mr. Pataki sets much of the agenda downtown. In his last benchmark address in April, he pledged a series of near-term projects. First among them was a pedestrian bridge at Vesey Street that was to open along with the new PATH terminal and funnel thousands of commuters over the busy lanes of West Street.

At the end of last week, with the terminal nearly finished, there was no Vesey Street bridge to be seen.

Come Sunday morning, however, it had materialized: a 220-foot, silvery-gray trusswork span, more than 20 feet above the roadway, framed in a lacy network of X's like a tower from the George Washington Bridge that had been set on end.

Score one for the governor's list. (Moral: It is nice to have a Transportation Department at your disposal when making speeches.)

Actually, many of Mr. Pataki's milestones have been reached. Some have not, though it should be noted that the governor gave himself a one-year deadline.

The Millennium High School has opened at 75 Broad Street, a greenmarket has returned to Liberty Street, a Borders bookstore is doing business at 100 Broadway and the streetscape along Broadway is being refined and enlivened with new fixtures and markers commemorating ticker-tape parades.

"The fact that those milestones are being met is terrific," said Carl Weisbrod, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, which runs the Lower Manhattan business improvement district and has been working on the streetscape project since 1998. "It provides businesses, residents, visitors and workers very tangible evidence that things are moving forward."

On the other hand, what Mr. Pataki called the "black shroud" over the badly damaged Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, "an ever-present reminder of the darkest moment of our past," is still unadorned by the mural he promised on the theme of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is overseeing the governor's plans, has permission from the bank to erect the mural, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank said. The mural would hang in front of the protective netting and above a 17-story opening that is now exposed to permit needed repair work.

The governor also said in April that the "rows upon rows of police barricades" outside the New York Stock Exchange should be replaced quickly by something more attractive. Yesterday, Broad Street was still penned in by metal barriers south of Wall Street.

Kevin M. Rampe, the president of the development corporation, said a security plan for the stock exchange would soon be ready that might even serve as a template for other highly sensitive public buildings. And in general, he said, "We're on track with everything outlined in the April speech."

Waiting in the wings for a Nov. 5 ribbon-cutting is the relandscaped Brooklyn Bridge-Drumgoole Plaza at Gold and Frankfort Streets, the first of 13 parks and open spaces that are being rejuvenated by the city's Parks and Recreation Department with $25 million from the development corporation.

Behind the temporary chain-link fence at Drumgoole Plaza are new plantings, pathways and benches with boomerang-style legs like those used at the 1964 World's Fair.

An even more striking transformation has occurred over West Street, also designated Route 9A, where the superstructure of the Vesey Street pedestrian bridge was hoisted into position in two 110-foot sections, the west end before dawn on Saturday and the east end before dawn on Sunday.

The $15 million project, financed by the development corporation, has moved rapidly. Contracts were let in June, work began in July and the bridge is on schedule to open next month, said Richard J. Schmalz, the Route 9A project director for the state's Transportation Department. Escalators and elevators should be running by mid-April, he said. The bridge will be up for five years.

RUNNING from the base of the Verizon building at 140 West Street to the corner in front of 3 World Financial Center at Battery Park City, the bridge is 20 feet wide to accommodate 4,500 to 6,000 people an hour at peak periods.

It will be sheathed in perforated stainless-steel panels that cut down on wind. They will also permit a gauzy kind of view, but not enough to encourage visitors to linger. Additional light will come in through translucent overhead panels. The bridge was designed by Earth Tech, working with Vollmer Associates, and is being built by the Yonkers Contracting Corporation.

As for the timing, Mr. Schmalz said that last weekend was as close to ideal as such things got. The steel was ready and the overnight traffic was not as heavy as it is expected to be tomorrow, after the Halloween parade. "This was," he said, "a nonevent weekend."

Except at Vesey and West Streets.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

NYatKNIGHT

October 30th, 2003, 10:22 AM

....a security plan for the stock exchange would soon be ready that might even serve as a template for other highly sensitive public buildings.

Good, those barricades are aweful. You'd think something spectacular is going to replace them for the amount of time it's taking.....

On the other hand, what Mr. Pataki called the "black shroud" over the badly damaged Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, "an ever-present reminder of the darkest moment of our past," is still unadorned by the mural he promised on the theme of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower.

Had this mural been there, it might have been a lot more difficult to sell a completely different looking tower by Childs, no?

Jasonik

October 30th, 2003, 10:56 AM

On the other hand, what Mr. Pataki called the "black shroud" over the badly damaged Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, "an ever-present reminder of the darkest moment of our past," is still unadorned by the mural he promised on the theme of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower.

Had this mural been there, it might have been a lot more difficult to sell a completely different looking tower by Childs, no?

Very astute observation. Kind of makes you wonder if Pataki really backs Libeskind.

Nina should have been on this by now. ;)

TLOZ Link5

October 30th, 2003, 12:33 PM

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

New design for WTC's Freedom Tower to be unveiled
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Thursday, October 30th, 2003

A revised design for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site will be unveiled in mid-December, Gov. George Pataki said Thursday as he outlined a redevelopment timetable that also calls for PATH commuter rail service to lower Manhattan to resume next month.

In remarks prepared for the Association for a Better New York/Downtown Lower Manhattan Association luncheon, Pataki said PATH service from New Jersey to the trade center site would resume Nov. 23, a month ahead of schedule.

The inaugural trip will be made by the same eight cars that were the last to leave the station on Sept. 11, 2001, taking with them commuters fleeing the terror attack, he said.

The revised design for the Freedom Tower will be released Dec. 15, Pataki said. The plan is a collaboration between Daniel Libeskind, who created the original concept for the 1,776-foot tower, and David Childs, who was hired by leaseholder Larry Silverstein to act as lead architect on the detailed design.

The tower deadline appears to serve as an impetus for the architects, to work out artistic differences that emerged in recent weeks. The two met earlier this week and promised to work together on the project.

Pataki, who previously voiced support for the original Freedom Tower design, reiterated that position in his remarks Thursday.

“Now that the plan for the site has been refined, it’s clear that Daniel Libeskind’s compelling vision emerged not only intact, but improved,” he said in prepared remarks.

Also next month, eight proposals for a memorial to Sept. 11 victims will go on public view at the Winter Garden. The plans, winnowed from a large field by a memorial jury, will be displayed the week of Nov. 17.

Pataki also said a pedestrian bridge over Vesey Street will open Nov. 22. The bridge will connect Battery Park City and the World Financial Center to the trade center and downtown.

The governor promised to undertake quality-of-life improvements in lower Manhattan as well.

The area around the New York Stock Exchange, now filled with concrete security barriers, will get a facelift under a plan to be unveiled next month. The plan, to be completed by spring, calls for more greenery and for security measures that blend into the surroundings.

© Copyright of the Associated Press and the New York Daily News, 2003

Harmonicaman

October 30th, 2003, 09:30 PM

The World Trade Center Memorial Competition Finalists are selected and have been refining their designs:

CNN item: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/30/wtc.memorial/index.html

JMC

October 30th, 2003, 10:30 PM

When I was down there, on Tuesday...there were actually lights on, inside Deutsche Bank...I don't even like walking down wind from that thing.

It seems that the risk, from the liability, that future workers would find this a "sick" building, would outweigh raising it...jeeze.

JMC

October 31st, 2003, 12:45 AM

I mean, outweigh *not* raising it!

:?

Kris

October 31st, 2003, 01:47 AM

October 31, 2003

Governor Praises the Pace of the PATH Rebuilding Effort

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Gov. George E. Pataki told downtown business leaders yesterday that there is steady and certain progress in the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, with the PATH station reopening next month, the exhibition of proposals for a memorial and, in December, the unveiling of a new design for the first skyscraper on the 16-acre parcel.

Mr. Pataki said he was intent on overcoming all of the obstacles to rebuilding Lower Manhattan, from the battles between architects designing the signature Freedom Tower to insurance disputes and bureaucratic sluggishness. The governor emphasized that the plans he presented in April to build a memorial, a transit complex and the first office tower on the site by September 2006 were "right on track."

"We are entering a new phase in the rebuilding effort, moving from planning to implementation," Mr. Pataki said in a speech before the Association for a Better New York and the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association. "In the next year, we will begin building the world's tallest building, a 21st-century transportation hub and, most importantly, a memorial, all at the same time."

To offset any notion that the rebuilding effort had become mired in disputes, Mr. Pataki tried to convey a sense of momentum by ticking off a long list of projects, some new and others announced months ago. By publicly establishing the deadlines, though, he invested a great deal of political capital in completing the projects.

Despite the on-again, off-again public squabbling between two architects over the design of the main tower, Mr. Pataki said he had set a Dec. 15 deadline for the men, Daniel Libeskind, the site's master planner, and David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, to complete their plans for the 1,776-foot skyscraper.

Mr. Pataki pledged to ensure that "downtown remains the financial capital of the world," and to create or renovate 50 acres of parks and public spaces south of Houston Street, build new schools and make $4.5 billion worth of transportation improvements.

"He's set a timeline and put everyone to task to make sure that everyone fulfills their obligations," said William Rudin, vice chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York and a major downtown landlord.

On Nov. 23, PATH service at the site is scheduled to resume at a temporary station, connecting Lower Manhattan to New Jersey by rail for the first time in more than two years. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey also plans to release a preliminary design by the architect Santiago Calatrava for the permanent PATH station that would be akin to Grand Central Terminal. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working on plans for a new transit hub at Fulton Street that would bring order to the tangled web of nine subway lines.

Mr. Pataki said that over the next two years, fast commuter ferries would begin between Lower Manhattan and La Guardia and Kennedy Airports and Yonkers. He also reiterated his support for a rail link between downtown and the airports.

The governor announced that the actor Robert De Niro, who was sitting in the audience, planned to build an 83-room luxury hotel at Greenwich and North Moore Streets, with an estimated $38 million in tax-free Liberty Bonds. Mr. Pataki called on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to finance a feasibility study for building a large cultural center in Chinatown, where tourism continues to suffer from the attack on the trade center.

In an effort to resolve another dilemma, Mr. Pataki said he had asked a former senator, George J. Mitchell, a Democrat, to mediate settlement discussions between Deutsche Bank and the Allianz insurance company over the bank's heavily damaged building at 130 Liberty Street.

The bank has sued Allianz and a second insurer, AXA, saying that the tower is uninhabitable and that the insurers must pay their share of a $1.72 billion loss. State and city officials want the matter settled so that the building can be demolished and the property incorporated into the trade center site.

Mr. Pataki had also hoped that Mr. Mitchell would help settle the long-running dispute between Larry A. Silverstein, the developer who controls the commercial lease at the trade center site, and nearly two dozen insurers over billions of dollars needed for rebuilding. But on Wednesday, the federal judge who is hearing the Silverstein case appointed his own mediator.

Mr. Pataki said yesterday that he had set a Dec. 31 deadline for a settlement between the bank and its insurer. "The governor and the parties thought that I may be of assistance," Mr. Mitchell said. "We all have to do what we can."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

TLOZ Link5

October 31st, 2003, 10:29 AM

Okay, fine. Maybe I was a teensy bit wrong about Pataki.

NYatKNIGHT

October 31st, 2003, 11:52 AM

Something else to look forward to. :D

(From the above article) The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey also plans to release a preliminary design by the architect Santiago Calatrava for the permanent PATH station that would be akin to Grand Central Terminal.

Another Times article:

October 31, 2003

Pataki Visits PATH Station at a Recovering Ground Zero

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

The homecoming began yesterday, not in a sunken memorial or a sky-piercing observatory but in a rail station that will be the first public portal to ground zero.

Spartan and utilitarian, sprawling and surprisingly luminous, the nearly completed PATH terminal at the World Trade Center is a three-dimensional reminder that before the trade center was anything else — civic emblem, compass point, mass cemetery, mountain of wreckage — it was a hub of movement.

On a brief tour, Gov. George E. Pataki introduced the temporary terminal to a group of officials, executives and reporters. Commuters will follow next month.

"When people come in from New Jersey into the bathtub, it's not going to be any ordinary morning," said Joseph J. Seymour, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is building the $323 million terminal. "Conversation's going to stop."

Mr. Pataki lingered along Tracks 2 and 3, some 60 feet below the sidewalk, looking out across the bathtub, as the trade center foundation is called. Then he turned around and regarded the long blue sign over the platform: "World Trade Center."

More than a memory, the old trade center terminal even shows itself in a few odd places, like glass doors leading to the E train platform and an overhead sign, pointing to the N and R trains, that still carries ad panels for the Monster online job site.

Except for a broad bank of escalators, there is little else about the temporary terminal that connects it recognizably with the old. As designed by Robert I. Davidson, chief architect of the Port Authority, it is a deliberately spare place of gray steel columns, concrete floors and corrugated floor decking. It is eventually to be replaced by a permanent terminal designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Now open on the sides, the terminal's rooms will be enclosed in translucent panels and in vinyl screens that will act as scrims, permitting a diffused view while serving as backdrops for quotations about New York and New Jersey.

Mr. Pataki visited the station after giving a speech about Lower Manhattan in which he said: "At 9:10 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a PATH train pulled into the World Trade Center, rescued the last people on the platform, closed its doors and left the station, becoming the last train to leave before the south tower collapsed. On Nov. 23, 2003, those same eight cars that left the station on that fateful morning will be the first to come back and finish that journey."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/10/30/nyregion/31PATH.chart.jpg
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

JMC

October 31st, 2003, 03:09 PM

Mr. Pataki visited the station after giving a speech about Lower Manhattan in which he said: "At 9:10 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a PATH train pulled into the World Trade Center, rescued the last people on the platform, closed its doors and left the station, becoming the last train to leave before the south tower collapsed. On Nov. 23, 2003, those same eight cars that left the station on that fateful morning will be the first to come back and finish that journey."

Right on!

NYguy

October 31st, 2003, 11:54 PM

Downtown Express photo...

http://downtownexpress.com/de_27/downtown.jpg

State Dept. of Transportation contractors began moving parts of the Vesey St. pedestrian bridge from Battery Park City’s Site 26 to its home over West St. over the weekend. The bridge is expected to be finished before Thanksgiving to coincide with the reopening of the temporary World Trade Center PATH commuter station.

NYguy

November 1st, 2003, 08:24 PM

Images taken today (Nov 1) of the new temporary pedestrian bridge accross West St...

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877449/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877454/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877459/large.jpg

NYguy

November 1st, 2003, 08:33 PM

More images today taken from ground zero...

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877482/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877495/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877484/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877494/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877506/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877508/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22877499/large.jpg

Gulcrapek

November 1st, 2003, 10:01 PM

What's the steel on 7WTC? It doesn't look thick enough to be the tower frame.

NoyokA

November 1st, 2003, 11:17 PM

Its nice that steel is now rising at 7 WTC.

What you're seeing are the external columns. And by-way of these columns the loads will be transferred into the inner-core.

Eli, in answer to your question this steel is part of the towers frame.

Gulcrapek

November 1st, 2003, 11:49 PM

Wow. I guess it's high strength...

emmeka

November 2nd, 2003, 03:36 AM

Yes, Yes, Yes! it looks like deustche bank is being repaired rather than demolished. I always thought they could.

ZippyTheChimp

November 2nd, 2003, 06:14 AM

The work being done on 130 Liberty does not mean it is being rebuilt

emmeka

November 2nd, 2003, 08:16 AM

What? Damn it. What the hell are they doing then?

Chicagoan

November 2nd, 2003, 01:59 PM

They could be simply stabilising the building until a decision can be mad. This would not be the first time in history that has happened. If that is the caes... what a waste of resources.

emmeka

November 2nd, 2003, 03:30 PM

NYguy

November 3rd, 2003, 07:48 AM

NY POST...

Reopening Ground Zero

Dale McFeatters

It is altogether fitting that the first part of the World Trade Center site to reopen to the public will be the commuter rail station. And it is also fitting that the rebuilt station will continue to be called World Trade Center.

The station will formally open on Nov. 23, just over two years since the 9/11 attack, and the first train will be the same eight cars that were the last train out, rescuing passengers trapped on the platform and departing just before the collapse of the south tower.

The $323 million station is in the "bathtub," the huge retaining wall that keeps water out of the excavation and whose strength kept the disaster from being wose than it was. Screens will partially obscure the site of the missing buildings, but the curious would see only a vast construction yard.

At 50,000 passengers a day, the reopened station will restore life and foot traffic to the onetime social and commercial center, it should be that again. The station is only a first step, a $323 million first step; others will follow quickly.

On Nov. 17, the eight finalist designs for a memorial to the victims, whose numbers were recently revised downward to 2,752, will go on display.

And by Dec. 15, the architects are to agree on a final design for a skyscraper to be erected on the site. That design should be big, bold and brash; it should be New York.

Chicagoan

November 3rd, 2003, 09:15 AM

Just what I was thinking, if there going to stabalize it then whats the point in demolishing it? Its almost the same as repairing it, from those pictures it looks like the floors and the individual partitions for the glass have been put in.

Am i crazy or is that strange? (if they are going to demolish it).

No, not if you consider the alternative. Who knows how long it will take for the bank and its insurer to resolve the damage dispute. The last think anyone wants is another collapsing building.

But also, someone could always come in an purchase the tower and site from the bank, nulling the whole insurance dispute thing. Fixing the building makes it that more attractive for that alternative.

JMC

November 3rd, 2003, 06:04 PM

Hey, fellas...is it possible that we could commit, on here, to refer to this area of downtown as, "The World Trade Center," as opposed to "Ground Zero" ?

I feel doing this will help NYC get its Mojo back.

(and if this stock rally continues, we'll really have our Mojo back!)

Chicagoan

November 3rd, 2003, 10:19 PM

NYguy

November 4th, 2003, 07:59 AM

It would probably help more if the title of this thread wasn't Ground Zero Developments!

Ninjahedge

November 4th, 2003, 09:30 AM

The outer steel does not transfer load to the inner core, it just is responsible for carrying the load at the outside down to the foundation.

the inner core is usually set up with a dual purpose. One is noaturally to support the gravity load that it is above it. The second is a lateral resistance against wind and seismic loads.

So the steel you see there, at that much of a distance, is quite large. I estimate they are peobably going to be at about W14x257 at the base if this is a strait forward (not tiered/setback) design given a 30 foot spacing.

These seem more like a curtainwall system, so they may be tubular steel or W12's closer spaced.

Could someone take a closer picture?

JMC

November 4th, 2003, 06:56 PM

NY Guy...I second that evaluation!

NoyokA

November 4th, 2003, 06:59 PM

I guess you could now say the title is politically correct.

NYguy

November 4th, 2003, 07:01 PM

I guess you could now say the title is politically correct.

Cool....

JMC

November 4th, 2003, 07:02 PM

I guess you could now say the title is politically correct.

Thanks sir. Actually, I would say it's cartographicially correct!

NYguy

November 5th, 2003, 07:38 AM

NY POST...

LIBESKIND'S LOUSY RULES

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

November 5, 2003 -- Development officials are working to ease master planner Daniel Libeskind's design guidelines for Ground Zero office towers, fearing they are too restrictive and could drive top architects away from the project.

Libeskind has repeatedly said other marquee architects should design the trade center's office buildings - but a draft of his site guidelines obtained by The Post calls for a series of five office towers closely resembling the ones in his own master-plan drawings.

The guidelines call for towers with slanted, diamond-shaped tops rising in a stepped progression across the site.

Libeskind specifies the height of each building and the way the towers should grow thinner as they rise - and he requires that all the towers have diagonal stripes across their glass sides "to reinforce the urban composition."

Development officials fear architects of that caliber could be put off by the guidelines.

One official called Libeskind's guidelines "restrictive."

Another source said the guidelines are being revised "in the direction of [greater] flexibility."

"There's very little room left under those guidelines for anybody to exercise their originality and talent. They're proscriptive," said architect Peter Eisenman, who reviewed a draft of Libeskind's guidelines obtained by The Post.

"I don't think any architect worth his integrity would get involved in something like this."

WTC developer Larry Silverstein has said he hopes to hire some of the world's top architects to create buildings at Ground Zero, including Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel or Fumihiko Maki.

The guidelines were submitted by Libeskind to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the Port Authority in late summer and planning staffers are working on a revision to show top officials in coming weeks.

"We're trying to strike a balance between preservation of the selected design's vision while insuring that other architects can lend their distinctive styles to the plan," said LMDC executive Matt Higgins.

Libeskind is cooperating in drafting the changes and has agreed to remove the requirement for diagonal lines on the building facades, sources said.

Denise Scott Brown, who makes up an award-winning architectural team with her husband, Robert Venturi, said, "I think we would find these [guidelines] onerous."

"He [Libeskind] has a very specific formal vision for these towers . . . a sculptural vision," she said. "The notion of a city being kinetic is missing. It's static. It looks like it should all be built at once."

http://www.nypost.com/photos/web11050314a.jpg

TonyO

November 5th, 2003, 11:19 AM

There really isn't any way, with the staggered building process, that the buildings will be uniform like Libeskind wants. In 3 or 4 years if there is different political leadership the whole plan could change. Who knows, instead of building "down" in the circular pattern, maybe they'll build up? :-)

JMGarcia

November 5th, 2003, 01:26 PM

Libeskind specifies the height of each building and the way the towers should grow thinner as they rise - and he requires that all the towers have diagonal stripes across their glass sides "to reinforce the urban composition."

Wouldn't you just love to know the heights? :)

This is pretty standard massing model/master plan stuff except for the facade treatment which should be left up to the actual architect within less rigorous guildines. Something akin to the facade guidelines for BPC would be better unless, of course, the decisions is made that the towers of the new WTC should be treated as a composition just like the WFC across West St.

NYguy

November 5th, 2003, 02:37 PM

I think height, and general size are ok, but the rest should be left to the architects, or why isn't Libeskind designing the damned buildings?... :x

NYguy

November 5th, 2003, 03:03 PM

DOWNTOWN EXPRESS:

W.T.C. plans on track, Pataki says

By Josh Rogers

Six months after Gov. George Pataki laid out a detailed timetable for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, he returned to the scene of the speech to announce that virtually all of the deadlines have been met and to promise that Downtown progress will continue.

Just like his April 24 address at the Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park City, Pataki once again had announcements about a school and a greenmarket. He said he would work with the mayor on opening a K-8 school in Lower Manhattan and he announced that the World Trade Center Greenmarket would return to ground zero by Nov. 23 when the PATH commuter trains come back to a temporary outdoor station at the site.

The governor made several other announcements last Thursday at the Ritz:

*He said there would be a Downtown construction command center where every city and state agency overseeing a construction project south of Canal St. would provide staff and information to Lower Manhattan residents and workers

*Pataki backed away from his support of Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s plan to use some tax-free Liberty Bonds for office buildings in Midtown and called for extending the application deadline beyond next year into 2009. “Should we need Liberty Bonds in the rebuilding effort, we must ensure they are available when we need them - and that Lower Manhattan remains the first priority, just as Congress intended,” he said.

*The governor softened his enthusiasm for building a $860-million vehicular tunnel under West St. and adjacent to the W.T.C. site — a project which has had a growing number of skeptics among some city officials and residents because they either think it is too costly or an ineffective way to improve pedestrian safety.

At least two major issues remain undecided. Architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind are arguing over the design over the W.T.C. site’s first skyscraper, which Pataki dubbed the Freedom Tower in his April speech. He gave them until Dec. 15 to agree on a design. Construction on the building is targeted to being in August — a week before the Republican National Convention in New York City, although officials maintain the two events are not linked.

Developer Larry Silverstein, who owns the W.T.C. leasing rights and brought Childs into the project, said last week the tower will retain the symbolic height proposed by Libeskind: “1776 is where its going to be.”

Pataki appointed George Mitchell, the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and a Democrat to mediate the dispute between Allianz insurance company and the Deutsche Bank, which owns the black-netted and still-damaged building on Liberty St. Pataki put a Dec. 31 deadline on ending the disagreement. The current plans for the W.T.C. site are dependent on the Port Authority or another government entity buying and demolishing the Deutsche to reduce the building density at the W.T.C. and add plaza space to the Libeskind master plan.

Pataki formally withdrew his call in April to place an expensive mural over Deutsche while the disagreement is being resolved. Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and a Pataki appointee, told reporters last month that the Deutsche mural idea was likely to be scrapped because the building would be demolished anyway.

http://downtownexpress.com/de_28/wtc.jpg

Charles Gargano, chairperson of the Empire State Development Corp., Developer Larry Silverstein, and Gov. Pataki toured the World Trade Center PATH station last week after Pataki’s speech. The station is set to reopen Nov. 23.

http://downtownexpress.com/de_28/wtc1.jpg

Architect Daniel Libeskind, Larry Silverstein and architecht David Childs walk toward the PATH entrance.

NoyokA

November 5th, 2003, 03:18 PM

I wonder when this picture was taken?

http://downtownexpress.com/de_28/wtc1.jpg

NYguy

November 5th, 2003, 03:21 PM

Must have been last week at the press conference/speech. Everyone was there...

NoyokA

November 5th, 2003, 03:23 PM

Hopefully they resolved whatever problems the two had.

NYguy

November 5th, 2003, 05:31 PM

According to Nina, Libeskind was waiting for a revised Childs design last week...

NYguy

November 5th, 2003, 07:51 PM

Development officials are working to ease master planner Daniel Libeskind's design guidelines for Ground Zero office towers, fearing they are too restrictive and could drive top architects away from the project.

This can only be the result of Libeskind's spat with Childs. Suddenly officials are becoming more aware of the monster they have created, when everyone should have seen the potential for conflict from the beginning. I say either Libeskind should himself be designing the buildings, or strip some of his power away. Whats the use in having other architects if their talents can't be used?

Kris

November 7th, 2003, 04:15 AM

November 7, 2003

At Ground Zero Oasis, a Path Is Restored

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

For the first time in memory, you can get to the chapel by way of Church.

The western gates to St. Paul's Chapel on Church Street, which had been padlocked for no one knows how long, were reopened this week. So was the churchyard itself, which had been closed since Sept. 11, 2001.

Suddenly, there is a contemplative public space — brand new but 237 years old — on the edge of ground zero. The open gates allow visitors to approach the chapel as they would have in the 18th century, across a lawn dotted with headstones, through trees so tall they almost obscure the wooden steeple.

"The world doesn't expect anything like this to exist right in the middle of New York City," said the Rev. Dr. Daniel Paul Matthews, rector of Trinity Church, to which St. Paul's is attached. Yesterday was his first journey through the Church Street gates in 16 years as rector.

He stopped to study the jagged stump of a sycamore tree that was blown over when the World Trade Center collapsed and may have offered the first line of defense for the chapel, which survived intact. The tree is to be replaced this month with a 20-foot Norway spruce that Trinity will call the Tree of Hope.

This has been a week of rebirth around the trade center site.

Engine Company 10 and Ladder Company 10 returned to their quarters at 124 Liberty Street, which were damaged in the attack. Plywood barriers came down from the doors that connected the E train platform to the World Trade Center concourse, revealing an original travertine-clad column and a dust-covered sign, "PATH Trains to New Jersey."

And at St. Paul's, some 500 people crossed the churchyard on Monday after the gates opened, said Linda Hanick, director of special projects at Trinity. The gates will stay open every day from 10 a.m. to dusk.

St. Paul's was the setting in 1789 of a service of thanksgiving after Washington's inauguration as president.

In 2001, after the attack, it cared for the workers at ground zero, offering hot food, dry socks, ponchos, shovels, aspirin, lip balm, chiropractic care, massage therapy, pews to sleep on and an oasis from the havoc outside.

Though it seems to face Broadway, the chapel was actually built to overlook the Hudson River, then only two blocks away. It rose in a field that had been planted with wheat earlier in the same year its foundations were laid.

By the early 19th century, New York's center of gravity had shifted to Broadway, and St. Paul's front lawn gradually became its backyard.

No one at Trinity can recall when the Church Street entrance was closed or why, though Dr. Matthews has a theory. "Probably the powers that be, namely the janitor, didn't want to walk all the way down here to open the gate," he said. Once those gates were closed, visitors could enter the yard only through the chapel. After the attack, they could not enter at all.

The reopening came in response to requests from visitors to an exhibition at St. Paul's, "Out of the Dust: A Year of Ministry at Ground Zero." They would look out the chapel doors and see the yard beyond, just out of reach.

"We're hungry for sacramental expression," Dr. Matthews said. "St. Paul's has become a symbol, whether we wanted it to be or not. There's nothing symbolic you can identify with across the street except a big iron fence."

But the very first visitor was not on a spiritual journey. He told Ms. Hanick his name was Tom, that he worked for the Bank of New York at 1 Wall Street and that he was running late. The churchyard, it turned out, was a convenient new shortcut.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Patrick

November 7th, 2003, 02:42 PM

Thanks Christian,

i like those stories. :)

Patrick

Kris

November 8th, 2003, 06:29 AM

November 8, 2003

Master Plan for New Trade Center Gets Down to the Finest Detail

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/11/08/nyregion/rebuild.large.jpg
A draft of guidelines for the new World Trade Center offers specifics on things like building heights, and the angle of each faceted rooftop. (Overall Site Development Guidelines (Oct. 23 Draft), Studio Daniel Libeskind)

After months of dealing in broad concepts, the planners of the new World Trade Center are devising guidelines that will prescribe the actual forms of the buildings — in inches and feet, metal and stone.

A recent draft of the guidelines by Studio Daniel Libeskind, the master planners of the site, dictated the shape and size of every office tower so precisely that other architects would have had little leeway to pursue significantly different designs of their own.

While those proposed controls have already been relaxed, with more changes to come, the draft offers unusually detailed glimpses of features that are often overlooked — including museum buildings that would overhang the footprints of the twin towers.

Mr. Libeskind has proposed to "buffer the memorial space from the everyday activities of the city" by extending one museum, like a bridge, over the site of the north tower and cantilevering another museum above the site of the south tower. This is not a new idea. But seeing it rendered in a diagram is likely to surprise anyone who thought the footprints would be unimpeded, as many families of Sept. 11 victims have demanded.

As it happens, these overhanging museums and a proposed waterfall may disappear entirely under an independent design for the memorial. Eight prospective memorial plans are to be unveiled in two weeks.

What is not likely to go away is a large ramp along Liberty Street leading to the service roads under the trade center. It would be separated from the memorial by a 60-foot-wide green space. Screening the memorial from the impact of over 100 trucks an hour entering the ramp "will be a considerable challenge when designing the space," the draft guidelines noted.

The guidelines show that the Wedge of Light on Fulton Street, rather than being a somber space, is to have "some of the highest value commercial outlets" at the site, with shops along 180 feet of the PATH terminal and 213 feet of an office tower across the street. (A blockfront between crosstown streets in Manhattan is 200 feet long.)

It is unclear how many features in this draft will be in the final version, which is expected next month. Those with knowledge of the guidelines declined to discuss them yesterday because they said the draft was not meant to have been circulated outside the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, for whom Mr. Libeskind is working.

Photocopies of a key chapter and several other sections were made available to The New York Times. Most pages are dated Oct. 23, some as late as Oct. 27. But it is understood that Mr. Libeskind has made revisions to answer concerns of the Port Authority and the development corporation.

Kevin M. Rampe, the corporation president, said yesterday, "The drafting of guidelines is an iterative process in which we're constantly trying to balance the need to remain true to the vision, as set forth in the selected master plan, while providing the flexibility to have excellence in architecture throughout the site."

Larry A. Silverstein, the commercial leaseholder, has named four architects for the office buildings: Fumihiko Maki, Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster and David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who is working on the Freedom Tower.

To judge from the Oct. 23 guidelines, they would not have much room to maneuver. The draft specified the exact height of each tower, from 871 feet on the Deutsche Bank site at 130 Liberty Street to 1,776 feet at the Freedom Tower. It laid out the exact distance from one tower to the next. It even stipulated the angle of each one of the faceted rooftops.

"For consistency," the draft said, "the towers are composed of rectangular or trapezoidal solids, arranged in an additive composition. Cylinders, cones, domes, pyramids or the like are not permitted as primary forms within the towers."

The guidelines restricted materials in the upper reaches of the tower shafts to glass and metal ("natural anodized aluminum, stainless steel, natural titanium, or other metals with a permanent coating, either white or gray in color" would be acceptable) but allowed stone or terra cotta down below. The guidelines also called for a uniform floor height of 13 feet, 6 inches among all the towers.

The guidelines are based on a master plan that Mr. Libeskind has been developing since February. On Sept. 17, he and state officials presented what they called the refined version of that plan.

Yesterday, he said the precision and detail in the guidelines was an attempt "to define our scheme in words, exactly as we presented it," and was undertaken at the request of the development corporation.

Asked if the guidelines had since been modified, he answered: "Of course. It's an organic process."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/11/08/nyregion/rebu.1843.jpg
The draft guidelines restrict materials in the upper reaches of the tower shafts to glass and metal, but allow stone or terra cotta down below.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Kris

November 8th, 2003, 06:31 AM

November 8, 2003

AN APPRAISAL

Design Guidelines for Ground Zero Point More to Space City U.S.A.

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

How did we end up in Houston? That is the burning question raised by a new set of design guidelines for the office towers at ground zero. True, we've got a hole the size of Texas sitting down there in Lower Manhattan. But how did ground zero come to inherit a vision of glitzy, structurally inept towers that would look more at home in an office park for energy companies in Space City U.S.A.?

Students of architecture and urbanism will be pondering such questions for years. Many of the answers lie beyond an architecture critic's grasp. They will be found within the realms of politics and economics. But no building can be properly analyzed without taking the social and ideological structures of power into account. The guidelines, which were prepared by Studio Daniel Libeskind, reveal the extent to which such structures have dishonored the ground zero design process, which was supposed to be open and democratic.

Thus far the guidelines, which are dated Oct. 23 and 27, exist only in draft form. But they have already been circulated among the group of architects retained by the developer Larry A. Silverstein to design office towers for ground zero.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, of course, says that these guidelines are already outdated, that the process is still very fluid.

Even so, they do provide a glimpse into Mr. Libeskind's inflated ambitions for the World Trade Center site. Contradicting his earlier assurances that different architects would design the towers, the drawings establish that Mr. Libeskind's intention all along has been to become their sole architect. What he calls design guidelines are just short of schematic designs for actual buildings. Mr. Silverstein's architects, not to mention the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, would be fools to accept them.

So would we. In fact, the time has come to examine in some detail the ground zero design process as it has unfolded in the last two years.

The process began as a political story and has again become one. What's needed now is a cultural framework for interpreting it. Until such a scaffold is in place, it will be impossible to make artistic sense of this or that scrap of design as it comes floating along.

More balloons are due shortly. On Nov. 17 the development corporation will present designs by finalists in the competition for a memorial to the victims of 9/11. Next month Mr. Silverstein is expected to present a preliminary design by David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Mr. Libeskind for Freedom Tower, the first office tower on the construction schedule.

Mr. Libeskind's design guidelines build on material presented in September as the Refined Master Site Plan. The title was odd: the public had yet to see a master plan. What they saw was a patched-together collage of an obsolete site plan, new plans for below-grade uses (chiefly transportation) and architectural renderings submitted by Mr. Libeskind in February.

Unless you've been living on Mars, you've already seen those illustrations and the familiar features depicted in them: the wedge of light, the exposed slurry wall, the spiral of skyscrapers culminating in the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower, and so on. Mr. Libeskind's plan partly transforms those images into architectural designs. Though less impressionistic than the earlier images, the drawings present a set of highly articulated building envelopes. These are shaped entirely by formal concerns and do not reflect a serious analysis of structure, circulation and interior organization. Those, presumedly, would be left to the individual architects on Mr. Silverstein's team.

Not a lot else would be. If these guidelines — or ones anywhere near as rigid — are adopted, Mr. Childs, Jean Nouvel, Fumihiko Maki and Norman Foster, architects whose experience, talent and professional experience vastly exceed Mr. Libeskind's, would be reduced to the level of executive architects, producing working drawings for designs they had virtually no hand in shaping.

Forget Freedom Tower. It should be renamed Straitjacket Tower. The guidelines for it are so rigid as to virtually exclude Mr. Childs from shaping the building he was hired to design. As a formal composition, the design is feeble. Conceptually, it is kitsch, with its broadcasting spire intended to echo the Statue of Liberty's upraised arm more nearly resembling a skyward salute. The design is not worth the increased expense that its complex and illogical structure would incur.

When first appraising this proposal last December, I noted its resemblance to unbuilt designs for the stadtkrone, or city crown, developed by German Expressionist architects in the early 20th century. Those with a sense of history have found this resemblance highly disturbing.

For historians of the Expressionist period, the stadtkrone has long been a controversial concept. The architecture critic Wolfgang Pehnt, among others, has seen it as a forerunner of National Socialist ideology. As developed by Expressionists like Bruno Taut, the city crown's imposing scale, its subordination of individuals to the mass, its homogenous formal vocabulary and its aura of religious spectacle offered a glimpse of a totalizing aesthetic that came to fruition in the cathedral of light, Albert Speer's design for the 1936 Nuremberg rallies.

Similar forms, of course, can convey different meanings. Expressionism has inspired many architects of Mr. Libeskind's generation to design projects that are antifascistic. But the Libeskind design flirts perilously with the ideology of its source.

It is, for one thing, a creation of the state, and its rhetorical themes conform obediently to prevailing political views. The "assault on freedom" — Mr. Libeskind's term for his plan's underlying theme — is a propagandistic notion, not a historical fact.

Any design guidelines that insist on restrictiveness and homogeneity should be rejected. There is not just one way to respond to 9/11. The exclusion of other architectural visions is an assault on the idea of the city as a place where every voice counts.

Design guidelines in general are problematic for ground zero. Commonly used in suburban residential neighborhoods, they are now most often associated with the followers of the New Urbanism, developers of suburban communities known for their "traditional" period pastiche styles. Plans originally prepared for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation by the New York firms Peterson/Littenberg and Beyer Blinder Belle adhered to this retro design philosophy. That is one reason for which these plans were rejected by the public at town hall meetings held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in July of last year.

The development corporation's "innovative design study," organized after that meeting, was intended to bring contemporary architecture into consideration. The selection of Daniel Libeskind was the end result of that process.

Yet as David W. Dunlap noted in The New York Times in March, Mr. Libeskind's proposal was strikingly similar to the earlier plans. It differed chiefly in the angular and fragmented forms of the buildings depicted in Mr. Libeskind's renderings. The problem is that those illustrations were not intended as designs for buildings, a task that in any case fell outside the scope of the planning tasks that the architect was hired to perform. Rather, they were stand-ins for the buildings that would be designed by the "other architects" that Mr. Libeskind himself had specified. That inclusiveness was possibly the best feature that his proposal had to recommend it.

I don't doubt that Mr. Libeskind and his supporters believe that artistic principles are at stake in the formulation of his guidelines. Even, or perhaps especially, considering the doubt that has already been raised about the wedge of light, the slurry wall and other features, I wouldn't expect them to think any other way.

But there are other ways to think, build and remember. Isn't this the point of freedom? The point of cities? The point of art? We need not recast our urban centers according to suburban styles of taste, or in the image of cities where rigid conformity is the rule.

"Art," Marshall McLuhan wrote, "is anything you can get away with." In that sense, at least, the guidelines are of the highest artistic order.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

NYguy

November 8th, 2003, 09:11 AM

Contradicting his earlier assurances that different architects would design the towers, the drawings establish that Mr. Libeskind's intention all along has been to become their sole architect. What he calls design guidelines are just short of schematic designs for actual buildings. Mr. Silverstein's architects, not to mention the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, would be fools to accept them.

So would we...............

If these guidelines — or ones anywhere near as rigid — are adopted, Mr. Childs, Jean Nouvel, Fumihiko Maki and Norman Foster, architects whose experience, talent and professional experience vastly exceed Mr. Libeskind's, would be reduced to the level of executive architects, producing working drawings for designs they had virtually no hand in shaping.

Forget Freedom Tower. It should be renamed Straitjacket Tower. The guidelines for it are so rigid as to virtually exclude Mr. Childs from shaping the building he was hired to design. As a formal composition, the design is feeble. Conceptually, it is kitsch, with its broadcasting spire intended to echo the Statue of Liberty's upraised arm more nearly resembling a skyward salute. The design is not worth the increased expense that its complex and illogical structure would incur.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Finally, someone agrees with what I have been saying..

JMGarcia

November 8th, 2003, 10:46 AM

Clarknt67

November 12th, 2003, 12:01 PM

Sorry if this is off-topic a bit, but I wanted to share something and see if anyone else is feeling this way also..

I've been following the WTC developments in the news intensely for 2 years. I'm now finding I just want to tune it out.

Whatever you thought of the Twins, they became an iconic represention of NYC and America. They were a momental achievement and a source of pride for our country. They distinguished the NYC skyline, like the Eiffel tower, the Hancock building or even the Great Wall of China.

I hoped that this would a driving force for the redevelopment. That the skyline would again become majestic. That from the ashes we assert ourselves as visionaries with world class architecture. That, while, yes, we're afraid to be targets, we're defiantly America, bold, brash and brave.

But the watering down of the original design, height restrictions and in-fighting promise to drag the redevelopment down into mediocrity. I've nearly abandoned hope that what will rise will be a source of pride for me or any other New Yorkers.

Are we Americans even capable of good architecture anymore? Or have we looked at cost/benefit analysis and determined we can't afford to build anything that is artful or inspirational?

Does anyone else have this feeling?

NYatKNIGHT

November 12th, 2003, 12:55 PM

I have to think these architects and even politicians want to do their best work for this important and conspicuous site. The in-fighting could be a good thing if, in the end, they are fighting over how to make the best, most bold architectural statement. That may be wishful thinking (especially with Silverstien involved), but we can't abandon hope before we actually see the plans for the buildings, the PATH station, and the memorial. Same goes for the height restrictions and "watering down the original design". If the plans are terrible then I agree with you, but let's not give up hope until we see the plans. Don't forget, they plan on building the world's tallest building - that says something.

ZippyTheChimp

November 12th, 2003, 01:17 PM

The twin towers were not icons during construction, but were generally regarded with indifference. They became symbolic with the city over time, in my opinion, not because of architectural merit, but because they were big, and there were two of them.

They never enhanced the lower Manhattan skyline, but made statements all their own. Such a statement works for the ESB, given it's location, but not in the density of lower Manhattan.

I'm hopeful that the current plans will better integrate the surrounding buildings, but that remains to be seen.

Clarknt67

November 12th, 2003, 01:24 PM

This talk of building the world's tallest building is just a technicality isn't it? I mean, it's the the spire that makes the height is my understanding. The highest occupable floor isn't at such a remarkable height is it? like 80 stories.

Or am I mistaken?

(Are we just daring Chicago to put a big antenna on the Sear Building so THEY can lay claim to the world's tallest building?)

Oh and you're right, I'm giving up hope before we've seen the plan. I'm just imagining the committee approach is going to have the same artful result it does for Jerry Burkheimer films and NBC sitcoms. <<note sarcasm

dbhstockton

November 12th, 2003, 01:30 PM

Are we Americans even capable of good architecture anymore?

Clarknt67, I'd phrase that "Are we Americans even capable of good skyscraper architecture in America anymore?

Clarknt67

November 12th, 2003, 01:33 PM

Regarding the Twins icon status, I'm aware it took years for New yorkers to warm to them and that they were aside from their size, architectually unimaginative.

I do think their dullness was genius however, imagine how gauche and vulgar they would have seemed had they been ordimented or decorated, combined with their size? They were simultaneously over-statements and under-statements.

I disagree with the (admittedly popular opinion) that the towers didn't integrate. I always saw them as two big exclaimation points at the end of a frenetic sentence. If they were a single tower, it wouldn't have worked however.

I've lived in Brooklyn Heights for 11 years, and for 8 of them, I'd walk to the promenade and stare at wonder at those bright towers. I always thought it was amazing that mankind had created what approximated a mountain range. It just doesn't look the same now.

NYatKNIGHT

November 12th, 2003, 02:01 PM

"It just doesn't look the same now".
You're right, it needs a good peak. But I agree with Zippy, I hope it integrates with the rest of the skyline better.

This talk of building the world's tallest building is just a technicality isn't it? I mean, it's the the spire that makes the height is my understanding. The highest occupable floor isn't at such a remarkable height is it? like 80 stories.
Even if it isn't technically the world's tallest building, anything that stands above 2000 feet is substantial. Again, we have to wait and see. It would be nice to see the occupied floors reach as high as the twins and the unoccupied floors be more than a just thin spire, and that the overall affect I hope is thrilling. For now, your guess is as good as mine.

Clarknt67

November 12th, 2003, 02:34 PM

Thanks for the polite discourse. This board is one of the more civilized forums on the net. Sometimes I'm amazed at the rude, obnoxious, snarkiness that proliferates on USENET, just because someone dares to disagree with someone else. I see compably little of that here.

NoyokA

November 12th, 2003, 02:55 PM

Thanks.

What sets us apart is the number of smart people.

BrooklynRider

November 12th, 2003, 03:00 PM

I agree with the poster who said he is losing interest. I think this is a case where too many cooks....

I've tried to concentrate on things coming out of the ground. It is more to my liking discussing things that are real than ideas and theories that we can never prove or bring to fruition.

NYguy

November 12th, 2003, 03:09 PM

This talk of building the world's tallest building is just a technicality isn't it? I mean, it's the the spire that makes the height is my understanding. The highest occupable floor isn't at such a remarkable height is it? like 80 stories.

Or am I mistaken?

(Are we just daring Chicago to put a big antenna on the Sear Building so THEY can lay claim to the world's tallest building?)

The highest occupied floor isn't what makes it the tallest building. Libeskinds spire would be taller than Chicago's Sears Tower without the planned antenna, so putting a taller antenna on the Sears Tower wouldn't change things.

Pataki has set a Dec. 15th deadline for the Freedom Tower design by David Childs, so by then we will know what the tower looks like, how many floors, etc.

NyC MaNiAc

November 12th, 2003, 03:19 PM

I'm starting to care less about what the Towers look like, but more about the Future of Lower Manhattan.

What's the point of it anymore?

Going to eat-Midtown's Better.

Clubs-Midtown's Better.

Theater-You can catch A Broadway Performance...in Midtown.

Business-Midtown's Better, suprisingly, because Downtown used to have the crown of The Financial District of the World...Midtown Owns it Now.

Buildings-Well, at least Midtown's Building 'Em :roll:

Hotels-Who dosn't stay in Midtown?

Museums-More in Midtown/Upper East and West Sides

Nightlife-I walked around Downtown Saturday Night, A Beautfiul, Chilly Evening, and I was virtually alone :cry: After taking the subway to Times Square...Well, There were people there alright.

The Fact is, The whole Downtown area needs to be reinvented. Make something special about it, and bring people down there. I'm starting to fear that Downtown will soon be abandoned considering how Midtown is advancing in strides, and Downtown is still living in the 30's.

What needs to be done, to Make New York City's Midtown and Downtown areas equally enjoyable, and equally visited to?

ZippyTheChimp

November 12th, 2003, 03:37 PM

What needs to be done, to Make New York City's Midtown and Downtown areas equally enjoyable, and equally visited to?
Haven't you been paying attention?

With the debate strictly focused on the buildings, it's easy to lose sight of it, but that has been the broad purpose of the redevelopment from the beginning - to take lower Manhattan in a new direction, make its economy less dependent on financial services, and a retail and cultural destination.

NoyokA

November 12th, 2003, 04:01 PM

I'm starting to care less about what the Towers look like, but more about the Future of Lower Manhattan.

What's the point of it anymore?

Going to eat-Midtown's Better.

Clubs-Midtown's Better.

Theater-You can catch A Broadway Performance...in Midtown.

Business-Midtown's Better, suprisingly, because Downtown used to have the crown of The Financial District of the World...Midtown Owns it Now.

Buildings-Well, at least Midtown's Building 'Em

Hotels-Who dosn't stay in Midtown?

Museums-More in Midtown/Upper East and West Sides

Nightlife-I walked around Downtown Saturday Night, A Beautfiul, Chilly Evening, and I was virtually alone After taking the subway to Times Square...Well, There were people there alright.

The Fact is, The whole Downtown area needs to be reinvented. Make something special about it, and bring people down there. I'm starting to fear that Downtown will soon be abandoned considering how Midtown is advancing in strides, and Downtown is still living in the 30's.

What needs to be done, to Make New York City's Midtown and Downtown areas equally enjoyable, and equally visited to?

I would say all parts of the city have these venues. Nothing you cant find in a Time Out New York, you just need to know where the hot spots are.

Just to make an example I would say nothing in midtown is comparable to a Pastrami Sandwhich at Katz's. Just to finish my food example I would say I've had my best Pizza, icecream, sour-pickles, knishes, Chinese, Dim-Sum, all downtown.

matt3303

November 12th, 2003, 06:02 PM

I do get the jist of what NYCmaniac is saying, though. When tourists come to NY, do they go downtown or midtown? The only draw to Lower Manhattan is Ground Zero...

NoyokA

November 12th, 2003, 07:00 PM

And thus its charm.

Where the tourist aint.

NyC MaNiAc

November 12th, 2003, 07:28 PM

Downtown needs the tourists. It would help out us New Yorkers

The reason there are no tourists there are because, frankly, there is so much more to do in Midtown.

Are they really trying to correct this?

Jasonik

November 12th, 2003, 08:32 PM

Here goes:

Midtown is for tourists; downtown is for everyone else.

Honestly, whenever I am in NYC I rarely make it up to the teens.

NyC MaNiAc

November 12th, 2003, 08:37 PM

Right. And In my opinion, this needs to change for the Good of Downtown.

TonyO

November 12th, 2003, 09:21 PM

This will change, but not solely with cultural additions. Its all about the hub. If they link the Island (and thus JFK) and Metro North with the site then downtown's revitalization is written, IMHO.

JMC

November 12th, 2003, 09:29 PM

Did you know that the mall at the WTC was the *number one* most profitable mall in America? Boarders #1 store, Victoria's Secret #1 store...etc.

I worked at 7 WTC and 2 WFC. Nothing will ever compare. Moran's for drinks!! Just a phenomonal place to work and do business...

yanni111

November 12th, 2003, 09:30 PM

Libeskind is a fool, he will not be the one designing all the towers and his "guidelines" are bs and certainly wont be followed. All i want from his guidelines is the height figures given - 871 feet for the shortest tower!!!! From there each individual tower can be designed by the other architects Silverstein hired. I cant wait to see Child's design, anything that isnt Libeskinds ultra thin spire that almost disappears when seen from north or south has to be better.

kliq6

November 12th, 2003, 09:43 PM

what they need to do is get firms back downtown, the more employees there the more small business and stores can become more profitable. Dowtown needs more office buildings not conversions to apartments.

Clarknt67

November 12th, 2003, 10:30 PM

I can't agree that downtown isn't happening. The Lower East Side is brimming with bars, performance venues and restaurant. Tribeca too, has many great spots.

Any issue of Time Out can guide you to a great evening downtown.

For example: I attended a preview film screening at Tribeca Grande, ate at Nam Phuong vietnamese, had drinks at Sugar on Church, brunch at Odeon, attended the Tribeca Film Festival, attending several parties in the LES.

TLOZ Link5

November 12th, 2003, 10:35 PM

I think that Maniac is referring specifically to the Financial District.

NYguy

November 13th, 2003, 08:33 AM

billyblancoNYC

November 13th, 2003, 10:01 AM

The Fin. Dist is being reinvented... 13 new, small, parks; tons of new resiential to bring 24/7 (sorry to use that term) life to the area. This will bring more clubs, bars, and restaurants. There are already a lot of those, plus museums, etc. Take a look at how great Stone St. is, how South St. Seaport is being developed, how the WTC will have a massive transit hub (key) and cultural center. There's even people looking to put the National Sports Museum in the Fin. District. Add to it the West St. tunnel, the Hudson River Park, and the redevlopment plans for the East River and Fulton st. (for cafes, jzz, etc), and you have a great, comprehensive plan for workers, residents and tourists alike. This area will be greater than it already is... it's a matter of time.

Clarknt67

November 13th, 2003, 10:27 AM

I think that Maniac is referring specifically to the Financial District.

I don't think that such a problem then. The FD is walking distance from Tribeca, Battery Park City and other residential neighborhoods. Isn't that why we have various zoning ordinances?

To spread office and residential thinly and evenly throughout the whole city doesn't make a lot of sense for anyone.

Have we forgotten so quickly that--while yes slow to start--the 10 million square feet of concentrated office space in the twins was a very powerful economic engine for the City from the late 80's until 9/11. A loss of which can still be felt (at least by this under and occaisionally un-employed New Yorker).

NYatKNIGHT

November 13th, 2003, 10:30 AM

The Skyscraper Museum too. :D

I wish there were a few more restaurants and live music scenes down there.

Kris

November 13th, 2003, 11:47 PM

November 14, 2003

NYC

Twilight Zone for ZIP Code at Ground Zero

By CLYDE HABERMAN

FROM the beginning, the collapse of the World Trade Center has been a tale told in numbers as well as words.

We're still counting exactly how many people died. And parceling the compensation for victims' families. And measuring the damage to the city's economy. And deciding how tall new buildings at the site should be. Figures like 2,752, the latest tally of the dead, and 1,776 feet, the proposed height of the so-called Freedom Tower, are as much a part of the post-9/11 vocabulary as "footprints" and "ground zero."

One number gets little attention, but it should not be ignored in contemplating Lower Manhattan's future. It is 10048.

That was the trade center's ZIP code. When the towers came down, 10048 fell into a state of suspended animation — seemingly dead, but not really.

An inevitable question is what does the United States Postal Service intend to do with this ZIP code. Preserve it for the new buildings that will eventually rise? Or retire it, much as a ball club does with a great player's number?

Nothing has been formally decided, the Postal Service says. Still, 10048 does not seem about to go the way of Babe Ruth's 3 or Lou Gehrig's 4 at Yankee Stadium.

"It is being held as an active number," with no plans to discontinue it, said Anthony Musso, a Postal Service spokesman in New York. When development begins, Mr. Musso said, "in all likelihood that number is going to be assigned to whatever buildings are on that site."

Obviously, the fate of a postal number is not the most pressing concern for city planners. But ZIP codes mean something. Communities, feeling that their very identities are at stake, sometimes fight over them. Where would the TV show about Beverly Hills kids have been without that 90210 in the title?

Certainly, 10048 meant something. It meant money. Many people who worked there earned lots of it. This was, after all, the World Trade Center, dedicated to commerce and to making a buck — just as New York itself has been since its earliest days, when Dutch traders came ashore and struck, or so the story goes, their $24 deal.

Given this reality, those wanting to turn the entire 16-acre trade center site into a memorial are arguably untrue to the city's guiding spirit. Now, the advocates of rebuilding seem dominant. But it took them a while. In the first months after the terrorist attack, few people cared to think of the trade center as the money machine that it was.

"It was like you were speaking ill of the dead," said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist and demographer at Queens College. But let's get real. The lawyers and financial types who filled the twin towers "were not working there for self-actualization," Professor Beveridge said. "They were there to make as much money as they could."

Analyzing census data from 2000, the trade center's last full year, Professor Beveridge found that 31,149 people worked in 10048, and were paid an average of $101,006, far more than the citywide average of $59,448. No other ZIP code in the city registered a higher income per worker.

(Intriguingly, the 2000 census recorded 55 people, including 11 small children, as living in the trade center complex. "The odds are we're dealing here with a homeless situation," said Joseph J. Salvo, director of the population division of the Department of City Planning.)

MAIL continues to arrive addressed to 10048, about 3,600 pieces a day, Mr. Musso said. That is a fraction of the volume before 9/11, but it is enough to make one wonder if some people out there never heard the news.

These letters and packages now go to the main post office on Eighth Avenue, opposite Pennsylvania Station. There, they either are picked up by businesses that have relocated or are marked "return to sender."

Before the terror attack, 10048 mail was sorted at 90 Church Street, but that building, another victim of Sept. 11, remains closed. Artifacts from the Church Street post office — items like letter carriers' bags and sorting cases with pigeonholes for Windows on the World and Cantor Fitzgerald — were sent to the National Postal Museum in Washington, part of the Smithsonian Institution.

The Church Street station may be reopened by mid-2004, Mr. Musso said. Presumably, at some point, 10048 will also return fully to life.

So it should, Professor Beveridge said. It would be a symbol of the site's rebirth. "They should rebuild it and get it going again, as opposed to pretending that we never can," he said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

NyC MaNiAc

November 14th, 2003, 12:09 AM

Yes, I am talking about the Financial District.

Like, the Wall Street Area for those of you who don't understand what I mean.

NYatKNIGHT said it right. We need more restaurants and live music scenes.

I agree. Among other things.

On Billy's Comment, I will say this.

I think the East River Plan will make or Break Lower Manhattan. We have to set it in motion, and build, build, build.

Name a 700(or above) foot scraper that is being proposed, approved, or under construction for Downtown that is not a part of the WTC Complex.

You can name how many? 3? I can't even.

Do the same thing for Midtown. That's what I'm trying to get across.

And while the construction of skyscrapers does not mean the area will be used more, it's quite depressing seeing nothing go up, only down, in Lower Manhattan.

Build Skyscrapers, Build Businesses, Build Trust. That's what we need Downtown.

Kris

November 14th, 2003, 12:24 AM

November 14, 2003

Libeskind Isn't Finished

To the Editor:

"Design Guidelines for Ground Zero Point More to Space City U.S.A.," by Herbert Muschamp (An Appraisal, Nov. 8):

The illustrated plans of Daniel Libeskind clearly represent rough versions of a work in progress, and plans still on the boards often evolve before final presentations. Unfortunately, Mr. Muschamp has subjected these ideas to a critical scrutiny normally reserved for finished projects and outrageously relates them conceptually to neo-Fascism.

Besides, a planning document with any hope of success in New York's turbulent waters should be watertight at its launching. Otherwise, battered by political and developmental pressures, it might sink without a ripple, negating the significant public — and worldwide — investment already made in choosing an architect.

ROBERT IVY
Vice President and Editor in Chief
Architectural Record Magazine
New York, Nov. 11, 2003

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

TonyO

November 14th, 2003, 10:52 AM

Otherwise, battered by political and developmental pressures, it might sink without a ripple, negating the significant public — and worldwide — investment already made in choosing an architect.

The only one invested in Libeskind and the only one who chose him was Pataki. I'm surprised to see someone who should know more about the process make such an argument.

JMGarcia

November 14th, 2003, 11:49 AM

Actually, a great deal of the architectural community (of which the writer of the letter is part) has a good deal of support for Libeskind's plan over a more usual corporate development that Silverstein wants.

TonyO

November 14th, 2003, 01:20 PM

kliq6

November 14th, 2003, 02:34 PM

im with NYC maniac on the statememnts made. Nothing is being dont to move these plans for Lower Manhattan ahead. If Blommberg real wants to save this area then Site 26 and its capbality of 2 millionsf of office space must be built along with 270 greenwich street and office constructionalong front street south of the seaport. If business return then all those other things fall into space. Take a trip dowtown i do from time to time for business, nothing is going on down there. Look at what Jersey City has done the past few years as NYC messed up. Lets get moving here

JMGarcia

November 14th, 2003, 02:58 PM

JM, I know you like Libeskind and his plan, but this letter does not make reference to the architectural community. There was no "public and worldwide" support for Libeskind. I have family in architecture and they are not particularly fond of his plan either.

All I am saying is that many in the architectural community, some of whom are quite influential, support the Libeskind plan and therefore should not be discounted. You simply cannot say he has no support within the architectural community.

NYguy

November 14th, 2003, 04:37 PM

November 14, 2003

Libeskind Isn't Finished

To the Editor:

"Design Guidelines for Ground Zero Point More to Space City U.S.A.," by Herbert Muschamp (An Appraisal, Nov. 8):

The illustrated plans of Daniel Libeskind clearly represent rough versions of a work in progress, and plans still on the boards often evolve before final presentations. Besides, a planning document with any hope of success in New York's turbulent waters should be watertight at its launching. Otherwise, battered by political and developmental pressures, it might sink without a ripple, negating the significant public — and worldwide — investment already made in choosing an architect.

ROBERT IVY
Vice President and Editor in Chief
Architectural Record Magazine

I'm sure Silverstein would agree with him on the "investment already made in choosing an architect" part. (Although the public chose neither Libeskind nor Childs)

Again, let us not be fooled. Libeskind was not hired to design skyscrapers, no matter how much anyone may think they are the site plan.

Kris

November 15th, 2003, 08:33 AM

November 15, 2003

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

A Houston on the Hudson?

By GARY HACK

Houston is the only large American city with no zoning, and no ground rules to guide development. Because architects there have complete freedom, the view of the skyline is a tour of architectural egos. As a result, they have assembled half an ark: one building of every kind. At the street level, the iconic towers sit in empty plazas, silent about their neighbors and the city around them.

Yet such a vision (or lack of one) has apparently been deemed appropriate by those who oppose the design guidelines being prepared by the Studio Daniel Libeskind team, of which I am a member, for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center. These opponents believe that any guidelines will become a straitjacket, suppressing the creativity of designers chosen for the site. The reality, in fact, is quite the opposite.

One just needs to look around New York for examples of the most urbane places, and ask whether they were the product of unfettered artistic license. Take Rockefeller Center and Battery Park City. Both had master plans that specified the form and character of buildings and open spaces. Each took decades to complete, and involved several architectural firms. The plans were updated regularly to capitalize on new development opportunities and to respond to changing styles of architecture. The integrity and coherence of their urban fabric is not accidental.

The contrast between these fine places and the empty pedestals of Houston's towers should make it obvious why design guidelines are necessary. There are two other reasons as well, the first one practical. Construction is set to begin late next year or early 1995 on the PATH terminal that will, quite literally, serve as the foundation for the buildings that rise above the street. It will incorporate the footings, columns and elevator cores for structures that will be designed by numerous architects over the next 20 years. The footprint of these structures will be fixed, making the need for building guidelines apparent.

The other reason is a product of civic culture. When thousands of citizens came together for a town hall meeting in 2002, they spoke in unison: the memorial should be the centerpiece of the site; its architecture should be memorable; the skyline should be restored; and design should not be left to chance or real estate interests. They also wanted to be assured that plans would be carried out faithfully.

Under normal circumstances the city's zoning would offer that assurance. But the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owner of the site, isn't subject to local regulations. The design guidelines will serve as a surrogate for the normal rules.

Urban design is a social act, and the trade center site has been planned through the most public of processes. There will be opportunities to challenge specifics of the guidelines, beginning with the current environmental impact assessment. The guidelines will undoubtedly be refined, based on public input. Designers of future buildings are also sure to suggest departures from the rules. The guidelines will serve as a flexible constitution, providing a basis for deciding whether their proposals are appropriate. We owe the public nothing less.

Gary Hack is dean of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Kris

November 22nd, 2003, 01:48 AM

November 22, 2003

Silverstein Will Get Most of His Cash Back in Trade Center Deal

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

The developer Larry A. Silverstein and his investors are getting back most of the cash they put up for their winning bid more than two years ago to take control of the World Trade Center in the largest real estate deal in New York history.

Even so, Mr. Silverstein will remain in control of rebuilding the 10 million square feet of office space that is planned for the trade center site in the next 10 or 15 years. In the end, according to people who have been briefed on the deal, he will have little of his own money at risk for one of the most important corners of the Manhattan landscape.

"Only in New York can a developer strike a deal with government to get his money back and still walk away with a prime piece of real estate," said Harvey Robins, who was a top city administrator in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

Under a sweeping agreement between the developer and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Mr. Silverstein and his partners, who include the investors Lloyd Goldman and Joseph Cayre, will get back $98 million, or almost 80 percent of the $125 million in equity that they invested in a 2001 deal that gave them control of the World Trade Center for the next 99 years. The Port Authority, which built and owned the trade center, valued the original deal at $3.2 billion.

Mr. Silverstein's windfall is a byproduct of an agreement by both sides to use insurance proceeds to pay off his lender in the trade center deal, the GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corporation, at a cost of $563 million. In effect, Mr. Silverstein is getting back some of the collateral for the loan used to make a down payment to the Port Authority; the Port Authority got its money upfront, when the original deal was struck .

At the same time, the two sides agreed that the Port Authority would pay $140 million to buy out Mr. Silverstein's partner, Westfield America, which controlled the retail mall at the trade center.

Port Authority executives said the agreements would streamline the rebuilding process as the agency and state and city officials moved from planning to construction. The buyouts of Westfield and GMAC would also remove two entities that have at times been obstacles to progress at the site when they objected to elements of the design or blocked the release of funds, a Port Authority official said.

"We are very close to an agreement with all the parties," said Greg Trevor, a Port Authority spokesman.

GMAC issued a statement yesterday saying it was pleased that Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority had reached an agreement to repay the loan, although final approval is subject to a similar agreement with Westfield and consent from the bondholders of the GMAC loan. The company said it expected the buyout to close in December.

Executives said an agreement with Westfield was nearly complete, although the company did not return calls requesting comment. Gerald McKelvey, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, declined to comment.

When GMAC is paid off, the lender will turn over to Mr. Silverstein an escrow account with $130 million in insurance proceeds and a $98 million reserve account, according to three people involved in the negotiations.

As part of his agreement with the Port Authority, Mr. Silverstein will use the $130 million sum for rebuilding, as well as any other business interruption insurance proceeds that are not spent on ground rent and other expenses. But he and his investors will keep the $98 million, the three people said.

Mr. Silverstein won the bidding for the trade center in 2001. As in many other modern real estate transactions, Mr. Silverstein, the developer, put up a relatively small sum himself, about $14 million of the $800 million in fees and down payments.

He raised about $110 million from the Goldman real estate family and Joseph Cayre, an investor who made a fortune in the entertainment industry before shifting to real estate. His group borrowed $563 million from GMAC. For its part of the trade center deal, Westfield put up about $127 million.

Mr. Silverstein's group then paid the Port Authority a $491 million down payment and together with Westfield agreed to pay about $120 million a year in rent. Six weeks later, terrorists steered two commercial jets into the twin towers.

Mr. Silverstein has been engaged in a court battle ever since with his insurers; he claims that the trade center's destruction was the result of two separate attacks, entitling him to a double insurance payout of nearly $7 billion. The insurers say he should get $3.5 billion. So far, the insurers have paid about $1.9 billion, most of which was controlled by GMAC.

Mr. Silverstein has continued to pay rent at the trade center and has vowed to rebuild the 10-million-square-foot complex, although some real estate executives question the wisdom of building so much speculative office space when vacancy rates are so high downtown.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

NYguy

November 23rd, 2003, 06:21 PM

Construction pics taken today, Nov. 23rd...

The Vesey Street pedestrian bridge is now open.

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566286/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566304/large.jpg

Site of the Freedom Tower

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566314/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566325/large.jpg

Looking down Vesey Street, past 7 WTC

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566328/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566333/large.jpg

The Barclay-Vesey-Verizon building

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566338/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566356/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566363/large.jpg

BMCC may rebuild on this site...

http://www.pbase.com/image/23566418/large.jpg

Kris

November 24th, 2003, 03:38 AM

November 24, 2003

Vesey Street Bridge Opens to Quiet, but Grateful, Crowd

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

With none of the fanfare that greeted the reopening of the nearby World Trade Center PATH station but with plenty of grateful travelers, the Vesey Street Bridge opened yesterday at the northwest corner of ground zero.

The span of 220 feet offers pedestrians a new route more than 20 feet above West Street, which is really more of a highway (Route 9A, in fact) than a city street. It has always been a formidable barrier between Battery Park City and the rest of downtown, but now it is crossed by four bridges from Chambers Street to Rector Street, a distance of less than a mile.

While dignitaries filled the new station, the new bridge quickly filled with walkers, joggers and tourists angling for a new elevated view of the trade center site.

The bridge crosses the intersection of Vesey and West Streets diagonally, running from 3 World Financial Center to the Verizon Building at 140 West Street. Seen from the ground, it bristles with overlapping corrugated plates, some of them in perforated stainless steel, some in translucent plastic.

Surprisingly, however, the inside of the walkway is reminiscent of a 19th-century train shed, with a gently arched roof crowned by a skylight.

Elevators and escalators to the bridge should be in place next April, said Richard J. Schmalz, the Route 9A project director for the state Transportation Department, which built the $15 million structure in four months. It was designed by Stefan Dallendorfer and Johan Bjorkman of Earth Tech.

The bridge is expected to be up for five years, as the trade center site is redeveloped.

Work on the other temporary bridge, at Rector Street, began a month after the trade center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Built by the state Transportation Department and the Battery Park City Authority, that bridge opened to pedestrians in March 2002.

"The bridge was probably the first structure in place to bring back some level of normalcy to residents of the area and the people who work down there," said William Sharples of SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli, the architects. The engineers were Buro Happold.

Though it looks like a single structure, the Rector Street Bridge is actually two independent box trusses side by side, wrapped in an angular skin of galvanized metal slats and a corrugated metal roof; a 21st-century descendant of the covered bridge.

Neighbors did not want it to become a viewing platform for curiosity seekers, so the slats were arrayed randomly, with little space between them, allowing peeks but not panoramas. As a result of that design, and the elimination of some lighting to save money, the bridge is fairly dark.

In contrast, the walkway of the TriBeCa Bridge, at Chambers Street, is filled with light through glass walls and a glass roof. Easily the most lyrical of the West Street bridges, the span of 230 feet is supported between parallel bowstring trusses. These form a great white double arch of steel that serves as a kind of gateway to Lower Manhattan. The bridge opened in 1992.

Among the architects who worked on the TriBeCa Bridge was David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who is now designing the Freedom Tower at the trade center site, in an on-again-off-again collaboration with Daniel Libeskind.

The South Bridge, at Liberty Street, was built in 1984 and was once one of a pair linked to the World Financial Center. The North Bridge was destroyed in the attack and will not be rebuilt. Both bridges were designed by Cesar Pelli & Associates, architects of the World Financial Center. Recalling an airport concourse, the South Bridge attracts crowds of people to its monumental nine-pane windows, which overlook ground zero.

The window patterns were based on those at the World Financial Center, said Mark Shoemaker, who led the design team at the Pelli office. But the choice of metal paneling was intended to complement the World Trade Center. So its silvery color is truly ghostly, reflecting buildings that are no longer there.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Zzed

November 24th, 2003, 03:50 PM

did i read that right, $15 million for a *temporary* bridge?

billyblancoNYC

November 26th, 2003, 02:45 PM

http://www2.observer.com/observer/pages/frontpage2.asp

Two Architects Whip Up Tower In Mad Frenzy
by Blair Golson

The signature tower of the rebuilt World Trade Center is taking shape, and not a moment too soon. With scant three weeks left, the two architectural teams working together on the tower—one led by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s architect David Childs, the other by Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind—have been engaged in intense, seven-day-a-week meetings aimed at reconciling each side’s competing vision for the Freedom Tower, which is to be the tallest of five skyscrapers to rise from the ashes of Ground Zero.

Although many aspects of the proposed new tower are still in flux, several features are consistent to every recent draft rendering of the tower. Surviving from Mr. Libeskind’s original proposal is the asymmetrical shape of the tower, along with its narrow spire feature, both of which are meant to simulate the torchbearing arm of the Statue of Liberty seen from the harbor. Also surviving is the slanted roof that gives a spiraling sweep to the shape of the circle of the five skyscrapers, of descending height, called for in his master plan.

In a bow to Mr. Childs’ design, the building will most likely twist as it rises, although it’s not clear at this point when the building will right itself vertically, nor to what degree.

Other major considerations, like the height of the building, the materials to be used for the exterior, and other aesthetic and engineering questions, remain to be decided. But the major stumbling blocks seem to have been overcome, and both sides now say they’re confident they’ll be able to meet the Mr. Pataki’s Dec. 15 deadline.

They were off to a late start. After agreeing in July to a scheme that made Mr. Childs the lead architect for the building and Mr. Libeskind a "collaborator" on the project, each man spent weeks developing his own version of the tower without setting foot on common ground.

It wasn’t till a month ago, when Mr. Silverstein—under orders from development authorities—gave the two a blistering knuckle-rapping for refusing to work together, that the real work began.

"What essentially happened is that Childs and Libeskind abandoned their rigid adherence to their designs to try to come up with another building that incorporates the best of both," said Mr. Libeskind’s lawyer, Ed Hayes, who has seen early drafts of the new tower.

To be sure, it’s still an awkward union of dueling egos—what Mr. Libeskind referred to as a "forced marriage." But this marriage is almost full-term on what is hoped will be the world’s tallest building, with a due date of Dec. 15.

"At Larry Silverstein’s insistence and through a collaboration with Studio Daniel Libeskind, we are rapidly resolving these issues and will finalize a conceptual design by December 15th, thereby keeping to the Governor’s timetable," Mr. Childs told The Observer in an e-mail.

Rocky Marriage

Things weren’t looking so rosy a month ago. On Oct. 28, a furious Mr. Silverstein had a meeting with Mr. Childs, Mr. Libeskind and his wife, Nina Libeskind, in which the developer pounded the table and said: "There’s no more time for personal or design differences. We need to come together on a consensus design in a couple of weeks."

Headlines about the two sides’ competing visions for the Freedom Tower had been raging in the papers for the previous week. Mr. Silverstein was playing the role of mediator and motivator-in-chief because he had gained control of the Trade Center site in the summer of 2001, only a few weeks before terrorists destroyed the twin towers on Sept. 11. Mr. Libeskind entered the picture in February when Governor Pataki overrode the previously influential site-planning committee of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to annoint the Polish-born architect to design the site’s master plan.

Officially, Mr. Childs came on the scene on July 16, when Mr. Silverstein selected him to design the Freedom Tower. But from the very day of the Sept. 11 attack, the architects of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill—who were forced to flee their own downtown offices—had been working out designs, in their heads or on paper, for their client Mr. Silverstein. Moreover, the firm had already been Mr. Silverstein’s choice to upgrade the ground-level facilities at the complex, sprucing it up for potential renters. The relationship between the firm and the developer strengthened considerably in those days immediately following the attack.

From the beginning, the stage was set for strife. Both architects entered with enormous reputations and outsized egos, but it wasn’t clear who would be the last word on design matters for the Freedom Tower. According to an agreement that both men worked out in July, Mr. Childs was to be lead architect on the Freedom Tower; Mr. Libeskind was to collaborate, making sure that the building fit into the master plan. Mr. Libeskind, perhaps best known for his design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, is an acclaimed designer of visionary structures that challenge the status quo, but he has little experience with erecting massive commercial projects. Mr. Childs, who recently completed the massive, twin-towered Time Warner Center, is a world-renowned leader of commercial projects, but critics complain that he makes too many aesthetic sacrifices to his clients.

The War Room

For the last month, the 23rd floor of S.O.M.’s headquarters at 14 Wall Street has been home to nearly 50 architects, engineers, designers and consultants who have been working on various aspects of the Freedom Tower. Four of the 50 are employees of Studio Daniel Libeskind (not including Daniel and Nina themselves). S.O.M. employs the rest, approximately 10 of whom are full-time, with the remainder being part-time specialty consultants.

The office floor is a huge white room with no divider, and almost every wall can be used as a pin-up board. Conferences take place in two smaller rooms off to the side. Days start at 8 in the morning and sometimes go well into the next morning.

"The atmosphere is intense. It’s professional work; it’s pros focusing on the tasks at hand on tight deadline constraints," said a member of the S.O.M team. "The theater you see in newspapers is absent in this room …. There are occasional strong differences of opinion, but this is a highly professional group."

A source within the Libeskind camp, however, said that as recently as the end of last week, tensions between the two sides were somewhat more apparent: Mr. Childs was characterized as stubborn in his desire to flout the design principles that form the basis of the Libeskind design.

It is a claim that sources in the Childs camp vigorously dispute, though off the record, there are no shortage of countercharges. Daniel and Nina Libeskind are currently traveling in Hong Kong and were unavailable for comment.

Regardless, the source in the Libeskind camp said that any such tensions evaporated over the course of several marathon meetings this weekend.

If the road to this consensus has been twisted and laden with pitfalls, it is in no small part due to the aggressive timetable that Mr. Pataki laid out for the two competing sides. The Governor badly wants construction to start before the Republican National Convention comes to town in August—and if that means banging heads together, so be it.

"The Governor has done everything but take family members as hostages to make sure that this project moves along," said Mr. Hayes, a longtime friend and adviser of Mr. Pataki’s. "Pataki is staking his whole place in history on this project. This is as large a historical project as anything in our history. The only one that compares is the rebuilding of Washington after the British burned it in 1812, at least in this country. Even the earthquake in San Francisco or the Chicago fire didn’t have the same public significance as this. In both those cases, they were basically just replacing what was there. This is something where they’re going to put in a whole new public infrastructure in a very important part of New York City in a very visible way."

You may reach Blair Golson via email at: bgolson@observer.com.

NoyokA

November 26th, 2003, 03:06 PM

"What essentially happened is that Childs and Libeskind abandoned their rigid adherence to their designs to try to come up with another building that incorporates the best of both," said Mr. Libeskind’s lawyer, Ed Hayes, who has seen early drafts of the new tower.

JMGarcia

November 26th, 2003, 04:05 PM

Shall I be the first to make a crack about the "twisted freedom" tower? :wink:

JMC

November 26th, 2003, 04:29 PM

I can imagine Libeskind getting all hot under the collar, when Childs tried to explain to him that the building would be structurally unsound, the way Dan and his wife "envisioned."

Leibiskeind is all flash and theatrics. Put his design in a gallery in SoHo and serve some Franzia white wine to the art-school illuminati.

I wonder what the United Steel Workers think of Leibeskind...

JMGarcia

November 26th, 2003, 05:10 PM

Libeskind has a very reputable engineering firm (Arup Ltd.) working on this design so I'm sure its pretty well feasible. My take on it is that it will be cheaper to make Childs design rather than Libeskind's, hence the posturing.

NYguy

November 26th, 2003, 06:02 PM

Although many aspects of the proposed new tower are still in flux, several features are consistent to every recent draft rendering of the tower.

Surviving from Mr. Libeskind’s original proposal is the asymmetrical shape of the tower, along with its narrow spire feature, both of which are meant to simulate the torchbearing arm of the Statue of Liberty seen from the harbor. Also surviving is the slanted roof that gives a spiraling sweep to the shape of the circle of the five skyscrapers, of descending height, called for in his master plan.

In a bow to Mr. Childs’ design, the building will most likely twist as it rises, although it’s not clear at this point when the building will right itself vertically, nor to what degree.

Oh well. There goes any hope of getting something more dominant on the site. New York will get is new statue of liberty after all. And that's what we really needed.

LuPeRcALiO

November 27th, 2003, 12:26 AM

wonder if she feels the same way. . .
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/attack/attackgifs7/webday.gif

NYguy

November 27th, 2003, 01:28 PM

I think its a bad idea. Leave Lady Liberty alone. She doesn't need a copy.

emmeka

November 27th, 2003, 01:44 PM

Yeah, leave her alone, its not easy standing in that position all the time in the sun and rain.

NYguy

December 3rd, 2003, 08:20 AM

From an article in today's NY Post...

(Kevin) Rampe said he has asked New York New Visions to review the design guidelines written by Ground Zero planner Daniel Libeskind that will determine the size, shape and look of the office buildings that surround the memorial.

Libeskind's guidelines were criticized as being too restrictive and not allowing room for other architects to create buildings for the site.

Rampe said he also wants to seek the opinion of Norman Foster and the other architects tapped by World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein.

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news12030304.jpg

Kris

December 12th, 2003, 11:45 AM

December 12, 2003

PUBLIC LIVES

A Pragmatic Eye on the Downtown Site Plan

By ROBIN FINN

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/12/nyregion/12PROF.jpg
``I see it as the last opportunity to have influence over what gets built, so I'm looking at it as a positive.''
BRUCE S. FOWLE

FAME is what Daniel Libeskind, the big winner in the urban reality sweepstakes to anoint a lead architect for the resurrection of the World Trade Center, is basking in or suffering through, depending on his appetite for cutting a high-profile swath by creating world-class architecture from a disaster. Resignation is almost what Bruce S. Fowle, a prominent yet low-key peer — no kooky glasses, no silly scarf, no gel on the cranium or speckled beard — is feeling as the towers grow taller and clunkier and the planning ordeal crawls on. But not quite.

Though his team's ground zero concept was short-listed after Round 1, it failed to make the cut during the second round of competition. Mr. Fowle's group is focused on the marketability of the office buildings and their integration into the neighborhood. Forget about Freedom Tower fever. "I agree there should be something in the skyline which symbolizes the event, but I don't think it has to be the tallest building in the world," he says, a shade irritably.

And forget about transparent gardens in the sky. When you're married to the president of the New York City Audubon Society, you don't dare get whimsical and propose a tower that messes with the minds, or trajectory, of migrating birds. Discouraged by the byzantine selection process, the faintly freckled Mr. Fowle, 66, whose Chelsea-based firm, Fox & Fowle, designed two new denizens of Times Square, the Condé Nast and Reuters towers, didn't have the heart to take another crack at imposing his vision downtown when the Lower Manhattan Development Company opened the floodgates to would-be designs for a Sept. 11 memorial. This time around he skipped what he deems a flawed process and redirected himself to other projects: the Roosevelt Avenue Intermodal Transit Terminal in Queens, the renovation of the landmark Bronx Zoo Lion House to accommodate a Madagascar exhibit, a collaboration with Renzo Piano on a gossamer new headquarters for The New York Times opposite the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the design of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, his alma mater.

Regarding what sprouts at the trade center site, he was left on the sidelines, and from there, Mr. Fowle watched like a hawk, but never silently. Less than a week after the towers fell, he and like-minded designers huddled right here at his Italian marble conference table — he can't recall the color of his tie without sneaking a glance but remembers that this slab of stone is called Fior di Pesco — and formed a coalition, New York New Visions. Worry that the design competition might turn out to be a travesty is what drew, and kept, them together.

"Between the real estate forces, the political forces and the bureaucracy," says Mr. Fowle, pounding his fists against the table as he lists each ingredient for architectural agita, "we were very concerned that the design community would not have a chance to influence what happened there." They still are. But last week New York New Visions was asked to come aboard in an advisory capacity; Mr. Fowle is chairman of the committee that will review the site plan, and another committee will concentrate on the memorial. New York New Visions has already expressed dismay with the eight memorial finalists: undistinguished and "all within the box" is the main gripe. That and the fact that the overall site and memorial plans seem estranged.

SUDDENLY I'm famous because I'm going to lead this mere little committee to review the site guidelines," he says, doubtfully. "And yes, it's purely an advisory, pro bono role. But I see it as the last opportunity to have influence over what gets built, so I'm looking at it as a positive." As opposed to looking at it as another piece of political window-dressing? This earns a shrug. "The Libeskind scheme has great potential as a concept, but it's extremely fragile because it's so dependent on the relationship between the buildings. Would I have done it the same way? No. But it has a clear integrity. I'm critical of the process, but not of what we have to work with. At New York New Visions, our interests are in the public good: even the World Trade Center didn't make economic sense until five years before it fell, so I think it's fair to make sure that doesn't happen again."

Mr. Fowle grew up on the North Shore of Long Island in Manhasset with zero awareness of architecture until the construction of a wildly modern Unitarian Church caught his eye during junior high. A high school visit to New York City determined his career: "When I saw the Lever House, that's when the light bulb went off. Every other building was solid masonry, and there was this glass and metal structure, this sculptural form, really, and that's when I knew I had to be an architect." Modern is his mantra: even his prewar apartment at 94th and Park, and his 250-year-old house in the Berkshires, contain modern embellishments. He patronizes the New York City Ballet because it fuses modern dance and ballet: "I don't get excited about classical."

He and his former partner, Robert F. Fox Jr., opened Fox & Fowle 25 years ago but split up in March. Mr. Fowle has not yet changed the firm's name, nor has he removed the delightful sign outside his office: it is wordless, round, wall-mounted on a lazy susan, and features a fox and a waterfowl. Time was when each partner surreptitiously spun the sign so his surname, in animal form, was on top. Now the bird is permanently topside. Mr. Fowle blushes. "I should probably take it down," he says.

Not on our account.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Kris

December 12th, 2003, 12:01 PM

December 12, 2003

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Master Planner or Master Builder?

By RAFAEL VIÑOLY

As Gov. George E. Pataki prepares to unveil the latest design of the "Freedom Tower" at ground zero, the long-simmering dispute between Daniel Libeskind, the master planner for the site, and David M. Childs, the architect chosen by Larry Silverstein, the commercial leaseholder at the site, to design the tower has come to a boil. Although this is unfortunate and unprofessional, it will probably pale in comparison to the struggle for symbolic control of the rebuilding after the designer of the World Trade Center memorial is chosen next week. That is the way things will go if certain crucial points are not clarified now.

As a member of the team that was the runner-up to Daniel Libeskind as master planner of the World Trade Center site, I am familiar with the trajectory of the process. As a New Yorker, I care deeply about the future of Lower Manhattan, and how the rebuilding will honor the memory of those lost on 9/11 and shape our future as a dynamic metropolis.

Much of the confusion that reigns today centers on the public's — and apparently Governor Pataki's — misunderstanding of what constitutes a "master plan." Master planning, although usually done by architects, is not the same as architectural design. The planner decides where buildings go, how big they are, the kind of urban form they create and the purposes they serve. A planner marks out roads and figures out how the underground infrastructure relates to the surface infrastructure. What a master planner does not do is design the buildings themselves.

None of this is to say that a master plan should not have an enormous impact on a site's development. (After all, I too wanted the job.) A master plan is an important tool in a city's overall evolution, even if it does not mandate specific designs. Paris and Washington were shaped by master plans; on a smaller scale, so was Battery Park City. The outlines were set by a planner and then the details were filled in, to varying degrees of success, by individual architects.

The trouble at ground zero began with the governor's decision to support Mr. Libeskind's "vision" (what his rendering looked like) rather than the master planning ideas behind it. Unfortunately a vision is not a master plan, it is simply a version of what one particular architect would do within that plan.

Mr. Libeskind's master plan is a spiral of rising towers around the site where the twin towers were. This is a powerful urban form that can and should be respected. However, the detailed design that Mr. Libeskind incorporated into his rendering has too often been treated by the governor and others as a design guideline, which it is not.

This problem is particularly apparent when it comes to the memorial. In his rendering, Mr. Libeskind essentially designed the memorial itself. After all, the exposed slurry wall, the waterfall and the names of the public spaces he specified all had a commemorative function. What's wrong with this? Well, the task of creating a memorial was intentionally removed from the master-plan competition because it was supposed to be the subject of the memorial design competition. I think that the weaknesses in the finalist designs for the memorial are a consequence of having to design a memorial within a memorial.

In my view, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has consistently failed to educate the public — and perhaps even the governor — as to what to expect (and not to expect) from a master plan.

How so? First the corporation asked Beyer Blinder Bell and other firms to put together six master plans. These weren't building designs. Rather, they were geometric shapes meant to give people the sense of what Lower Manhattan's cityscape might look like. These plans encountered public opposition not just because they were not very inspirational in themselves, but primarily because they were mistaken for architectural designs.

The corporation reacted to the public outrage by creating the Innovative Design Study, a sort of "noncompetition" that was supposed to identify one or more consultants to help the agency further develop the master plan for the site. This process resulted in the most exciting architectural event in years. It was from this competition that Mr. Libeskind's rendering was chosen. But instead of portraying the exercise as one step along a more deliberative path, the corporation created the impression that this was the final result.

No matter. There is still time to clarify the process and allow it to move forward in a fair, constructive and logical manner. For this to happen, though, the governor, the development corporation, Mr. Libeskind, Mr. Silverstein and the other parties need to agree to the following basic points, which any first-year architecture student would be able to derive from a textbook on master planning.

• Define the basic idea of the master plan as a spiral of structures around the footprints of the towers. This is Mr. Libeskind's vision — and it should be accepted.

• Assure the developers that the design of the buildings is the responsibility of their chosen architects.

• Prompt Mr. Libeskind to see to it that there is a set of precise design guidelines — guidelines that can preserve his urban form without restricting the architectural design of those buildings.

• Give control of the memorializing functions of the plan to the winner of the memorial design competition.

• Specify where cultural facilities will be placed and outline where the money for them will come from (and make sure that money is not diverted to other uses).

• Build more time into the project. To coordinate the laying of the Freedom Tower cornerstone with the Republican National Convention in New York next summer is an unrealistic goal that will compromise the success of all our efforts. Would it not be better to disappoint a few conventioneers than to let down all New Yorkers and the 9/11 families?

Rafael Viñoly is an architect.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Jasonik

December 12th, 2003, 12:31 PM

... control of the rebuilding after the designer of the World Trade Center memorial is chosen next week.

Kris

December 15th, 2003, 05:16 AM

December 15, 2003

Traffic Flow Is Crucial Part of Debate at Trade Center

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/15/nyregion/wtc_map.gif

While the public is transfixed by the struggle over the Freedom Tower and the memorial at the World Trade Center site, an equally vital debate has been occurring over the layout of streets around the site.

Decisions made now about the street plan will determine how hundreds of truck deliveries are made, and how buses, autos, taxis, limousines, emergency vehicles (including a fire engine and fire truck quartered on Liberty Street) will share small slices of asphalt and concrete. The ripples from these crosscurrents will be felt down to the Battery, over to the Brooklyn Bridge, up the Avenue of the Americas and down Seventh Avenue.

And — importantly — it will affect how tens of thousands of visitors, commuters, workers and neighbors move along the sidewalks and public spaces on the site.

"As you begin to define how traffic moves, you're also defining how pedestrians move," said Amanda M. Burden, director of the City Planning Department. "The integrated network of public open spaces and the generosity of the public realm will be critical to the success of the site."

Planners have been given, through unparalleled disaster, the rare opportunity to correct what is now regarded as a major mistake made in the 1960's: the truncation of Dey, Cortlandt, Fulton, Greenwich and Washington Streets to create the site of the twin towers and 7 World Trade Center.

"It was this huge obstacle in terms of having to traverse Lower Manhattan," said Iris Weinshall, the city transportation commissioner. "How do we make this site better than it was pre-Sept. 11?"

Not easily.

The 16-acre site will quickly get crowded when work begins on the memorial, Freedom Tower and three other office buildings, the permanent PATH commuter station, cultural institutions, stores, plazas and parks. Wherever planners turn, they will face a zero-sum prospect.

For example, if the area occupied by the Freedom Tower grows in size, as now seems likely, that may constrict Vesey Street, which was supposed to be two-way. "Everything is a house of cards," said Jeffrey M. Zupan, senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association. "If you make Vesey one-way eastbound, you need the westbound capacity elsewhere."

Liberty Street would seem to be the logical place, except that westbound lanes would conflict with eastbound trucks bound for a ramp to the security checkpoints and delivery bays that are planned underground. One solution would be to move the ramp from the north side of Liberty Street to the south side.

Another instance of pushing and pulling involves the new 7 World Trade Center. It will be taller and narrower than its predecessor, to permit the reopening of Greenwich Street between Barclay and Vesey Streets. (The earlier 7 World Trade Center, which was destroyed, cut off Greenwich Street.)

But the part of Greenwich Street north of Vesey Street will not run into the part south of Vesey through the main trade center site. Instead, this will serve as a conduit for southbound traffic from West Broadway and, by extension, Seventh Avenue.

The idea is to create a southbound corridor to complement the northbound corridor along Trinity Place, Church Street and the Avenue of the Americas.

North-south routes are relatively easy to chart compared with east-west routes that arose out of the 17th-century tangle of Lower Manhattan.

"It's not a street grid in any sense of the word," said Andrew Winters, a vice president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and its director of planning, design and development. "Everything dead-ends."

For that reason, there was wide agreement that Fulton Street ought to be recreated through the trade center site, since it could run all the way from the South Street Seaport to the front door of the World Financial Center. Because the route of Washington Street can be traced through the footprints of the twin towers, there was little chance it would be reopened.

That leaves the fate of Cortlandt and Dey Streets to be decided.

Commissioner Weinshall said the city would like to see Dey Street "reintegrated to the maximum extent it can be," depending on the layout of the permanent PATH terminal.

As for Cortlandt Street, the current plan by Studio Daniel Libeskind shows it as a walkway between Church and Greenwich Streets, with stairs and escalators leading to an underground shopping concourse. A pedestrian bridge overhead would link two office towers.

The Bloomberg administration strongly opposes this approach. "Cortlandt Street must be a New York City street — outdoors, completely open to the sky and open to traffic," Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said in October.

An alternative use for Cortlandt Street would be as a staging area for limousines. "If this is going to work like a real city," Ms. Weinshall said, "there is a demand for curbside space."

Madelyn Wils, the chairwoman of Community Board 1, said she favored creating new streets, even if access later has to be limited. "When you have regular streets, you can close them," she said. "If you don't have them, you can't open them."

The fate of streets, sidewalks and public spaces is not as diverting as other design issues at ground zero. So Sherida E. Paulsen and Raymond W. Gastil, the chairwoman and the executive director of the Van Alen Institute, which concerns itself with public space, sent an open letter last week asking colleagues to redirect their attention from the battle between architects over the shape and authorship of Freedom Tower.

"These exercises in compulsory origami may be of theoretical interest," Ms. Paulsen and Mr. Gastil wrote, "but they avoid the more serious task of preparing a compelling plan for the public spaces on the ground around them."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Kris

December 17th, 2003, 08:11 AM

December 17, 2003

Schumer Wants Kennedy Link to Be Paid for With 9/11 Aid

By MICHAEL LUO

Weighing in on a fractious debate over transportation priorities in Lower Manhattan, Senator Charles E. Schumer offered a plan yesterday to pay for the construction of a much-discussed rail link from downtown to Kennedy Airport without any state or local money.

Senator Schumer is one of a host of politicians who have thrown their support behind the idea, once seen as an expensive pipe dream of some downtown landlords.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg laid out his vision of a one-seat ride to Kennedy from Lower Manhattan a year ago. Gov. George E. Pataki has now asked his planners to look into the possibility. But little progress has been made in how to finance the huge project, which could cost $1.9 to $5 billion.

At a breakfast forum of local business leaders, sponsored by Crain's New York Business, Senator Schumer detailed a proposal to tap into the $20 billion promised to the city by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attack.

Of that, $4.55 billion has been set aside for transportation projects, including $2.85 billion for the permanent PATH station, the Fulton Street Transit Center and the rebuilding of the South Ferry terminal.

The Port Authority wants to use the remaining $1.7 billion for a range of projects, including a plan to bury part of West Street in a tunnel, more bus parking and the effort to shore up the slurry wall of the World Trade Center site. But Senator Schumer proposed taking the money for the rail link. "We can spend that transportation money on little projects," he said. "But we will not be thinking grandly. We will have missed a tremendous opportunity."

Senator Schumer also highlighted $1.2 billion in economic development financing that has not been used yet by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The money should be diverted to the project, he said.

"There is no greater way to bring downtown business back than to create the link to the airports and the labor pool on Long Island," he said.

Finally, if more money is needed, Senator Schumer said, he would push Congress to convert $3 billion in tax incentives into additional federal financing.

Some transit advocates yesterday cautioned against a headlong rush to build the rail link, worrying that a project that served only a limited number of riders would compete against other priorities, like the Second Avenue subway and the planned connection of the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

krulltime

December 18th, 2003, 01:01 AM

Well...if this becomes a reality...the new JFK air tram was a waste of money.

Although I agree with the article 100%.

TonyO

December 18th, 2003, 01:55 AM

BPC

December 18th, 2003, 08:25 AM

Well...if this becomes a reality...the new JFK air tram was a waste of money.

The rail link they talk about would use the new JFK light rail. It would either use a pre-existing tunnel or an entirely new one and go from Jamaica station to the new hub downtown (along with LIRR trains). Great idea in my opinion, lower Manhattan needs similar commuter train connections as midtown.

Sorry, the JFK link is never going to happen. As described in the article, the Governor has decided that the remaining 9/11 money is better spent burying four blocks of West Street. But I won't get re-started on that, or Christian might call me a "NIMBY bitch" again.

Kris

December 18th, 2003, 08:39 AM

Poor thing.

Zzed

December 18th, 2003, 08:43 AM

70 Stories of New York WTC Tower to Be Occupied

Wed December 17, 2003 09:43 PM ET

By Grant McCool

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The skyscraper that will replace the destroyed 110-story twin towers will have just 70 stories of occupied space but will still be the world's tallest structure, the leaseholder said on Wednesday, two days before the official unveiling of the so-called "Freedom Tower."

Developer Larry Silverstein said in a speech to building industry leaders that an unoccupied section of the tower would support TV antenna on top and push the height to 1,776 feet, symbolic of the date of U.S. independence.

Seventy floors were intended for offices, the 71st and 72nd levels would contain restaurants and the 73rd level would be a viewing floor, Silverstein said of the tower, about which only a few details were known.

"It will be both magnificent and practical. It will be a soaring new landmark. It will define the skyline of New York," Silverstein told the New York Building Congress, a policy group in the design, construction and real estate industry.

Officials were scheduled to unveil the design of the World Trade Center site's signature skyscraper on Friday, two years and three months after the Sept. 11 attacks destroyed the buildings and killed nearly 2,800 people.

Architects have put a premium on safety and an environmentally friendly structure for what would be the world's tallest, officials said. The building regarded as the world's highest is the Taipei 101 office block in Taiwan, at 1,667 feet.

DESIGN COMPROMISE

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind had reached a compromise over the design. They said it included Libeskind's concept of a spire evoking the Statue of Liberty and Childs' idea of electricity-generating wind turbines.

Silverstein, 72, gave the industry group an outline of the 16-acre site's rebuilding process. He put the cost at up to $12 billion over 10 years. Previous estimates had put the cost at between $4 billion and $7 billion.

Silverstein said he expected $7 billion to come from insurance proceeds -- an amount that is the subject of a bitter lawsuit between the leaseholder and insurance companies. He said $5 billion would come from government sources.

A cornerstone would be laid on the "Freedom Tower" by Sept. 11, 2004 and it would be finished by the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009, he said.

New York Gov. George Pataki, who has final authority over the land owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, has set 2015 as the completion date of the project.

It will include a memorial to the 2,752 victims, a transportation hub, commercial and residential space, a museum and other cultural facilities.

© Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved.

TonyO

December 18th, 2003, 12:15 PM

Sorry, the JFK link is never going to happen. As described in the article, the Governor has decided that the remaining 9/11 money is better spent burying four blocks of West Street.

Never say never. There is momentum behind this, and its potential newsworthiness will dwarf a West Street project in the coming years.

TLOZ Link5

December 18th, 2003, 01:45 PM

Sorry, the JFK link is never going to happen. As described in the article, the Governor has decided that the remaining 9/11 money is better spent burying four blocks of West Street. But I won't get re-started on that, or Christian might call me a "NIMBY bitch" again.

Hey, no one ever thought that a 72-acre urban village could be built on Hudson River landfill from the World Trade Center site.

NYguy

January 1st, 2004, 06:44 PM

Some photos of the site taken today...(Jan 1, 2004). The Freedom Tower will rise from this site in the "pit"...

http://www.pbase.com/image/24692024/large.jpg

I wasn't aware that 90 West St was making an appearance again...

http://www.pbase.com/image/24692041/large.jpg

Another shot of the site of the Freedom Tower...

http://www.pbase.com/image/24692044/large.jpg

SunsetWorks

January 1st, 2004, 10:41 PM

A nice sign of progress toward her 2005 reoccupation.

I wasn't aware that 90 West St was making an appearance again...

Rob

January 2nd, 2004, 07:38 AM

It may be a stupid question, but beacause Im new here I never had the change to read all the posts... but is there already a definitly plan for the freedom tower known?

ZippyTheChimp

January 2nd, 2004, 08:10 AM

Information on the Freedom Tower can be found here. (http://forums.wirednewyork.com/viewtopic.php?t=1217&start=600)

Kris

January 5th, 2004, 01:24 PM

Rebuilding in 2004 (http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/issueoftheweek/20040105/200/819)

Kris

January 5th, 2004, 11:00 PM

January 6, 2004

Officials to Consider Role of Preservation at Ground Zero

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

What is historic about the World Trade Center site?

The reflexive answer, of course, is everything. But beginning today, government agencies, preservationists, planners, builders, neighbors and the relatives of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, will try to forge an official response, one that will guide redevelopment of the site.

They will attempt to define the boundaries and features that would make ground zero eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, in a process outlined by the National Historic Preservation Act. Then they will assess what adverse effects that reconstruction might have on the historic areas and, if there are any adverse effects, propose ways to avoid, lessen or soften these impacts.

Many groups will be represented as consulting parties in the first meeting today, at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. But they will be there by invitation only. The meeting will otherwise be closed to the press and general public. The review process is expected to run at least until the summer.

Though the federal preservation act is 38 years old — a product of an era in which interstate highways and urban renewal projects seemed to be obliterating the historical landscape — it has rarely dealt with as unconventional a site as ground zero.

To begin with, the trade center site falls far short of the ordinary 50-year age requirement for registry eligibility. That, however, can be overcome with a finding that it possesses exceptional significance.

More challenging, the site is both a mass graveyard and a neighborhood in its own right, brimming with emotional resonance but almost devoid of the three-dimensional structures that once made it a global cynosure. It is now a raw-edged precinct in which every protrusion of steel or concrete can signify to many people the most memorable and painful day they will ever know.

In the review, for instance, a balance may have to be found between preserving the remnants of the towers' footprints, which are still partly visible as rusted steel column footings around the base of the site, and accommodating a permanent PATH terminal.

As another example, participants may find themselves weighing the loss of the last of the trade center garage, with levels that are still vibrantly color coded, against the construction of Freedom Tower.

No one expects this to be easy.

"In a difficult process of such high visibility, with so many interested parties, perhaps not everyone will be happy," said Bernadette Castro, New York State commissioner of parks, recreation and historic preservation, in what may prove to be a considerable understatement.

Ms. Castro is also vice chairwoman of the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation which oversees the review process. She said she might end up recusing herself from one of the two roles.

Ground zero is subject to review under Section 106 of the preservation act because the government is providing financing for the new PATH terminal, through the Federal Transit Administration; the reconstruction of West Street-Route 9A, through the Federal Highway Administration; and the activities of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Kevin M. Rampe, the president of the development corporation, said historical resources at the site would also be studied under a separate environmental review.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site and is developing the permanent PATH terminal, will probably be most directly affected by the review. Its cultural resources consultant is Dr. John A. Hotopp, senior vice president of the Louis Berger Group, which was involved in the recent disinterment and reburial of some 3,500 graves from a potter's field in Secaucus, N.J., to make way for a highway interchange.

In the trade center review, there are now 65 consulting parties, and the list may grow. They include the Alliance for Downtown New York, the Coalition of 9/11 Families, the Families of September 11, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Municipal Art Society, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the New-York Historical Society, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, Pace University, the Regional Plan Association, Silverstein Properties, the Van Alen Institute, Verizon, the World Monuments Fund and three members of Congress.

Achieving consensus or compromise in such a group may seem unlikely. But speaking generally about the process, Don L. Klima, the director of federal agency programs at the advisory council, said: "Everyone is motivated to reach a memorandum of agreement. The agency wants to maintain control of the project, and the preservationists want to reach a memorandum of agreement because it's legally binding on the agency."

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

A Chance to Assess Ground Zero's Historical Significance

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

Architectural preservationists are coming to the rescue one more time. Thanks to these intrepid souls, the ground zero design process may shortly enter a new stage. Legitimacy, it might be called.

Preliminary discussions are being held today on a federal review of plans to develop the World Trade Center site. As stipulated by the National Historic Preservation Act, the so-called Section 106 review requires that the site's historical significance be officially evaluated before federal money can be used to rebuild it.

For the first time, in other words, independent scholars will have the opportunity to address publicly the historical meaning of ground zero and its value to future generations. This is welcome news indeed. Not since the milestone Supreme Court decision that upheld the preservation of Grand Central Terminal has there been a landmarks issue of comparable importance to the future of urban America.

The review may well liberate the site from the clutches of politicians, architects, their publicists and other unqualified figures who have presumed to speak in history's name. And it could slow the breakneck redevelopment timetable imposed by Gov. George E. Pataki.

More important, if done properly the review will be a pioneering undertaking in cultural archaeology, for it will explore not merely the value that is inherent in urban artifacts but also the mechanisms a society uses to confer value on some artifacts and withhold it from others.

Historical significance, that is to say, is in the memory of the beholder. In the case of ground zero, it resides in the conflicts that arise when memories disagree.

So the review ought to arouse philosophical as well as historical debate. What is there, after all, to be preserved? A void? Little physical evidence remains of the twin towers. The void itself has been voided by the new temporary PATH rails that run under the ground where the towers once stood.

This voided void is densely packed with history nonetheless: with the layers of ideology encoded by the towers and by the critical responses to them, and with the changing perceptions of architecture as the city around them evolved.

Peering into this void could substantially alter the scope of historic preservation itself.

I propose that we begin this cultural excavation by sifting through the stratum nearest us in time: the plans developed by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation since its creation after 9/11. We can learn about the site's meaning by reviewing the history we have been living through while it is still fresh in living memory. The attacks brought to the surface many of the unresolved conflicts over the twin towers. Call it the protracted panic stage.

On the whole, I find the record deplorable. Yet even its most depressing episodes could be redeemed were the record to be treated with the proper degree of historical awareness. In fact, in a Swiftian vein, I can already envision an educational program — a sort of Almost Like Freedom Museum — dedicated to learning from the mistakes so far.

They include parceling off the public realm to the highest private bidders; the eagerness of cultural institutions to embrace their own devaluation in the marketplace; the suppression of civil discourse through techniques of risk management and conflict avoidance; the manipulation of stirring images to distract attention from baser motives; the abuse of religious belief to evade personal responsibility.

No one should be surprised that it has been left to preservationists to restore a measure of sanity to Lower Manhattan. Until recently, with the rise of a new audience for contemporary architecture, preservation and public art were all that remained of the liberal consensus that once supported architecture in New York. It may take another generation before the new audience discovers that solidarity does not automatically mean settling for the lowest common denominator of taste.

Preservationists, however, have had ample time to build organizational skills. And these talents need not always be deployed toward turning back the clock. In fact, preservation now has the potential to foster some of the most advanced thinking on modern social space.

In the last two decades, a remarkable body of scholarship has emerged on the concept of cultural landscape, a category that has only begun to filter into popular consciousness. With roots in traditional archaeology and the structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, this area of study has become a major discipline in cultural studies. The writings of J. B. Jackson, the homespun philosopher of the American landscape, also belong to the genre. Historians like Gwendolyn Wright, Delores Hayden and Patricia Morton are among its leading practitioners today.

Ideally, the Section 106 review of ground zero will be guided by approaches developed by these thinkers. It could help make clear that preservation now denotes much more than lying down in front of bulldozers, valuable as such techniques undoubtedly are. It is also strategy for training vision, for learning how to recognize the ideologies from which built forms emerge. Equally important, the review could reveal the ideologies from which built forms do not emerge: the beliefs and assumptions that underlie the drive to declare some places to be protected zones of history and others not.

Is this asking too much of the Section 106 review? Not if public confidence in the ground zero plans matters. Unfortunately, politicians often believe that they are entitled to public trust without troubling to earn it. So long as they are in charge, the plans will remain a classic study in the rage for self-deception: the defining cultural characteristic of the post-cold-war era.

We won! We're the big winners. We can put shopping malls into graveyards, make office buildings dress up for the Fourth of July. Come see a culture implode.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

JMGarcia

January 7th, 2004, 04:38 PM

Pataki Outlines Plans To Rebuild Lower Manhattan

By ALICIA CHANG
Associated Press Writer

January 7, 2004, 12:07 PM EST

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Gov. George Pataki outlined his vision Wednesday to rebuild the area of Manhattan devastated by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, saying officials will soon unveil designs for a rebuilt transit hub and find ways to provide easier airport access.

"These new initiatives bring us closer to fulfilling a pledge we made while the fires were still burning at ground zero: We will never forget the heroes who died on Sept. 11," Pataki said in his State of the State speech.

Pataki said transportation architect Santiago Calatrava's design of the new terminal will be unveiled Jan. 22. A native of Spain, Calatrava has designed bridges, terminals and public buildings worldwide. Calatrava received the green light last August to collaborate on the project with Daniel Libeskind, who designed the conceptual plan for the site.

The new station will unite PATH trains with pedestrian passageways.

"It will create a new grand civic space for lower Manhattan, carrying natural light down the platforms and into a place once made dark by evil," Pataki said in his speech.

Agencies like the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will announce later this month four different plans to offer direct access from lower Manhattan to John F. Kennedy Airport and Long Island. The choices will be analyzed and the winning plan will be selected in April.

Pataki said the project is necessary to compete with cities like Chicago and London, where airport passengers can ride shuttles directly to and from downtown areas.

On Tuesday, the LMDC, the agency overseeing the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, chose the "Reflecting Absence" design marking the tower footprints with two reflecting pools for the site's memorial.

The memorial will be one of two focal points at the trade center site, along with the 1,776-foot glass skyscraper known as the Freedom Tower. Four other buildings are planned where the trade center stood.

"We must honor their memory in all that we do in lower Manhattan _ not confined to a tract of land or work of art, but throughout the entire 16-acre World Trade Center site as one living memorial," Pataki said.

Acknowledging the rocky reception some of the designs have received, Pataki said Wednesday, "In the end, we know that there is no right way to remember, only that it is right that we do remember. And in the end, I know that the same spirit, that same love of freedom that united New Yorkers on Sept. 11th and everyday since will prevail."

Pataki said he and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration would work together to redevelop waterfronts in the five boroughs, build a new convention center in Manhattan and try to host the 2012 summer Olympics.

Bloomberg was scheduled to attend Pataki's speech.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

DougGold

January 8th, 2004, 12:40 AM

Agencies like the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will announce later this month four different plans to offer direct access from lower Manhattan to John F. Kennedy Airport and Long Island. The choices will be analyzed and the winning plan will be selected in April.

Wow! Cool! You know, I know someone that, instead of driving down and parking at JFK, took the Metro North into Grand Central, then took the subway to JFK, and took the Airtrain the rest of the way. She was surprised at how convenient it was, and since she was going to be away a while, it was cheaper than parking. I'm totally into a better route from the city, but doesn't taking the subway directly to the airtrain count as direct access? No?

dbhstockton

January 8th, 2004, 03:29 AM

What they have in mind is a one-seat ride, no transfers, a la Newark. Part of the plan for the new Pennsylvania Station involves counters for Newark's Airlines right on the concourse.

BrooklynRider

January 8th, 2004, 10:15 AM

I'm guessing , as others have before me, that the Long Island link with be an extension from the new (and nicely renovated) LIRR Atlantic Terminal.

Ninjahedge

January 8th, 2004, 11:25 AM

dbhstockton

January 8th, 2004, 12:29 PM

I think they're going to extend the PATH to the airport -- the Newark line terminates just about a mile and a half short of the airport. But it will still probably make more sense for you to drive. I live on the Northeast Corridor line, but I still always drive to Newark "Liberty" Airport. It always seems to make more sense in the final calculation -- though on Long Island there's no road like the NJ Turnpike, which you can generally count on to be moving, even at peak hours.

DougGold

January 8th, 2004, 02:06 PM

Try doing all that for a ski vacation. You will see how convenient the current system is....

Also, how long did it take her?

Added point. I am in Hoboken, where it touts the light rail system as teh way to go. Youhave to get on the path train to newark, then catch the train to the airport, then the monorail. Total time is more than an hour.

I did the same thing in my car in under 15 min...

Well, it did take her like an hour and 20 minutes or so, which aint bad compared to usual driving time from Rockland. And you really got from Hoboken to JFK in 15 minutes? Good lord--did you hit no traffic and went 90 miles an hour??

Ninjahedge

January 8th, 2004, 04:42 PM

Hoboken to Newark.

I used that with a comparison to driving time to the same place.

I also had a nice long trip to Logan over the T when I was in college.

All I am saying is that the current system takes WAY too long. (BTW, JFK would probably be 45 min from Hoboken, non rush hour).

GR2NYsoon

January 9th, 2004, 01:54 AM

test

STT757

January 9th, 2004, 02:55 PM

Added point. I am in Hoboken, where it touts the light rail system as teh way to go. Youhave to get on the path train to newark, then catch the train to the airport, then the monorail. Total time is more than an hour.

There are a couple (2-3) of NJ Transit North Jersey Coastline diesel trains from Hoboken to Bay Head which stop at Newark Airport's Rail link station, they are mostly in the aftenoon though.

Get on NJCL train in Hoboken and you at the airport Airtrain station is 15 minutes or less, I like the Hoboken-Bay Head Diesels because they tend to be less crowded than the NY Penn-Long Branch trains, everybody on the Hoboken-Bay Head trains seems to know one another.

I take the North Jersey Coastline from Matawan, there's one express train (a Bay Head-Hoboken Diesel) which departs Matawan at around 3:55Pm and runs express all the way to Newark Airport. That train FLIES! and skips about 6 stops, it gets me to the airport from my home (Manalapan) faster than driving.

The PATH extension to Newark Airport's Rail link station is in the works, but it's not going to be complete until '07-'09. It's a simple project of extending the line about 1.5 -2 miles from it's yard South of Newark Penn Station to the Newark Airport Rail Link Station, estimated to cost about $525 Million.

38 Minutes from Newark Airport to the World Trade Center, a little less for Hoboken or Newport.

The biggest benefit of the PATH extension to Newark Airport is not just the connection to Jersey City and Lower Manhattan but also the increased frequency of Service to the Airport. Right now the schedules of NJ Transit trains to Newark Airport are not very consistent, during some hours there will be a train every 8 minutes or so. Other hours there will be a wait of 30-40 minutes between trains, Amtrak is more consistent but they only run 1-2 trains per hour.

The PATH will be more reliable with scheduling, during the morning and evening rush hours there will be a PATH train departing Newark Airport's Rail link station every 5 minutes!..

NoyokA

January 9th, 2004, 03:00 PM

If the link is made, what will become of the airtrain?

NYatKNIGHT

January 9th, 2004, 03:11 PM

I was wondering that too, and here they just finished it.

NoyokA

January 9th, 2004, 03:13 PM

With the right amount of PR the airtrain could easily become that link that they're looking for.

ASchwarz

January 9th, 2004, 03:15 PM

Nothing will happen to the Newark Airtrain. It connects the terminals to each other and to the NJ Transit/Amtrak rail station. The PATH train will terminate at the NJ Transit/Amtrak rail station. Therefore, you will still have to use the Newark Airtrain to access the terminals.

NoyokA

January 9th, 2004, 03:20 PM

Ofcause not. Im more interested in the JFK Air Train, whereas it is not a direct access it does link JFK with Manhattan.

NYguy

January 9th, 2004, 03:41 PM

If the link is made, what will become of the airtrain?

A direct connection to Midtown...

NYguy

January 9th, 2004, 03:42 PM

NEWSDAY...

WTC Picture Not Any Clearer

By Justin Davidson
January 9, 2004

The future of the World Trade Center has been laid out in so many presentations of such glittering, digital clarity that the situation has now become utterly murky. The 16-acre site has been carved into a multiplicity of projects: a cluster of office towers, a train station, a memorial, a museum, maybe an opera house, possibly a park, probably a shopping center.

The Master Plan

To shape the long-term strategy for rebuilding downtown, the LMDC hired architect Daniel Libeskind to come up with a master plan. In more typical situations - and nothing about this project is typical - a master plan is a prosaic and technical document, dealing with land use, transportation needs, growth projections, traffic flow and other equally unsexy issues.

In the case of the World Trade Center, though, the usual steps were telescoped into a process that, inescapably, was charged with aesthetics, metaphor and meaning from the start. The result was Libeskind's version of a master plan, which was really a work of emotional theater, a literary record of the moment's aspirations.

A poet of public relations and an architect with a fine feeling for a politician's needs, Libeskind produced an elaborately imagined and yet potently vague vision of a glittering new Gotham. Thanks to sophisticated computer animations and renderings, the plan impressed itself on the minds of leaders and citizens, who largely ignored its most obvious - and often-repeated - aspect: that it would have to change in superficial and fundamental ways. For one thing, Libeskind was not hired to design any individual buildings, only to provide other architects with a menu of desires and possibilities.

Libeskind himself points proudly to the plan's flexibility as one of its chief qualities but he has also shown himself willing to pick certain items and declare them non-negotiable. Some observers believe that 20 years from now, he will have left his signature inscribed in lower Manhattan; others that he will have wasted the better part of his career waging an unwinnable war against disillusionment.

The Memorial

At the center of Libeskind's master plan lay a 4.7-acre hole to be filled by a memorial chosen by a jury of experts. When that jury picked eight finalists last month, the results elicited howls of disappointment from critics and the public. All of the proposals, with their boxy spaces and cascades of water, seemed far too generic as the artists and architects who competed set out to memorialize an event whose cultural meaning is far from clear.

The winner of that competition was announced Tuesday, and while Michael Arad's proposal envisioned a pair of sunken pools in a vast cobblestone plaza, significant revisions were already under way. The young Arad, 34, was teamed up with an established landscape designer, Peter Walker, and their joint effort will be released next week. The LMDC, the jury it empaneled and the newly designated designers are under enormous political pressure to convert ideas into reality as quickly as possible: Pataki has called for its completion by 2006. But many critics and some victims' families have called the rush misguided, and a review of the preservation issues involved, which is mandated by federal law, may slow the process.

Freedom Tower

Having called for a single, tall skyscraper to replace the double monoliths of the World Trade Center, Libeskind had hoped to design it. But he had no office buildings on his resume at all, and Silverstein turned the project over to an architect of great experience: David Childs, a principal in the large and well-established firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill who designed the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. Under pressure from the LMDC, Silverstein reluctantly agreed to have Libeskind come on as a consultant and gadfly, and the creative battle began.

With Pataki refereeing, Childs and Libeskind banged together a promising but incomplete design. As Libeskind insisted, it is asymmetrical, 1,776 feet high and topped with a spire echoing the Statue of Liberty's raised torch. But the meat of the building is Childs: a torqued, tapering tower surmounted by a latticework upper section enclosing a battery of energy-producing windmills.

Childs has acknowledged that the design still needs refinement, but at least it points to an actual building, the first commercial chunk of the project that merits the term real estate. Something along the lines of Childs' design will probably get built - quickly, if Pataki has his way: The governor wants the cornerstone laid by Sept. 11 of this year. The LMDC hopes the building will be complete no later than 2008.

Other Office Towers

Silverstein wants to restore all the rentable office space he lost, but it's not clear that the market can absorb so many cubicles and boardrooms concentrated in lower Manhattan. So while the Freedom Tower, with its initial installment of 2.6 million square feet of offices, is on the fast track, the rest will be delivered if and when they are needed.

In the master plan, Libeskind divided the 10 million square feet of office space he was asked for among five unequal buildings, including the Freedom Tower, arranged like stones around a campfire and getting progressively taller. Again declining the master planner's services, Silverstein retained three visionary architects - Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster and Fumihiko Maki - to design the first three skyscrapers.

Problems are already in the offing. Libeskind worked out a set of highly specific guidelines meant to ensure that future towers would conform to his aesthetic, regardless of who designed them. But Nouvel, Foster and Maki have all hinted that they consider Libeskind's pre-design designs - his insistence on the precise degree of slope in each roof, for example - an infringement on their artistic prerogatives.

7 World Trade Center

Aside from the Twin Towers, Silverstein also controlled 7 World Trade Center, another building that collapsed in the attacks but that lies just outside the vast fenced-in area known as the World Trade Center site. Silverstein moved quickly to replace that building. Almost immediately after it was destroyed, Silverstein appointed Childs to design a new version, and construction on that 52-story tower, which rests on a Con Edison generating station, is already well under way. The first structural steel beam was set in place in November. Completion is expected next year.

Transit Station

Restoring commuter rail service between New Jersey and lower Manhattan was a practical and symbolic priority from the beginning, and the Port Authority was not about to wait for the construction of a grand new transit hub. Workers began repairing the rail link as soon as enough debris had been cleared, even as discussions about the site's future were still picking up steam.

In November, an attractive, if clearly temporary PATH station opened, a refreshing sign of normality.

The task of designing the full-fledged Fulton Transit Station, with a possible rail link to Long Island, went to Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the author of bridges, stations, concert halls and museums that appear to be alighting momentarily on the ground for a photo opportunity before becoming airborne again. The LMDC's timeline optimistically predicts that Calatrava will complete the design of his flamboyant Manhattan gateway sometime this year, construction will start next year and the turnstiles will begin clicking in 2007.

Culture at Ground Zero

The foggiest corner of the rebuilding plans is the cultural one. Libeskind's master plan calls for a performing arts center, an opera house, perhaps, that may sit at the foot of the Freedom Tower and possibly even be attached to it. And one of the more striking images of the master plan is a September 11 Museum jacked up over the sunken footprint of one tower.

Last year, the LMDC solicited proposals from cultural organizations, which resulted in a hailstorm of visions, from a new downtown home for New York City Opera to the creation of a national theater company, to a catch basin for presenters of the quirky, experimental, noncommercial performances that have long thrived in lower Manhattan.

So the issues here are far more fundamental than who will build it when, what it will look like, and how much it will cost. The real question is: Now that New York City has an opportunity to build a brand-new haven for the arts, what sort of arts does New York City want?

ZippyTheChimp

January 9th, 2004, 04:13 PM

Let's see, you generally state the premise of the article in the first few sentences.

The future of the World Trade Center has been laid out in so many presentations of such glittering, digital clarity that the situation has now become utterly murky.
While what the author says is generally true, I don't think it supports his premise.

EIquintana

January 12th, 2004, 11:55 AM

http://208.55.192.240/images/tom/two-structures-by-the-ocean-40112.jpg

ZippyTheChimp

January 12th, 2004, 12:07 PM

That rates more than one :roll: :roll: :roll:

Jasonik

January 12th, 2004, 01:08 PM

"Hey, like -live your life."
Isn't that what we all try,
when we reach for stars?

NYguy

January 12th, 2004, 04:54 PM

Problems are already in the offing. Libeskind worked out a set of highly specific guidelines meant to ensure that future towers would conform to his aesthetic, regardless of who designed them. But Nouvel, Foster and Maki have all hinted that they consider Libeskind's pre-design designs - his insistence on the precise degree of slope in each roof, for example - an infringement on their artistic prerogatives.

Forget about the Freedom Tower and the Memorial for the moment. For me, this is the next big step in the development. I won't get excited about seeing anything anytime soon. But tower "number 2" is beginning to appear on my radar (3 and 4 will come first I believe). We won't have to get into any silly arguments about "height" with these towers - and they will be some of the tallest being built in the city. Very interesting....

Kris

January 19th, 2004, 11:25 PM

January 20, 2004

At Ground Zero, Rebuilding With Nature in Mind

By ANTHONY DEPALMA

While most of the anguished debate about ground zero has focused on recreating and remembering what was once there, another effort has been moving forward to create on the site something that never existed, an environmentally sensitive city within a city that is attuned to nature as well as the real estate market.

Over the last year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Larry A. Silverstein, the developer who holds the commercial lease on the World Trade Center, aided by environmentalists and builders, have put together development guidelines. Those guidelines will help shape how the office buildings and retail space, including the Freedom Tower, manage their energy consumption while minimizing their impact on the city's environment.

The guidelines set a new standard for New York. The roofs of buildings will be designed to catch rainwater for flushing toilets and boosting cooling systems. Developers will be encouraged to reuse pilings and other materials already on site and to specify that recycled material and products made from renewable resources, like fast-growing trees and sunflower seed husks, be used for interior and insulating materials.

The guidelines are not limited to the buildings but extend to the period of construction, requiring all large diesel engines on the building site to use ultra-low-sulfur fuel to reduce emissions. Half of all the waste wood, cardboard and metal generated during construction will be recycled, and construction crews will be encouraged to substitute corn oil or other natural substances for petroleum-based oils to keep concrete from sticking to wooden forms.

Although individual buildings in New York and other cities have been built to exacting environmental standards in recent years, such "green" goals have never been applied to anything as large as the trade center site, which when complete will contain about as much commercial space as the city of Indianapolis.

"We're talking about building an environmentally sensitive city. That's never been done before," said Daniel R. Tishman, chairman of Tishman Construction Corp., which is overseeing construction of the first building at ground zero, the new 7 World Trade Center, as well as the Freedom Tower.

Mr. Tishman, who holds degrees in environmental studies, helped devise the sustainable development guidelines.

Environmental groups in New York generally support the effort, though they expect to continue to push for even higher standards.

"This 16-acre site should not result in very good buildings, because very good is not enough," said Ashok Gupta, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council air and energy program, and an adviser to the group that drew up the guidelines. "These buildings should be the best that can be built."

The guidelines are an appendix to a draft environmental impact statement for the trade center site that is expected to be released for public comment today. But hints of how the new standards may be applied are already evident in the construction of 7 World Trade Center.

Located just to the north of the main trade center redevelopment site, the original building was destroyed in the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. So was the Consolidated Edison substation on which it stood.

Mr. Silverstein and Gov. George E. Pataki announced the start of construction at 7 World Trade Center in November 2002, disappointing critics who thought nothing should happen until planning for the trade center site was complete.

Although the design guidelines were not yet compiled, the project followed an environmentally sensitive course that added roughly $10.3 million to the cost, company officials said. In most instances, energy savings will not offset the added costs in the three to four years by which developers generally expect their payback, but meeting strict environmental standards can bring other rewards.

Janno Lieber, director of the trade center project for the Silverstein organization, said that building an office tower that uses less energy, recycles water and triple-filters inside air enhanced the marketability of the project, but that was not the only reason for taking the extra steps. He said Mr. Silverstein considered the trade center redevelopment a personal mission.

"This was a down payment on the broader commitment that Larry has made to having the trade center redevelopment be state of the art from an environmental standpoint," Mr. Lieber said.

The first bows to the environment came as construction began. Diesel engines at construction sites are largely unregulated sources of air pollution. To lower emissions, large diesel engines were fitted with powerful filters and switched to ultra-low-sulfur fuel. Bulldozers and backhoes used to clear the site were also converted. Now that steel is going up, the crane that hauls girders into place uses the new filters and fuel.

The success of the program helped lead to the adoption of a city law mandating the use of low-sulfur fuel and high-efficiency filters in all public construction.

At 52 stories, the building will be taller than its predecessor but will have a smaller footprint and less space. It will harvest natural sunlight through floor-to-ceiling windows specially coated to reflect heat and allow plenty of natural light into the building. Rainwater collected on the roof and stored in tanks in the building will be reused in toilets or will flow into the drip irrigation system for a small park that will be built next to the site. The architect designing the park will select hardy plants and trees that need little water.

Computers will control heating and lighting throughout the office building. Power to commercial tenants will be metered, which is expected to encourage conservation. A system to use some of the heating steam to generate electricity will produce about 150 kilowatts, reducing the building's reliance on the energy grid by about 3 percent.

Mr. Lieber, the project manager, said the environmental features accounted for 3 to 5 percent of the cost of constructing 7 World Trade Center. The total cost of the project, comprising direct and indirect costs, was given in Liberty Bond filings at $540 million. Commercial tenants, not the building's owners, will realize most energy savings, Mr. Lieber said.

The Freedom Tower, which the Tishman company will also build for the Silverstein organization, will incorporate many of the same environmental features as 7 World Trade Center, and a few not put in effect there. For instance, the tower, a much larger building, will be more energy independent because it will have propeller-driven wind turbines proposed by David M. Childs, a partner in the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who was design architect for 7 World Trade Center. Wind power is to furnish up to 10 percent of the tower's electricity.

Not every proposal made it into the guidelines. One that was abandoned as impractical called for all the steel and other construction material to be delivered to the site aboard a specially designated PATH train. Mr. Tishman said such a plan would not work because suppliers are too dispersed.

Meeting the guidelines will make it possible for developers to win rankings under a system known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, a national standard. No building in New York City has won a LEED award. But as environmental efficiency becomes more expected, New York builders have felt compelled to respond with greener buildings.

The Tishman company, which has developed a reputation for environmental awareness, has built several such buildings in recent years, including the Condé Nast building at 4 Times Square and the Westin New York at Times Square.

The Hearst Corporation is putting up a tower above its headquarters at Eighth Avenue and 56th Street that may receive national energy efficiency certification.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Kris

January 21st, 2004, 01:30 AM

January 21, 2004

Redevelopment at Ground Zero to Mean Noise and Traffic

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Snarled traffic, long shadows and noise - a decade's worth of noise - will be the inevitable byproducts of the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site, according to a 2,000-page study approved yesterday by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

The data came in a draft environmental impact statement that was approved unanimously by the corporation board. Part of its purpose is to identify potential problems and recommend ways to avoid or lessen them.

But it could find no way to fully mitigate the worsening traffic expected at 18 key intersections and crosswalks. Nor could it envision dispelling the shadows that would be cast by the Freedom Tower and four other skyscrapers on Washington Market Park in TriBeCa and other open spaces nearby.

Further, the statement conceded that the neighborhood would be very noisy for an entire decade, during the almost simultaneous construction of the office towers, the trade center memorial, cultural and retail buildings, the permanent PATH station and the Fulton Street Transit Center - while Route 9A-West Street is under reconstruction.

As for air quality, the statement acknowledged that "there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the long-term health impacts" of Sept. 11, 2001. Because "significant adverse impacts have been predicted in the vicinity,'' special attention will be given to air quality, the corporation said. It cited a policy of significantly reducing diesel emissions from construction equipment, which it identified as a major source of new pollutants.

It also outlined measures like worker training, protective and monitoring equipment, physical isolation and treatment systems to deal with materials like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, metals, asbestos and dust at the site. "Because hazardous materials would be abated, managed or remediated during construction," the statement said, "no significant adverse impacts are expected."

Ultimately - and not surprisingly - the impact statement concluded that the project would have far more benefits than drawbacks. The goal, it said, was "to revitalize Lower Manhattan as a center of commercial, residential and cultural activity," with "a memorial at its heart to honor and remember the victims of the attacks."

The document, required by state and federal agencies financing the project, compares the effects of the proposed construction with existing conditions, alternate development approaches and conditions that might have existed had the attack not occurred. It sets two milestones: 2009, when the first phase is finished, and 2015, for total completion.

Conditions studied in the document often represent the maximum that might be expected, said Irene Chang, the vice president for legal affairs and counsel at the development corporation. And because revitalization is a goal, certain increases - say, in pedestrian traffic - are not unwelcome.

The draft will be available by the end of the week at three New York Public Library branches downtown, at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street and at the offices of Community Boards 1, 2 and 3 in Lower Manhattan. It will also be posted on the corporation's Web site, www.renewnyc.com .

Two public hearings on the document are scheduled for Feb. 18 at Pace University, and public comments will be accepted until March 15.

After revisions are made, the document will be voted on again by the board, probably in April. It is sure to be mined in the months ahead for the detailed information it provides. And it is certain to be criticized for impacts that it does not consider.

Parallel reviews now under way include a study required by the National Historic Preservation Act to determine whether the World Trade Center site is eligible for listing on the state and federal registers of historic places. That determination "appears likely," Ms. Chang told the board yesterday.

Depending on the outcome, it could affect the design of the memorial and of the permanent PATH terminal, which share the site where the twin towers stood.

At the bottom of the 70-foot-deep foundations are many steel column footings defining the full outline of the north tower and much of the south tower.

Far older historical artifacts may be found, the impact statement noted, on what were once waterfront lots. Remnants might include parts of wharves or timber cribbing, as well as privies, cisterns, wells and cesspools from before the 1850's.

At the end of 2009, by far the largest use on the site in square footage will be the commercial office space controlled by Larry A. Silverstein: 2.6 million square feet in the 70-story Freedom Tower, which will also have a 400-person viewing deck, a 600-seat cafe, a 400-seat restaurant and 41,500 square feet of retail space on three levels. The 65-story second tower, the 62-story third tower and the 58-story fourth tower will not yet have risen, but their retail bases will be in place, on three levels, with a total of 310,000 square feet among them. An underground retail area will bring the total to 1 million square feet.

The memorial will be 4.2 acres, or 182,670 square feet, and is expected at first to draw up to 9 million visitors, which will decline to 5.5 million by 2015. There will also be an underground memorial center, other cultural space and a performing arts center.

Since the impact statement was compiled, a winning design, "Reflecting Absence" by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, was chosen for the memorial. "We will have to do some adjusting of analyses as the design continues," Ms. Chang said.

Open space completed by 2009 will total 211,350 square feet, or 4.9 acres, the largest being the 1.3-acre Wedge of Light along Fulton Street and the 1.3-acre Liberty Park South on the south side of Liberty Street. There will also be an 18,965-square-foot galleria along the route of Cortlandt Street.

There will be room in the underground roadway network for about 80 trucks to service the buildings above. An underground garage for 100 buses will be built nearby in Battery Park City or on the Deutsche Bank site south of Liberty Street.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Kris

January 21st, 2004, 01:32 AM

January 21, 2004

Ground Zero Official to Join Staff of Jets

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Matthew Higgins, who has often been the public face of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and even more often a behind-the-scenes influence, resigned yesterday to help the New York Jets' campaign for a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan.

His plan to join the Jets, effective Feb. 9, was announced at the corporation board meeting. "Not as a player, I understand," said the chairman, John C. Whitehead.

Mr. Higgins, 29, will be the team's vice president for strategic planning, at a salary he would not disclose. Until Feb. 6, he is the chief operating officer and director of communications at the corporation, which pays him $160,000 a year.

He has worked for the corporation since February 2002. On Sept. 11, 2001, as press secretary to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, he was hastily calling off an impromptu press conference two blocks from the World Trade Center when the first tower collapsed.

The proposed stadium is officially known as the New York Sports and Convention Center, and it is to be an extension of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The stadium would be an Olympics site should New York be designated the host city. The Jets would play home games there.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

NYguy

January 21st, 2004, 09:32 AM

NY OBSERVER...
http://nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage4.asp

Silverstein Vows Towers To Meet Slew Of Checks

http://nyobserver.com/images/mainimages/golson012604a.jpg

by Blair Golson

In an effort to reassure the public that new buildings at the World Trade Center site will meet government-mandated safety standards, the Port Authority and developer Larry Silverstein have agreed in principle to subject their construction projects to several new and independent safety checks, according to a draft of the proposal obtained by The Observer.

But members of a post–Sept. 11 advocacy group, whose criticism of Port Authority safety policies helped bring the issue to the fore, labeled the proposal a "sham," citing what they saw as a lack of enforcement powers. The group, the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, vows to continue its battle in the courts.

Under the proposed terms of the agreement, the Port Authority would submit the blueprints of any new construction at Ground Zero to an independent panel of building-safety experts. In addition, the agency also agreed to subject the buildings to regular inspections and safety-technology updates by another group of independent safety experts. The agency would also initiate an "open-door" policy for inspections by city agencies.

The details of the agreement, brokered in large part by Alan Gerson, a City Council member from lower Manhattan, still are hazy. The agreement has not been formalized, and an official announcement is at least a few weeks off. At the moment, it is unclear who would sit on either of these panels, and exactly what enforcement powers they will have.

The issue of enforcement is a contentious one, as the Port Authority is exempt from city and state safety mandates. And although the agency has long insisted that it has always voluntarily "met or exceeded" government standards, critics charge that lax safety measures may have hastened the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11. Those views gained traction in May, when federal investigators announced that the Port Authority had likely never fire-tested the main structural-support materials used to build the Twin Towers.

Mr. Gerson said he became involved in the talks to help allay the concerns of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, which was founded after the Sept. 11 attack. The peacemaking effort appears to have failed—at least for now. Sally Regenhord, the co-chair of the group and the mother of firefighter Christian Reganhord, who was killed on Sept. 11, called the proposal a "smoke-and-mirrors P.R. stunt," because the agreement lacks the enforcement powers needed to hold the Port Authority accountable.

"If Mr. Gerson thinks this will mean anything, he’s sorely misguided," Ms. Regenhord said. "The history of the Port Authority has been that these people are above the law. You could give the Port Authority a book full of violations, and they could just put it in their circular file."

The Skyscraper Safety Campaign filed a lawsuit in July to force the Port Authority to be subject to city and state building and fire codes, but a State Supreme Court justice dismissed the case in December. The group’s lawyer, Thomas Shanahan, said that Mr. Gerson’s proposal didn’t meet his clients’ demands, and that he would very likely continue the battle in court with an appeal of the December ruling. "We feel the judge erred when he said that firemen who have to go into these buildings that aren’t conforming to the code have no standing to challenge the Port Authority," he said.

The Skyscraper Safety Campaign also said that it’s working with U.S. Representatives Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut, and Carolyn Maloney, a Manhattan Democrat, to draft legislation that would make the Port Authority subject to the enforcement of the city’s buildings and fire departments. Mr. Shays’ chief of staff, Betsy Hawkings, said that both Mr. Shays and Ms. Maloney are working in concert with several New York state legislators to amend the Port Authority’s charter toward that end. She declined to name the legislators.

"If the Port Authority really meets or exceeds the requirements of building and fire departments’ safety codes, they shouldn’t be concerned about legal enforcement," said Ms. Hawkings.

Mr. Gerson, for his part, praised the Port Authority for its willingness to come to the table, but conceded that the proposal in its current incarnation is somewhat less than ironclad when it comes to enforcing the findings of the two proposed oversight groups.

"We’re negotiating and investigating that," Mr. Gerson said of the latter issue, "and I believe we’ll be able to come up with an adequate enforcement mechanism."

The Port Authority largely declined to comment on the proposal, noting that any agreement is not official yet.

"We’ve had very constructive discussions with Councilman Gerson on a whole host of issues, including peer review," said Steve Coleman, an agency spokesman. "Nothing has been finalized, and we’re still working out the details."

Representatives for Mr. Silverstein could not be reached by press time.

City Council member Christine Quinn, who helped broker the agreement along with Council member Helen Sears, said that despite the apparent immediate lack of enforceability, the agreement represents a significant step forward.

"I don’t think the Port Authority would have agreed to meeting building codes if they didn’t mean to live up to it," she said. "It’s a type of thing where you could show very easily if they weren’t living up to their end of the bargain."

Experts on fire safety were less convinced. Vincent Dunn, a retired deputy chief of the Fire Department of New York and author of three books on fire emergencies, said that there’s no reason why the Port Authority shouldn’t have to adhere to the same safety standards as any other commercial landlord in the city. He also discounted the value of agreements which the Port Authority has made with the FDNY regarding the agency’s compliance with city and state codes.

"Right now we inspect the building, but we don’t have enforcement power," he said. "We send a referral notice to the Port Authority, and it doesn’t have the powers of a normal enforcement. We can’t issue a summons."

Mr. Gerson said the composition of the peer-review group would be determined by "relevant community leaders" or "uniformed agencies," along with various safety experts. The second oversight group—which would be responsible for keeping the building’s safety standards up to date—would be composed of people appointed by similar types of entities.

NYguy

January 21st, 2004, 05:47 PM

TRIBECA TRIB

Hidden Cameras Capture Trade Center Site’s Rebirth

by Etta Sanders

Through the black-curtained window of a closet at the offices of Dow Jones, a movie camera peers down, nine stories, at Ground Zero. Every five minutes it quietly whirs, taking one more picture.

At five other hidden perches—47 stories high in the World Financial Center, atop buildings on Broadway and Church Street, at the firehouse on Liberty Street, and in the churchyard of St. Paul’s—cameras record the orange-vested workers and lumbering bulldozers on the 16-acre World Trade Center site.

Day and night for up to 10 years, these six cameras will expose a frame of film every five minutes, recording an almost moment-by-moment history of the rebuilding on the site, as part of an ambitious documentary film called Project Rebirth.

The result will be a time-lapse movie that will show, in a mere 20 minutes, the PATH station and transit hub, the Freedom Tower, a memorial, stores and office buildings spring to life. Falling leaves will blur into snowfall that melts into summer haze, like flipping the pages of a calendar.

“Our hope is that we can create an environment that people can go into, six screens representing the six camera positions that will surround an audience and allow them the experience of the buildings literally rising up around them,” said Jim Whitaker, Project Rebirth’s producer.

In a parallel project, Whitaker is conducting annual interviews with 10 people directly affected by the attack, including a firefighter who lost friends and colleagues, a teenage boy whose mother died, a recovery worker who spent months on “the pile,” and a woman who was one of the few to escape from above the airplane’s impact. That footage will be edited into a feature documentary. The two films will comprise what Whitaker calls a physical and emotional time lapse.

Whitaker, a vice president at Imagine Entertainment, the production company headed by Ron Howard and Brian Glazer, came to Tribeca in October 2001 for the wedding of his college roommate, Nick Wood. After he saw the destruction firsthand, the idea for Project Rebirth came to him.

Wood and Whitaker shot a test film out of a window in Wood’s Hudson Street apartment. Along with co-producer David Solomon, they used that 10-minute sample film to request permission to install cameras at other locations. “We were asking for them to provide an opportunity to put a camera for 10 years,” Whitaker said. “It’s not a small thing to ask.”

In May 2002 the first camera, in a specially designed temperature-controlled house, was placed on the roof of 30 Vesey Street. The opening shots captured the last days of the cleanup effort.

The project is estimated to cost $8 million. Five million dollars’ worth of in-kind donations for film and processing has been promised; the first big cash contribution they received, $400,000, came from the father of another of Whitaker’s college classmates, who heads AON Corp., a company that lost 175 employees in the attacks. The filmmakers must still raise another $3.3 million.

The team has submitted a proposal to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to have the film shown as part of the planned museum at the site. If that doesn’t work out, they will search for another museum space for the more than six million frames.

“This is history in the making,” Whitaker said. “In a hundred years, when people look back and say, ‘What did we do? How did we respond?’ they’ll be able to look at this film and say, ‘This is exactly what we did.’”

http://tribecatrib.com/photos/news/jan04/project-rebirth-vert-jim.jpg

Jasonik

January 21st, 2004, 05:53 PM

“Our hope is that we can create an environment that people can go into, six screens representing the six camera positions that will surround an audience and allow them the experience of the buildings literally rising up around them,” said Jim Whitaker, Project Rebirth’s producer.

Brilliant!

BigMac

January 21st, 2004, 07:28 PM

Despite the removal of the cultural buildings on the memorial, is Libeskind's plan for the "Wedge of Light" each September 11 still intact?

Jasonik

January 21st, 2004, 07:40 PM

Despite the removal of the cultural buildings on the memorial, is Libeskind's plan for the "Wedge of Light" each September 11 still intact?

Read back a bit (6 months?) about that red herring. Intact is not a word that could ever have been applied to the "Wedge of Light". Simply stated it was a salespitch by Libeskind and a sham.

BigMac

January 21st, 2004, 07:47 PM

Read back a bit (6 months?) about that red herring. Intact is not a word that could ever have been applied to the "Wedge of Light". Simply stated it was a salespitch by Libeskind and a sham.

The more I am hearing about Libeskind, the more my admiration for him is challenged; this soon after finding out how similar his WTC plan is to one of the original 6 proposed.

Kris

January 21st, 2004, 11:45 PM

Study by Eli Attia Discredits Wedge of Light (http://forums.wirednewyork.com/viewtopic.php?t=1112)

BPC

January 22nd, 2004, 11:48 PM

A healthy dose of pablumum from Richard Schwarz of the Daily News:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/157047p-137942c.html

New PA plan snuffs life out of streets

The Port Authority is afraid of the rain. And the cold. And the heat. Indeed, it seems to abhor any climate that cannot be controlled. Don't believe it? Then you haven't heard about the PA's plans for a vast, underground shopping mall in lower Manhattan.

The sprawling subterranean concourse, comprising some 370,000 square feet of retail space, will link to the new $2 billion PATH station downtown - which Gov. Pataki unveils today. A cavernous underground passageway will connect the PATH hub to subway lines two blocks away - with people-movers.

True, there will be stores aboveground, but at least half a dozen banks of escalators will draw thousands of pedestrians from Liberty, Greenwich and Vesey Sts. to scores of bland chain stores in the multilevel, suburban-style mall below.

"They are airport thinkers," one top official said of the Port Authority.

Imagine if the same gang had gotten its mitts on the new Times Square. Instead of throngs of people crowding the pavement, there would be no one to look at all those lights except the pigeons.

The PA planners specifically cited combating the elements as a major objective in their Ground Zero rebuilding schemes. PA chief architect Robert Davidson amassed volumes of weather statistics to support a blueprint that stands to suck the vitality from the streets.

"According to the Port Authority," one source close to the planning process joked, "it rains more in lower Manhattan than in the rest of the city."

"What was great about downtown's streets, but was obliterated by the old World Trade Center, was that they had lots of people," said Jane Jacobs, the matriarch of modern city planning who in the 1960s convinced a generation of urbanists that the essence of a place like New York is its street life. Diminish that life and you diminish the city.

It's a rule Evelyn Robb understands in her bones. Her shop, Evelyn's Hand Dipped Chocolates on John St. - a block away from Ground Zero - was virtually destroyed on 9/11. "It took a year before the business came back to life," she said from behind an old-fashioned glass counter crammed with truffles, heart-shaped chocolates and other homemade treats. Now her business is again at risk.

There's a subway station near her shop, and that means a lot of people walking by, but with the new plans, many would be strolling on an underground sidewalk leading from the station to the PA's dazzling new transit hub. It guarantees a loss of business for Robb and any other shopowner nearby. "That's not rebuilding the neighborhood," she lamented, "that's tearing it down."

Remember the barren, wind-swept plaza that sat lifeless between the twin towers? It was devoid of people because there was seldom a reason to venture there. All the stores, all the activities, were contained within the colossal shopping mall below. It enriched the Port Authority with millions in rent each year, while it impoverished the life of the neighborhood.

History seems ready to repeat itself.

Originally published on January 21, 2004

ZippyTheChimp

January 24th, 2004, 11:43 AM

It's a rule Evelyn Robb understands in her bones. Her shop, Evelyn's Hand Dipped Chocolates on John St. - a block away from Ground Zero - was virtually destroyed on 9/11. "It took a year before the business came back to life," she said from behind an old-fashioned glass counter crammed with truffles, heart-shaped chocolates and other homemade treats. Now her business is again at risk.

There's a subway station near her shop, and that means a lot of people walking by, but with the new plans, many would be strolling on an underground sidewalk leading from the station to the PA's dazzling new transit hub. It guarantees a loss of business for Robb and any other shopowner nearby. "That's not rebuilding the neighborhood," she lamented, "that's tearing it down."

The "people walking by" are commuters, and the author is correct that they will use the concourse rather than the street. However, the plan is to transform downtown into a 24/7 community. There was never a problem here nine to five. There was enough pedestrian flow to support businesses that catered to commuters. The problems began after everyone went home.

The restored street grid and new street-level retail will enliven the surrounding streets, and hopefully, downtown will begin to resemble midtown.

Evelyn will have to adjust her business hours.

BigMac

January 24th, 2004, 01:24 PM

New York Post

Deutsche Deal Near at Ground Zero

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

January 22, 2004

Development officials hope to work out a deal to buy the damaged Deutsche Bank building next to Ground Zero in coming weeks, at the same time they resolve an insurance dispute that has threatened to stall downtown rebuilding plans, sources told The Post.

The intense talks over the Liberty Street tower's future have been going on since November, after Gov. Pataki named former Sen. George Mitchell as mediator.

The negotiations were initially portrayed as being aimed at finding common ground between Deutsche Bank, which owns the building, and two insurance companies, which dispute the bank's claim that it needs millions to cover 9/11 losses, including the cost of tearing down the damaged tower.

But sources told The Post the negotiations have expanded to cover all the issues regarding the bank's property, which development officials want to integrate into the World Trade Center site, to make room for a new office building and underground truck ramps and parking.

Officials hope to announce a deal in the next few weeks, Lower Manhattan Development Corp. chairman John Whitehead said at an LMDC board meeting Tuesday.

The Port Authority, which owns Ground Zero, would ultimately control the Deutsche Bank site.

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

Pottebaum

January 24th, 2004, 04:52 PM

Will Deutsche Bank be occupying one of the new WTC towers?

ZippyTheChimp

January 24th, 2004, 07:15 PM

Deutsche Bank purchased 60 Wall St and moved their US headquarters to that location in 2002.

Pottebaum

January 24th, 2004, 07:26 PM

oh, okay. Thanks, Zippy.

EDIT: But isn't 60 Wall St. the HQ of J.P Morgan?

JMGarcia

January 24th, 2004, 07:33 PM

JP Morgan sold it when they merged with Chase. Chase's headquarters is now Chase/JP Morgan's headquarters.

BigMac

January 24th, 2004, 07:51 PM

Did the World Trade Center have an official website of sorts (containing tourist information, history, etc.) before its destruction?

Pottebaum

January 24th, 2004, 08:53 PM

I'm sure it did. Most major buildings do.

When is the J.P Morgan Chase HQ now?

NoyokA

January 25th, 2004, 03:45 PM

I'm sure it did. Most major buildings do.

When is the J.P Morgan Chase HQ now?

270 Park Avenue. Built for Union Carbide and designed by Internationalist, Gordon Burnshaft.

BigMac

January 25th, 2004, 04:15 PM

I was just studying the site plan (http://www.som.com/press_release/SitePlan.jpg). What is the small triangular area (bordered by Greenwich, West Broadway, and Barclay) supposed to be?

Gulcrapek

January 25th, 2004, 04:27 PM

The little park/fountain next to 7WTC.

BigMac

January 25th, 2004, 04:29 PM

The little park/fountain next to 7WTC.

Thanks...that will make a nice entrance into the area.

BigMac

January 28th, 2004, 03:22 PM

One aspect of the twin towers I appreciated was their offset positions from each other; one tower did not directly block the view when looking out from the other tower. It just occurred to me while studying the new model (pictured below) of towers 3 and 4 that, depending on which side you're looking out from in either tower, your view could be completely obstructed by the other building. Because this would have a negative impact on real estate, I could almost see these two towers being more effective when combined into one larger building. That, or have them offset.

http://www.lowermanhattan.info/images/news/73t_gt_calatrava_insite_sm.jpg

JMGarcia

January 28th, 2004, 03:42 PM

The are actually offset as you can see in the site plan.

http://www.som.com/press_release/thumbnails/SitePlan.jpg

Of course that could change when the architects that actually design them do so.

BigMac

January 28th, 2004, 03:44 PM

Of course that could change when the architects that actually design them do so.

Good point; I'm sure that would be one of the issues addressed. Speaking of which, is there a timetable yet for the other towers (not for completion, but for design selection)?

Also, I'm wondering if that element of the site plan has since become outdated, as have some of the other elements (like the original memorial cultural buildings).

TLOZ Link5

January 28th, 2004, 09:39 PM

And the shape of the transit hub. Yes, it's probably outdated.

BigMac

January 30th, 2004, 07:52 AM

New York Post

Ground Zero Rebuild Cost To Hit $11B

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

January 30, 2004

Rebuilding the office and retail space at the World Trade Center will cost close to $7.5 billion — part of a total Ground Zero reconstruction tab of more than $11 billion, The Post has learned.

The detailed cost estimate, prepared for WTC developer Larry Silverstein by Tishman Construction, puts the staggering expense of downtown rebuilding into stark relief amid questions about where the money will come from.

Silverstein's legal fight with his WTC insurers goes to trial next month — and he has repeatedly said the project hinges on his ability to convince a federal jury that Sept. 11 constituted two separate attacks, one on each tower. He says that should bring him a double insurance payout of close to $7 billion.

Preliminary rulings in the case have gone against him.

"Does anybody have any idea where the money's coming from, except Larry's litigation?" asked a source.

The construction estimate, obtained by The Post, sets the cost of building the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower at $1.6 billion.

Construction costs for the 10 million square feet of office space, including the tower, as well as 800,000 square feet of retail space plus infrastructure and below-ground work, are estimated to reach $7.4 to $7.8 billion.

But when Silverstein's rent payments to the Port Authority and huge legal costs are added in, the construction figure balloons "to above $9 billion," the developer said in a letter accompanying the estimate.

The estimate was delivered this week to the PA, which owns Ground Zero and will be will be responsible for a large chunk of the cost.

The analysis does not include other major expenses, such as the PATH rail hub and the memorial, which sources said raised the overall WTC total to more than $11 billion.

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

ZippyTheChimp

January 30th, 2004, 06:50 PM

American National Theatre Unveils Future Home

Entertainment Design Online, Jan 28 2004

The much-publicized American National Theatre, Inc. (Sean Cullen, President) presented the architectural model of its proposed three-theatre facility in Lower Manhattan on Monday, January 26th at The Odeon restaurant (145 West Broadway) to members of the press and supporters of the organization.

The American National Theatre building will be composed of three state-of-the-art theatres, a 1,000-seat proscenium, a 700-seat thrust, and a 400-seat black box. The striking structure was created through a collaborative effort between The ANT, Richard Olcott, a design partner in Polshek Partnership Architects and Steve Friedlander of Auerbach.Pollock.Friedlander. Olcott designed the impressive glass and steel structure to be incorporated into the plan for the arts center at the WTC site, conceived by architect Daniel Libeskind. Friedlander had the task of planning a space that would both reflect the vision of The American National Theatre as well as the premiere cultural center in Lower Manhattan, which could also be adapted for alternative locations throughout Manhattan.

The vision for the building features a variety of gathering areas off of the great hall, which would be open to the public during the day and evening. These spaces amenities would include a restaurant, a gift shop and viewing room for audio-visual presentations on all of the current and future theatrical works at the theatre, along with news about the originating theatres, their artists and their cities, which produce the selected plays and musicals for presentation at The ANT.

“Richard and Steve have dreamed this dream of a national theatre right along with us. They worked tirelessly to create a building that, like the mission of The ANT is unique in its concept and scope,” says Cullen.

Friedlander allocated and designed the space configuration for this full-service theatre operation, considering the multi-purpose requirements for The American National Theatre as well as the available footprint at the WTC site. “While the design is clearly specific to the WTC site, it will be adaptable and quite easy to move to any other site,” says Friedlander.

The American National Theatre, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to establishing a national theatre that will identify and present America’s most excellent and distinguished new theatrical works – both plays and musicals – in a full-service three-theatre facility in New York City.

Polshek Partnership Architects is an award-winning, internationally recognized architectural firm now in its fortieth year. The seven partners proceed from the shared belief that the most elegant architectural responses are both technically and socially relevant to their time and place. Characterized by a collaborative process, the architectural solutions are rooted in extensive research involving the analysis of context, program, public image and environmental and construction technologies. The firm's extensive portfolio of projects for the performing and visual arts and academic and not-for-profit institutions includes the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Hall Restoration and Renovation, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Museum of Art Renovation and Expansion, The Santa Fe Opera, Omaha Performing Arts Center and the Center for the Arts Theater at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

Auerbach-Pollock-Friedlander Performing Arts/Media Facilities Planning and Design, and Auerbach - Glasow, Architectural Lighting Design and Consulting, are among the leading theatre, media facilities and lighting consulting firms in practice today. Founded in 1972, the firm has developed over the past 30 years from a small, regional entity into an international firm with an extensive portfolio of award-winning projects.

Polshek Partnership's relationship with Auerbach-Pollock-Friedlander dates back to 1987, with the initial planning and design of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theatre in San Francisco. Over the course of more than 15 years, the firms have teamed to provide excellence in performance venue design with significant, award-winning facilities, including the Santa Fe Opera Theater; Copia - The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts; the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History; Symphony Space and the recently-opened Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York.

© 2004, Primedia Business Magazines and Media, a PRIMEDIA company.

From Downtown Express http://www.downtownexpress.com/

Theater idea released

By Josh Rogers

The American National Theatre released this design for a $200-million three-theater space to be built adjacent to the proposed Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site. The design by Richard Olcott of Polshek Partnership, would be a home for the theater group, which would form a jury to select the best 15 plays in regional non-profit theaters across the country.

Sean Cullen, ANT’s founder, said Wednesday at an unveiling announcement at the Odeon in Tribeca, that he’s committed to opening the theater somewhere but it would be an honor to be at the W.T.C., a “nationally recognized or sacred location.” He said non-profit theater groups in New York will also be recruited to participate. “There are at least 10 theaters from the Lower East Side to the Upper West that we’d love to have as members.”

The group is backed by Meryl Streep, Blair Brown and Harold Prince, among others.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is expected to release a report soon on the cultural organizations which submitted plans for the W.T.C. last September.

Madelyn Wils, an L.M.D.C. board member, said she expects to see the report within the next two weeks and assumes it will be publicly released soon after that. She anticipates that it will identify the organizations with the most feasible proposals.

—Josh Rogers

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_38/theater.jpg

NoyokA

January 30th, 2004, 08:02 PM

Very Polshek....

fioco

February 1st, 2004, 12:40 AM

Wow! This sets a high standard for the other arts proposals to match. I'm encouraged that the vision for ANT is so broad. Their commitment is proven by the architects' flexibility of design for another location if necessary.

While primary attention has been focused on the Memorial competition and the Freedom Tower soap opera, the ancillary developments are stealing the design show. From the renderings alone, I can imagine ascending through the Calatrava transit portal for an evening of theatre across the street. City Opera downtown at the WTC was always a long shot but they seem to share the same determination as ANT. Perhaps in joint venture with other arts organizations City Opera will also create a home somewhere downtown. It's difficult to imagine how different things will actually be in ten years. I hope I'm alive to see it.

billyblancoNYC

February 1st, 2004, 06:30 PM

So, what, this is part of the cultural building at the WTC or part of the FT? They are definitely going to be a tenant? Would be very cool if this was in ADDITION to the WTC cultural center proper.

ZippyTheChimp

February 2nd, 2004, 08:37 AM

The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/

SLINGS AND ARROWS

by PAUL GOLDBERGER

The architectural machinations at Ground Zero can be treacherous

Issue of 2004-02-09

Every time a new design element for Ground Zero is announced, the presentation room overflows with public officials. Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg give speeches hailing the planning process as democracy in action and congratulate each other for making it all possible, and the architects describe their projects in a humble, low-key manner. Protocol is as precise as that of a state dinner, and everyone is excruciatingly polite. But it was a hard act to bring off at the press conference in mid-December where the design for Freedom Tower, which is intended to be the world’s tallest skyscraper, was unveiled. David Childs, the architect who was in charge of the design, and Daniel Libeskind, who created the master plan for Ground Zero and was supposedly Childs’s partner on the tower, were barely speaking to each other. They had fought bitterly during their collaboration, which was forced on them by Pataki. Neither man was fully happy with the result, and, while Libeskind endorsed the design as consistent with the principles of his plan, he mentioned Childs’s name only once, in a pro-forma way.

Things were not quite what they seemed on January 14th, either, when the memorial designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker was presented. After the political speeches, Arad, who is only thirty-four, spoke earnestly about his intentions, and Peter Walker, who is seventy-one and an eminent landscape architect, said a few words. Then Libeskind, as usual, talked about how well the memorial fit in with his master plan. In fact, of course, Michael Arad’s design (Walker got involved only after Arad was selected as one of eight finalists, in November) did away with what had been considered the most fundamental aspect of Libeskind’s original proposal, the sunken pit in which a memorial was to be placed. Libeskind had insisted that the entire foundation area of the twin towers be left open to a level of thirty feet below the sidewalk, and that a large portion of the surviving slurry wall of the old concrete structure be exposed. Arad ignored all this, although part of the slurry wall was exposed in the revised plan that he worked out with Walker.

Is Libeskind a masochist, or simply more of a politician than the politicians? Twice in the space of a month, he stood next to the governor, the mayor, and officials from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority—his clients—as they made announcements that altered key portions of his master plan for Ground Zero. He could not get away with faking much good cheer at the unveiling of Freedom Tower, since the press had already reported that there was friction between him and Childs, but he radiated bonhomie at the memorial announcement. A little over a week later, at the unveiling of Santiago Calatrava’s model for a spectacular new path terminal, he was positively ebullient, although Calatrava had all but usurped the role that Libeskind had hoped for as the shaper of iconic architecture at the site. He had also appropriated Libeskind’s original Wedge of Light idea into the actual architecture of his building. (That could be considered a form of flattery, but it was probably more of a rescue operation, since Libeskind’s Wedge of Light Plaza never seemed quite workable.)

Libeskind was horrified when the jury selected Michael Arad and Peter Walker’s plan for the memorial. He told Kevin Rampe, the head of the L.M.D.C., that the jury had undermined two years of his work. He was not alone in thinking that a slight was intended. Some people believed that Arad had been selected as a finalist just so that the jury could assert its independence from the rest of the planning process. Arad not only raised most of Libeskind’s sunken memorial site but eliminated the angular museum building that Libeskind had proposed for the northern end of Ground Zero—the building that projected over a portion of the north tower’s footprint. Arad suggested instead a long, narrow slab of a building that would run along the western edge of the site, and that would have walled off the memorial from West Street and the World Financial Center, in Battery Park City. Nevertheless, his submission was the sharpest and the least sentimental of the eight designs that got into the final segment of the competition. He proposed marking the footprints of the Twin Towers with sunken reflecting pools, and he left most of the ground level open as a stark plaza. Compared with many of the other designs, which employed shimmering lights, water, and gardens, Arad was tough. He used austerity to suggest emptiness and loss, and he avoided kitsch.

The memorial competition, which attracted 5,201 submissions, was conducted apart from the other planning for Ground Zero. It was organized by the L.M.D.C., which is a government agency, but the judging was done by a jury that consisted mainly of art and architecture experts and civic leaders who had been assured that they could operate without political interference. When Arad was named the winner, Daniel Libeskind was not the only person in a bind. Kevin Rampe couldn’t reverse the independent jury, nor could he afford to alienate Libeskind, whose ideas for Ground Zero had been enthusiastically endorsed by Pataki, Rampe’s boss. The solution to this dilemma was, like everything else at Ground Zero, a delicately stitched-together web of politics, policy, and disingenuous public statements. First, Rampe told Arad that his awkward slab building along West Street had to go, and Arad agreed that he would not have any say over the location or the design of cultural buildings at Ground Zero. Then Libeskind and the L.M.D.C.’s director of planning and design, Andrew Winters, were brought into the memorial planning process. Winters had been reviewing all of the finalists’ designs, but he was not permitted to report his findings directly to the designers, because it would have been considered interference. Winters’s comments were filtered through the jury, many of whose members didn’t feel much obligation to the master plan. After the final selection was announced, on January 6th, Arad, Walker, and Libeskind were given a week to prepare something that they could all agree on, before the public unveiling.

Arad’s relationship with Peter Walker turned out to be critical. Walker is an aesthetic minimalist, which is unusual among landscape designers, and it made him an ideal partner, not to say mentor, for Arad in the continuing evolution of the design. Walker was not a natural colleague for Libeskind—they had recently clashed over landscaping plans for a museum in Denver that Libeskind was designing, and Walker was replaced as the museum’s landscape architect—but Libeskind went with Arad to Walker’s office in Berkeley, with a sheaf of drawings for the master plan under his arm, and they spent a day trying to find some common ground. Only then, Libeskind said later, did he realize that Arad and Walker didn’t understand that certain things in the master plan, like the location of train tracks, service areas, and so forth, were already fixed. “I said, ‘Michael, you can’t just change a ramp, because it affects so many things that are already set underground, like the concourses, the width of streets, the stations,’” Libeskind told me. “It became clear that they had talked to no one but the jury.”

After his wall-like structure on West Street was removed from the scheme, Arad had tried to put the museum building on the southwest corner of the site, but Libeskind moved it back to the northeast corner, where it was in his master plan. He did, however, give up the idea of cantilevering the building over the footprint of the north tower. It was moved closer to the street, which was an improvement, since it reinforced the major intersection of Fulton and Greenwich Streets. Libeskind stopped insisting on a large pit for the site, and he agreed to endorse Arad’s proposal to excavate only the footprints of the towers. He seems to have genuinely come to like Arad’s scheme in its current version, especially with the subtle geometric pattern of deciduous trees that Peter Walker added to the plaza. And because the painful battle over Freedom Tower ended in a draw—with more skirmishes surely to come—it was understandable that he wanted to appear diplomatic this time around. Being perceived as a team player might help Libeskind win the commission to design the museum building. So far, he has no building of his own at Ground Zero.

Libeskind must have also realized that although he had garnered public sympathy by taking a stand against Larry Silverstein, the developer who was building Freedom Tower, and by positioning himself as David against the architectural Goliath of Childs’s firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it would be much harder to take on a gifted young architect and a jury that included Maya Lin, the designer of the most revered memorial of our time. Lin was known to have had great influence with her colleagues on the jury, and Arad’s revised design bore a striking resemblance to a sketch she made for the New York Times in 2002.

None of the eight finalists for the memorial design included the twisted, burned shards of steel that remained from the original World Trade Center. Arad told the father of a woman who died on September 11th that he did not include the ruins because “I didn’t want to design a drive-by memorial.” He wanted every visitor to stop and descend into the memorial, and so he included an underground museum that will contain relics of the Trade center. The problem is that an eighty-foot-tall section of steel will never fit in an underground museum, and that large piece is the single most powerful, haunting object that remains from the Trade Center. Its absence is a major shortcoming of Arad and Walker’s design as it now stands.

Daniel Libeskind became famous in the late eighties, when he won the architectural competition for the Jewish Museum in Berlin. His design was a de-facto Holocaust memorial, which was what got built. The competition for the master plan for Ground Zero required a setting for a memorial, but Libeskind went further than that, and all but designed the memorial himself. This powerful and effective element in his plan was widely admired, and it helped get his design selected, but it was destined to conflict with the memorial process sponsored separately by the L.M.D.C. After Libeskind decided to go along with Arad and Walker’s design, he started describing his original master plan in terms that were somewhat different from the way he had described it before. He seemed to want to suggest that he hadn’t made any concessions. The huge depressed area that he had proposed to go around the tower footprints, Libeskind said, was never intended as anything more than “a space that could be used and interpreted in any way the competitors chose to use it.”

There is still no clear sense of how much the master plan means, or of how precisely its directives will be followed. Libeskind tends to talk about it as a set of general guidelines when he likes what other architects have in mind, and as a series of ironclad rules when he doesn’t. It’s true that when Libeskind was selected as the master planner, a year ago, he didn’t earn the right to design the buildings that would go up at Ground Zero. But it’s also true that all the architects who were commissioned to come up with site plans produced designs for actual buildings, just as Libeskind did, and that when Libeskind’s plan was chosen the public was given the impression that it was getting not just a site plan for Ground Zero but a fairly complete vision for the sixteen acres. That is clearly not going to be the case.

The muddied lines of authority are most pronounced in the plans for Freedom Tower. Larry Silverstein, the developer, wants to be in charge, and so does the L.M.D.C., and so does the governor, and so do the architects. The design at present has an awkward top that comes partly from David Childs’s early schemes for a symmetrical crown, partly from Libeskind’s designs for an asymmetrical spire, and partly from the engineer Guy Nordenson, who conceived the structural system of cables that surround a windmill farm. Nobody knows how well the windmills will work, but, then again, Larry Silverstein hasn’t promised to pay for them, and a lot of people close to the project think that the whole top may disappear. If it does, there is not much left to make the building special, since Libeskind’s original vision for the tower, a seventy-story office building of glass with a slanted top joined to a skeletal spire that would rise to 1,776 feet, is already gone. The design as it now stands bears scant resemblance either to Libeskind’s compelling sketches or to Childs’s original concept. It is an unnatural hybrid made up of the work of two architects, each of whom believed he had the right to design the building himself.

TonyO

February 4th, 2004, 11:28 AM

These articles are from the Wall Street Journal today.

http://home.nyc.rr.com/tottaviano/Silverstein%20article%201a.jpg

http://home.nyc.rr.com/tottaviano/Silverstein%20article%201b.jpg

http://home.nyc.rr.com/tottaviano/Silverstein%20article%202.jpg

ZippyTheChimp

February 4th, 2004, 02:16 PM

Poor Larry. His case may hinge on the mental state of a key operative.

TonyO

February 4th, 2004, 03:42 PM

Larry is really in a precarious position. It's very interesting because the risk of default is high. This whole process for the buildings (other than the transit center which is guaranteed federal funding) could be moot.

Jasonik

February 4th, 2004, 04:10 PM

Poor Pataki. He would be politically emasculated w/out his Freedom Tower.

BigMac

February 7th, 2004, 09:25 PM

The New York Times

February 8, 2004

In Depths of Ground Zero, Historic Notice Can't Wait

By DAVID DUNLAP

History does not have to wait its customary half-century. Even now, the World Trade Center site merits inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, according to a determination made on Friday by three government agencies.

The agencies, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Federal Transit Administration and the Federal Highway Administration, did not actually nominate ground zero or place it on the register. But their finding would have much the same practical effect by requiring that, if possible, ways be found to avoid or reduce any damaging impacts that redevelopment might have on the site's historic nature.

And that is considerable. "The surviving physical features at the site, including the large bathtub, slurry walls and the surviving bases of steel columns, convey the tragedy and destruction that took place on Sept. 11," the 19-page document concluded.

The National Park Service keeps the register, which now lists nearly 82,000 places. It does not ordinarily consider a property whose significance goes back less than a half-century, unless what happened there was of exceptional importance.

(An example in Manhattan is the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, often called the birthplace of the gay civil rights movement because of an uprising by bar patrons during a police raid in 1969. It was added to the register 30 years later.)

In the case of the trade center, the agencies said there was already more than enough evidence of the exceptional importance of the terrorist attacks in United States history, including the "deaths of an unprecedented number of individuals in a single location resulting from foreign attacks on American soil."

Kevin M. Rampe, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said the determination reflected his agency's overall approach to the site.

"From the beginning, we've been committed to ensuring that the historic nature of the site is not only recognized, but preserved," Mr. Rampe said, "while at the same time restoring the site to its historic role as a center of commerce, as it was on Sept. 11."

While almost no one would dispute the historic nature of the attack, there has been considerable uncertainty and debate over the significance of the physical remains.

Three months ago, in the face of a growing preservation campaign, the corporation required the finalists in the memorial competition to ensure that their designs would provide future visitors with access to the lowermost foundations of the twin towers. Earlier rules said only that the tower outlines, or footprints, should be made visible in the memorial design.

Remnants of the enormous steel columns that define the footprints were among the existing features highlighted in the new document. It also noted the presence of:

- The towers' interior columns and elevator pits, pumps and drainage lines.

- A heavily damaged stairway and escalator structure that once led up from Vesey Street to the trade center plaza and a pedestrian bridge leading to 7 World Trade Center.

- Vestiges of the 95-year-old terminal of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, predecessor of the PATH system, including two cast-iron tubes through which trains ran.

- Parts of six floors of the underground parking garage, where smoke scars from the attack are still visible, and openings in the foundation wall that once led to the garage from ramps in the middle of West Street.

- Holes for two pairs of pipes, with diameters of 60 inches and 66 inches, that were used to pump water between the Hudson River and the trade center's cooling system.

"Physical features surviving on the site that have structural, functional and material integrity retain their quality of association with the profound events of that day, as well as the post-Sept. 11 recovery effort," the document said. "Although buildings and infrastructure within the W.T.C. were destroyed and their ruins removed, the physical environment surrounding the W.T.C. site remains essentially as it was on Sept. 11."

The review is required by the National Historic Preservation Act for projects that receive federal financing. These include the permanent PATH terminal, the rebuilding of West Street-Route 9A and the overall planning by the development corporation, which is supported by a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

More than 60 "consulting parties" - including relatives of those who died in the attack, city and state officials, three United States representatives, planners and architects, property owners and tribal representatives - are also participating.

They will have 30 days to comment, said Irene Chang, the vice president for legal affairs and counsel at the development corporation, after which the agencies will determine what adverse effects their projects might have on historical resources.

One consulting party, the Coalition of 9/11 Families, raised objections to a Jan. 21 draft, which did not distinguish the boxlike perimeter columns from other structural remains. Apparently in response, the final version described the "box beam column footings that outline the space where the twin towers stood."

Ms. Chang also said the final document included a greater discussion of precolonial history of the site, at the request of the Shinnecock and Delaware Indian nations.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company