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How NOT to Rebuild the World Trade CenterMay 18 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line This should be taken as a reason why any major reconstruction process should not be in the hands of corrupt politicians.
I'll begin with this: I loved the Twin Towers and I still do; I want them back as they were if possible. I'm personally outraged that the rebuilding process is run by cowardly politicians and developers who are more afraid of heights and obsessed with lots of money, often at the expense of magnificent architecture and land use. The Trouble Begins- Not long after the cleanup of the World Trade Center site began, George Pataki said out loud “We will never build on the footprints!”, meaning that he wanted the original footprints of the Twin Towers left empty. Generally the Governor’s word simply cannot be ignored in New York State. At this point I knew there would be trouble. I for one wanted (and still want) the Twin Towers back, not necessarily an exact replica as they were, but at least as tall and solid as the old ones, with improved structure and safety systems I might add. The pro-Twin Towers rebuilding faction, which I still belong to, is not the only one going for a chance at the 16 acres. Soon after the attacks, a group of victims’ families, called mega-memorialists, led by Monica Iken (whose husband Mike was killed in the South Tower) began calling for virtually all the 16 acres to be turned into an empty memorial. Still others and Larry Silverstein himself began talking of putting four 50-floor buildings on site. One group of utopian NIMBY’s even talked of putting a farm on site. The dispute did not end when the last steel beam from the Twin Towers was carried out in a solemn ceremony in May 30. The "We will never build on the footprints!" mantra led to a WTC memorial competition, which in turn resulted in Michael Arad's "memorial down to bedrock" design, which stands as the current standard for a 5-acre memorial. It brings a part of the footprints 70 feet down to bedrock whilc preserving the western wall. If that's not depressing, than what is? The Architectural Competition- The dispute over what should be built on the rest of the site reached a head in July 2002, when a public meeting was held in the Javits Center to hold an architectural competition for six plans for the site made by Beyer Binder Belle. All of them left the footprints of the Twin Towers untouched, surrounded by tall buildings. More than 4,000 people attended the public meeting to discuss the plans and the aesthetics behind them. All six plans were denounced, with most people blasting the plans as too short (none of the building designs exceeded 75 floors), too bland, and too overstuffed with office space. “It looks like Albany!” One guy even said publicly. Needless to say the six plans were scuttled and a new architectural competition was drawn up. Libeskind comes forth- When the second architectural competition was launched in August 2002, a whole slew of architectural firms began coming forth. Eventually nine site plans were selected. Among the best known were the Kissing Towers, two towers with X-shaped steel facades in close proximity to each other, by Lord Norman Foster, The World Cultural Center, a set of two empty latticework towers surrounded by smaller office towers by THINK architects Rafael Vinloy and Fredric Schwartz, and a Memory Foundations site plan by studio Daniel Libeskind, which retained the bathtub and the slurry wall while creating several large buildings with diagonal roofs and a “Wedge of Light”. In February 2003, Governor George Pataki personally selected Daniel Libeskind as the main site plan architect for the site. This despite the fact that Libeskind was one of the lowest ranked designs in public polls. The biggest number favored Foster’s Kissing Towers, with a significant number of people also favoring THINK’s latticework towers. Both of them, needless to say, were routinely denounced by victims’ families and some local NIMBY’s for being too tall and too similar to the old Twin Towers. The Political Autocracy- Why are all these aberrations happening? Because of bureaucratic short-term thinking of course. Technically the WTC site is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a semi-governmental agency set up to coordinate international trade and commerce between the two states. It has long been accused of favoring New Jersey port facilities while allowing ports in New York City itself to decay, especially those in Brooklyn and Staten Island. The PA often gets marching orders from the governors of either state on what can be built or developed. In the case of the WTC site, George Pataki began giving marching orders to the PA; NJ governor Jim McGreevey has largely stayed on the sidelines. The NY state government up in Albany set up the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to supervise the rebuilding of the WTC site and revamp Lower Manhattan as a whole. The LMDC is a quasi-government agency that answers to the Empire State Corporation, a state development agency which in turn takes orders from politicians in Albany- the same Albany whose governor once said that the Twin Towers were bland buildings. Needless to say, the LMDC bureaucrats shared these same sentiments. One LMDC official even said in a press conference: "Sick irnoy or no, the 9-11 attacks have given us a chance to replace and imporve upon the the Twin Towers, which were an architectural mistake to begin with." The Freedumb Tower- Think of a 1,070 foot, 70-floor tower topped with a latticework up to another 330 feet (with wind turbines within them; don’t ask why) then a spire to the side and finally an antenna. Or better yet, think of the WTC North Tower being stripped of all floors above the 71st floor, with windmills impaled within the steel façade, and the tower twisted around, and a spire added to one side of the top facade. You have the Freedom Tower, which the politicians, especially Pataki, want as the trademark building on the 16 acres. In July 2003 Silverstein convinced Libeskind to hire David Childs, a major architect with Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, to help design the new tower. Childs himself had often denounced the original Twin Towers as out of place for Lower Manhattan, detrimental to street life, especially with the central plaza, and lacking in proper aesthetics. Libeskind and Childs often argued about the details of the main tower and the site plan, but that was before George Pataki opened his big mouth. He pressured Libeskind and Childs to work together to design the Freedom Tower, hence the current plan with the stupid latticework. It’s no coincidence either that Pataki gave the name “Freedom Tower” to the trademark building, planned on the northwest corner of the site. The Silverstein Insurance Trial- The estimated cost of building the entire site in whatever shape or form has been estimated as exceeding $9 billion, with some estimates going up to $12 billion or more The insurance trial was clearly a result of Larry Silverstein’s determination to rebuild all 11 million sq. ft. of office space, as he’s obliged to do so under a lease he signed with the Port Authority two months before the 9-11 attacks. He shot himself in the foot to some extent when he announced in January 2003 that he would not allow any building taller than 70 floors. At the same time he fought bitterly over a second $3.5 billion payment he wanted from his insurance policyholders to rebuild the WTC. He is entitled to a minimum of $3.4 billion to rebuild the site, but he wanted to double that amount to 6.8 billion, saying that the Twin Towers were two different entities. The extra $3.5 billion was owned by as many as 25 insurance companies, the largest of which was Swiss Re ($860 million). In May 2004, he took a severe financial beating when two juries ruled in favor of most of the insurance companies, agreeing with the insurance companies’ claim that the attacks on the Twin Towers were a single attack, not the double whammy Silverstein claimed it was. With this verdict, he lost $2.4 billion in insurance money, with another $1 billion still under dispute. Loss of insurance money doesn’t mean the Freedom Tower won’t be constructed. It’s possible that the Pataki Administration could siphon taxpayers' money from 19 million NY State residents to build the 1,050-foot Freedom Tower (estimated to cost at least $1.5 billion- the height excludes the latticework and the spire) and all the shorter buildings around it. Still the $2.4 billion he’s lost so far means that money will not be used to build the Freedom Tower or all its underlings. As of this writing the remaining $1.1 billion was still in dispute. Other Disputes- The one bright light was 7 WTC, where a red building collapsed from fires that erupted within the transformers at the base of the building. The site is on a separate lease from the main big site, so Silverstein could build on the property whatever he wished. Under construction as of this writing was a 52-floor, 755-foot glass tower with a total of 1.6 million sq. ft of office space. The footprint was reduced significantly to allow for a section of Greenwich Street to reach the rest of the site. It turns out that the authorities wanted to restore Greenwich Street through the entire site. Along with the building of 7 WTC, The Dispute over West Street continues, with state plans for a large tunnel under what is now West Street along the entire route down to Battery Park. In late 2001, Albany set aside just over $1 billion in federal funds for a possible tunnel under West Street from the WTC-WFC to the edge of Battery Park, about 1.4 miles down. Equally disconcerting: the Deusche Bank Tower, a 40-floor black office building just south of the 16 acres, took a severe beating from falling debris and steel beams when the Twin Towers collapsed. a 20- foot gap opened in the facade, and for several months maintenance men had to clean up a massive mold infestation that had erupted along the opening. Despite efforts to save it, and perhaps turn it into apartments, the state government desperately bought the land under it, made it a part of the WTC site, and announced that the building would be demolished, for a 50-foot building not much larger than the old one. An older building next door, 90 West Street, narrowly escaped a similar fate. Conclusions - From observation of the perverted rebuilding process, It’s clear that the same state government that built the magnificent and strong (though not structurally flawless) Twin Towers, has now chosen to castrate itself, as have the main developers and architects tied to the site. The major flaws of the Freedom Tower development include a wall of buildings that cut off most of the entire site from the rest of the city, despite new sidewalks, an empty bathtub memorial that is expected to be as windswept as the old plaza if constructed, and a tower with the top third cleaned out of office floors and implanted with wind turbines. In short, the Freedom Tower design symbolizes everything that's wrong with political control of construction processes. Pataki and his lackeys in the LMDC, Silverstein Properties, and Studio Daniel Libeskind want to rebuild Lower Manhattan as inferior to anything resembling the Twin Towers. Will Pataki end up making Lower Manhattan an exact copy of Albany? Let’s hope we don’t find out. Because of bureaucratic backstabbers like Pataki, I’m warming up to the possibility of New York City breaking away from Albany and becoming its own state. Just for the record, it was he who announced plans to break ground on the Freedom Tower on July 4, 2004, no doubt as a political ploy to exploit a national holiday. At the very least, he needs to be dethroned more than anyone else involved in the proposal for the new, castrated WTC. I’ll get a little more into the horror stories coming out of Albany sooner or later, for the screwed-up WTC process is hardly the only one. One more disgrace I'll mention here. NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg opened up a can of worms around the time when the WTC site was cleared of debris. He proposed a land swap in which the Port Authority would gain full control of JFK and Laguardia airports (they currently stand on city land that the PA leases) in return for a large cash payment and the WTC site. Such a land swap would have been disatrous. Not only would the city lose vital payments from the PA for airport land, but the site would have been a lot more likely to see "affordable housing" (read: lo-rise housing projects) next to a depressing memorial with footprints 70 feet down to bedrock. That would have meant no Twin Towers and no "Freedom Tower". Bloomberg aggressively tried to push thorugh that policy in a messianic manner (the same way he pushed through the messianic citywide smoking ban), and dropped the proposal a full year later only when the state government and by extension Pataki refused to support the plan. That's the kind of government administration the Big Apple has to put up with, both city and state-wise.  |
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