Cuozzo Slams Trump

Steve Cuozzo, who covers real estate issues for the NY Post, has slammed Trump for getting into the WTC reconstruction act. Cuozzo thinks that Trump is simply going to gum up the works by adding more rhetoric to a project that is already well off-track.

I disagree. Trump rightly shines light on a disjointed and dispirited rebuilding effort. The entire WTC rebuilding project has ground to a halt over security concerns, design concerns over the Freedom Tower, and just about every other aspect.

The only thing that seems to have made progress is how the fountains for the memorial will built, although that too is in a design phase as engineers try to figure out how to make the fountains work in all weather conditions.

Whether one agrees with rebuilding the Twin Towers along the lines of the Gardner plan, or in some other fashion, people are waking up to the fact that it is more than three years later and Ground Zero is still essentially a hole in the ground.

It shouldn't have to be that way.

Detractors like to point out that the WTC took 30 years to reach full occupancy, and that the design was not loved. Those are the facts.

Also, the fact was that the WTC was at full occupancy when the 9/11 attacks came, and the mall underground had undergone a renaissance over the last few years. The site was well regarded and conceding office space now is a short sighted idea. Building a single Freedom Tower, and then lining the rest of the site with lowrises is not the way to go because it means the amount of space able to be dedicated to all the uses (museums, cultural space, memorials), have to be shoehorned into an ever-smaller space.

Twin Towers or any other design that builds two major skyscrapers (Foster's Kissing Towers, for example) would alleviate the need to shoehorn. It opens up the maximum amount of space for those other purposes. Anyone who can read a map can figure that out on their own. It's time that those involved in the WTC reconstruction saw that as well.

Libeskind himself responded to Trump's press conference, saying his plan "is not just about commercial buildings," and that the arts center, museum and memorial are all "there for a reason."

No kidding.