Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by TomAuch
Smokin hash baby!!!!!! :P
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.
Pataki and Silverstein are doing nothing right now but goofing off. The Freedom Tower won't be scrapped, but I wish that they would make some positive changes to the design.
Smokin hash baby!!!!!! :P
Yeah, and Silverstein rolled up a joint in the shape of the FT
Thank god for the Post. Nobody forced gov Pataki to make those speeches and give dates for things to happen. That really wasn't necessary. Target dates come and go, and no one bothers to ask any questions. Again, thank god for the Post (this time).
NY POST
CRACK THE WHIP
By TOM TOPOUSIS
April 8, 2005
Leading public officials yesterday demanded that Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg pick up the snail-like pace of rebuilding Ground Zero.
"It has really got to move on. People have got to get out of the way. Decisions have to be made. Enough time has gone . . . and now it's implementation time," said state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Troy).
Sen. Charles Schumer said he is very concerned about delays in rebuilding the World Trade Center and lower Manhattan 31/2 years after 9/11 — a problem highlighted in detail on The Post's editorial pages yesterday.
Asked if he is upset over the slow pace, Schumer said he was, adding, "I'm trying to figure out how I can help correct that.
"I'm investigating it right now. I'm getting inside stories from people and I'll be doing something on it," Schumer vowed.
Post real estate columnist Steve Cuozzo wrote that rebuilding downtown has languished in part because Pataki and the Port Authority, which owns the site, have not acted with the sense of urgency needed to overcome obstacles.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) accused Pataki and Bloomberg of breaking their promises to rebuild lower Manhattan.
"Three and a half years ago we all talked patriotically about showing the terrorists that they will not stop New Yorkers, they will not stop Americans, and [now] they're floundering around downtown," Silver said this week.
Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff insisted the focus on projects on the West Side has had no impact on lower Manhattan, as some critics have charged.
"It is a very, very complicated site [downtown] with a complex plan, with complex infrastructure requirements and complex security arrangements and they have to be done right," Doctoroff said.
Spokesmen for the Port Authority and Pataki defended the pace of the rebuilding effort at Ground Zero.
The slow progress in rebuilding downtown has come up at several City Council hearings and is an issue with Speaker Gifford Miller.
"Of course he's concerned about the pace and he thinks the Port Authority and the governor are dragging their heels," said Miller spokesman Steve Sigmund. Additional reporting by David Seifman, Ian Bishop, Jennifer Fermino and Kenneth Lovett.
__________________________________________________ _____
SNAIL'S PACE ANGERS GROUND ZERO VISITORS
By NEIL GRAVES
April 8, 2005 -- Visitors at Ground Zero yesterday — tourists and New Yorkers alike — said it's a shame that 31/2 years after the 9/11 attacks, the hallowed grounds remain largely undeveloped.
Roger Smith, 32, a Brooklyn actor-musician, was among the hundreds who mingled as busloads of tourists and gaggles of high school kids clustered about on a warm day.
"It's a big disappointment," said Smith when asked about the delay, which was highlighted in several articles yesterday on the Post editorial pages.
"People said they would never forget, but I think they have. Their actions don't go with their words. Something should be here. I could have built something in 31/2 years."
Rob Armstrong, a Sparta, N.J., financial planner, also was not pleased with the glacial pace of reconstruction.
"I'd like to know where we are in the process — is there a process?" asked Armstrong, 35.
"I don't want this to take forever. I want the city to get back to semi-normal. I know some of the victims' family members and it must be frustrating to those people."
Steve Dorfman, a lawyer with offices two blocks away, also wanted action.
"I want to see offices down here again," said Dorfman, 34. "All these people who were displaced need to be able to come back."
Kate Campana, 45, a Manhattan homemaker, said, "It takes forever to get things done in this town. There are too many interested parties with lots of power and they screw things up. You need a Robert Moses these days to get things done."
NY TIMES
Leader of Times Sq. Revival to Head Ground Zero Agency
By ROBIN POGREBIN
April 8, 2005
Gretchen Dykstra, the city consumer affairs commissioner, who previously led the redevelopment of Times Square, was named yesterday as president and chief executive of the foundation charged with raising more than $500 million for a memorial and two cultural buildings at ground zero.
The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation was created in December to raise money and run the memorial and the cultural buildings, which include a performing arts center and museum. Its board, which includes David Rockefeller, Robert De Niro, Barbara Walters and Michael D. Eisner, is expected eventually to take over many of the responsibilities of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is overseeing the rebuilding at ground zero.
"It's important, it's historic, it's unique and it's doable," Ms. Dykstra, 57, said of her new job in an interview at the corporation's offices near ground zero. She said she was confident that it would not be hard to drum up financial support - "not for this event, not for this purpose," she said.
"We've got to get moving," she said, adding that the foundation members had "already begun to lay the groundwork."
At a news conference at the trade center site after the foundation's second board meeting yesterday, John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the development corporation, said the foundation began its fund-raising effort about two weeks ago and had already received large financial commitments. He declined to specify the amount, except to say that by large gifts he meant pledges of $10 million to $25 million.
Ms. Dykstra was selected from about 12 candidates, Mr. Whitehead said, because "she has all the qualities we were looking for in a president."
Ms. Dykstra said she would start in her new post sometime next month.
Ms. Dykstra must balance the competing concerns of the parties involved at ground zero, including city and state officials, families of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks, downtown residents, real estate developers and big-name architects.
That may be what she had in mind yesterday when she said it was important "to make sure the process of getting there also makes us proud."
"There are a lot of players," she added, "a lot of pressures."
Plans call for the performing arts center to be shared by the Joyce Theater, which presents dance, and the Signature Theater Company, an off-Broadway company.
The museum is to be shared by the Freedom Center, a nascent organization that plans to focus on human rights exhibitions, and the Drawing Center, which presents drawing shows in SoHo.
But the prospects for all four arts groups remain murky, given that the development corporation has yet to say how much it will contribute toward the groups' construction and operating costs and how much they will have to provide.
The development corporation has delayed its announcement of a design of the performing arts center, by the architect Frank Gehry, citing complications related to fitting both the Joyce and the Signature into a single building with limited space.
Mr. Whitehead spoke of the performing arts center yesterday as part of a "second phase" with a separate fund-raising goal of "roughly $200 million"; the first $500 million will cover the memorial, a memorial center and the museum component, which includes the Freedom Center and Drawing Center. The development corporation later said the $200 million figure was uncertain until a design was completed.
Tom A. Bernstein, the co-founder of the Freedom Center, was appointed to the foundation board yesterday, along with Jonathan M. Tisch, chairman and chief executive of Loews Hotels; Robert Kasdin, senior executive vice president of Columbia University; and Emily Kernan Rafferty, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Three prominent business executives - Sanford I. Weill, Jerry I. Speyer and Henry R. Kravis - declined last year to serve as chairman of the memorial foundation, in part because they came to view the post as a political quagmire.
Ms. Dykstra said she felt prepared for the challenge, largely because of her past work as the president of the Times Square Business Improvement District, which in the 1990's transformed a seedy area dominated by peep shows into a thriving hotel and entertainment district jammed with tourists.
Born on Staten Island and raised in Philadelphia, Ms. Dykstra received her bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's in education and an honorary doctorate from the Bank Street College of Education.
"I am a generalist," she said. "This is a job that has lots of different pieces - fund-raising, capital construction, the ephemeral but essential emotional piece, the global piece."
As consumer affairs commissioner, Ms. Dykstra said, she was particularly proud of helping consumers get refunds under the earned-income tax credit, expanding the list of licensed home improvement contractors and streamlining the approval process for sidewalk cafes.
Donald Trump shouldn't throw stones about monstrosities...Developer Donald Trump has said he hates the Freedom Tower. "I was never a huge fan of the World Trade Center. . . . Then, [the towers] came down. Now, I see pictures and say, 'they were great.' . . . How could they replace [them] with this monstrosity of garbled nonsense?" Trump said in late 2003. But he has yet to put the weight of his new national fame behind rebuilding the towers.
Latest Findings from NIST World Trade Center Investigation
"the buildings would likely not have collapsed under the combined effects of aircraft impact and the subsequent jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires, if the fireproofing had not been dislodged or had been only minimally dislodged by aircraft impact."
read all about it here: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/r..._april0505.htm
NYTIMES:
April 9, 2005
Towers Site Campaign to Bypass Theaters
By ROBIN POGREBIN
It might have gone unnoticed amid the pomp of Thursday's news conference with ground zero as a backdrop and luminaries like Robert De Niro and Michael D. Eisner behind the podium. But buried in the announcement that Gretchen Dykstra had been named the president of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation was one important development: the campaign to raise $500 million for the memorial and two cultural buildings at ground zero will not include the performing arts center being designed by Frank Gehry.
As originally planned, the $500 million would help finance a memorial and a museum complex as well as the performing arts center, to be shared by the Joyce Dance Theater, which specializes in dance, and the Signature Theater Company, an Off Broadway group.
But now the performing arts center will be part of a "second phase," said John C. Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The $500 million, he said, will support only the memorial (which will include an underground interpretive component) and the museum. Fund-raising for the performing arts center is expected to begin after Mr. Gehry's design is finished.
The decision would seem to leave the Joyce and the Signature at a distinct disadvantage. Despite an impressive board that includes Mr. De Niro and Mr. Eisner, it is hard to imagine how the foundation will easily raise half a billion dollars, let alone hundreds of millions more. That is why cultural institutions often combine major capital campaigns with their endowment drives: they know how tough it is to go back and ask again.
Yesterday, the leaders of the two performing arts groups did not seem aware that the $500 million campaign would leave them out. "I have no information to confirm that it will be part of a second phase," said Linda Shelton, president of the Joyce. "I think this memorial board is working that out."
James Houghton, the artistic director of the Signature, said, "It's going to make things more challenging for us, but I think we're still in dialogue about it."
The development corporation insists that the performing arts center is not on the back burner and that design plans for the underground portion of the building are moving ahead. But Mr. Gehry's work is on hold and the development corporation said yesterday that his design would not be announced until the beginning of next year.
Mr. Gehry said yesterday, "We're just waiting for the powers that be to decide when we're ready to go."
At least some foundation trustees are being quite explicit in saying that both cultural organizations are secondary. "We need to make sure that we raise the money for the memorial before thinking about the Freedom Center or any kind of cultural institutions," said Monica Iken, a foundation trustee, whose husband died in the trade center. The museum complex is to be shared by the nascent International Freedom Center, which plans human rights exhibitions, and the Drawing Center, which now presents drawing shows in SoHo.
Another trustee, Thomas S. Johnson, whose son died in the attacks, said, "The No. 1 priority has been and always will be the memorial and the memorial center, and the Freedom Center is part of that."
There is debate whether even the Freedom Center adequately addresses the terrorist attacks and whether the Drawing Center belongs in the complex at all. "That needs to be the first thing we think about: are they 9/11-related?" Ms. Iken said.
Another contingent - which several people involved say includes Kate D. Levin, the city's cultural affairs commissioner, and Agnes Gund, the president emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art - are pushing hard to keep the Drawing Center as part of the museum complex.
The development corporation said there was no total fund-raising target for the performing arts center yet because the design has not been completed. Estimates have projected that building's construction cost alone at about $400 million.
The design delay is due to programming and logistical problems, the development corporation said, in particular, how to move large groups of people arriving at the same curtain time for different performances. "Before you build a building, you've got to build a program," said Kevin Rampe, president of the development corporation.
But Mr. Houghton of the Signature said the issue came down to cost, "matching a design to the budget." Already, he said, the theater company had agreed to consider giving up one of the three theaters in its proposal. "We were under tremendous pressure to cut a theater," he said.
"We were willing to go that far," he added. "We've cut and cut and we're down to a minimum program."
In addition to the foundation's campaign, the development corporation will make a contribution toward the building effort.
Announced Thursday, and potentially significant, is the addition to the memorial foundation board of Tom A. Bernstein, a co-founder, chairman and chief executive of the Freedom Center. None of the other arts groups at ground zero are represented on the board, whose members include Kenneth I. Chenault, the chairman and chief executive of American Express, which has agreed to help sponsor the Freedom Center.
At SSP FT is listed as "on hold" in the buildings database. I am questioning weather FT and the other towers will be built at all. They have botched this terribly.
One last time SSP is not a source. I would compare SSP to something like the National Enquirer, its a good gossip rag.
And I'll counter that again: the NYC database is accurate almost all of the time. I changed FT to on hold because absolutely nothing is happening and the design could be changing. There doesn't need to be an 'official' announcement.
Thanks. You just proved my point, you are not the TIMES or the Post, as far as I know you don’t have any contacts with decision makers, your a layperson putting this building on hold, I wouldn’t hold any credibility to that, because myself another layperson would say its under construction. Point is don’t take what us, essentially, amateurs, say as fact, it’s far too riddled with conjecture and speculation.
It's not amateur.
I take from the Times etc. I don't do things arbitrarily, I wait for sources, and having seen for myself the "progress" at GZ, there's nothing going on, and you've seen articles about the delay and possible design change.
Yea it is...
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