I am more than satisfied; I believe that the final design surpasses that of the original World Trade Center. 10/10
While nothing may ever live up to the Twin Towers, I am wholly satisfied with the new World Trade Center; it is a new symbol for a new era. 7/10
I have come to terms with the new World Trade Center; although it has a number of flaws, I find the design to be acceptable. 5/10
I am wholly disappointed with the New World Trade Center; we will live to regret the final design. 0/10
I am biased, but honest, and hate anything that is not a reincarnation of the original Twin Towers.
You're off topic. Tax whining should be posted in New York Guide for New Yorkers Forum.
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.
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
....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?
Very astute observation. Kind of makes you wonder if Pataki really backs Libeskind.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?
Nina should have been on this by now.
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
The World Trade Center Memorial Competition Finalists are selected and have been refining their designs:
CNN item: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast...ial/index.html
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.
I mean, outweigh *not* raising it!
:?
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
Okay, fine. Maybe I was a teensy bit wrong about Pataki.
Something else to look forward to.
(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."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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!
Downtown Express photo...
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.
Images taken today (Nov 1) of the new temporary pedestrian bridge accross West St...
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