The Battle For Ground Zero, Part XXIII

Top Pols Uncertain of Giving To Memorial

What a surprise. Politicans, who happen to include Governor Pataki, are not willing to go on the record for saying that they will donate money to the Memorial project. Why? What's wrong with giving money to the Memorial project at the WTC? Could it have something to do with who is involved? One would think that politicians would fall over themselves to show that they really care about the 9/11 Memorial.

Governor Pataki's refusal to say is especially curious considering that he was the one who decided that the IFC and The Drawing Center should be involved in the Ground Zero reconstruction. If anything, it's his fault that the situation is in its present state.

Trump's WTC/Chicago Dual Personality
Yesterday, I wrote about Trump's criticism of the Fordham Spire, which was being designed by Santiago Calatrava for Chicago developer Christopher T. Carley. It sounds like it is nothing more than sour grapes on Trump's part that his ultraluxury tower in Chicago will be dwarfed by another, larger luxury tower. We see the same kind of massive egos colliding all over the place in the real estate development business - look at the way that Forest City Ratner is coming under fire at the last minute by Gary Barnett over the development of the Atlantic Yards property in Brooklyn. Barnett is still steaming over a loss to Ratner over the NYT Headquarters building, which reaped benefits ranging from condemnation of otherwise solvent and thriving businesses to Liberty Bonds, which were designed with the express intention of rebuilding Lower Manhattan. So, Barnett has invented a plan that could derail the Ratner Brooklyn stadium project. We aren't talking chump change either. These are multibillion dollar projects, so the stakes are high.

Trump's project in Chicago will be successful; what is less clear is whether Calatrava's building will ever be built. There are still tremendous hurdles to overcome, but the Fordham Spire is just the latest sign that architects, developers, and common folk are still looking to the skies for their inspiration. It also reemphasizes the fact that a Twin Towers design could be rebuilt at the WTC site with public and business support.

UPDATE:
City Journal's Steve Malanga has more on the failure to build at Ground Zero.

UPDATE II:(Alternative link to Malanga's article). Some excerpts are interesting and echo the comments made here:

The mayor and governor have responded to criticism of their downtown efforts not with substance but with political maneuvers. They announced a new package of goodies to spread around lower Manhattan in order to win the vote of State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for the Far West Side stadium—an effort that failed to win Silver’s support anyway. While the WTC site sits empty, the mayor and governor earmarked $90 million for parks and playgrounds around downtown, $45 million for grants to local cultural facilities, another $45 million for unspecified “community enhancements,” and $50 million for subsidized housing. Whereas the 1995 downtown revival plan had relied modestly on tax credits and a marketing effort to lure companies downtown, the city and state have now transformed the rebuilding of the WTC site into just another game in the New York state-capitalist racket, in which economic-development tax dollars are spread around to advocacy groups, politically connected nonprofits, and privileged developers to win political favor.

It’s a mark of their misplaced priorities that while the mayor and governor fiddle with hundreds of millions of dollars in trivial amenities, billions in essential federal transportation aid are at risk of going up in smoke. The primary role of government in economic development is to build the infrastructure that can accommodate new growth—like the proposed subway extension to the Far West Side—and inadequate public transportation has long been one of lower Manhattan’s biggest drawbacks. But the slow pace of planning at Ground Zero has jeopardized $2 billion designated to help connect the area to Kennedy Airport, a plan that businesses have hailed as a major boost to the area’s attractiveness.

The mayor and governor forget that New York is not the product of a centrally planned vision and that its economy is not the creation of government but of the private sector. They apparently don’t understand that government did not even create the famous cultural institutions that draw visitors to New York; they are instead largely the product of the enormous private-sector wealth Gotham has generated over the ages. They don’t seem to understand that New York has grown neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, in unpredictable eruptions, giving Gotham the genuine feel of a spontaneously evolving capitalist, democratic city—not the creation of a single autocrat’s or central planner’s mind.

City planning is interrelated, and since financing and funding for various projects are interrelated, delays in one project can jeopardize others. This is what has nearly scuttled the Farley Post Office/Moynihan Penn Station project in Midtown, and I fear that billions in dollars are jeopardized because of political hijinks.

UPDATE III:
Wired New York's NY Skyscraper Forum is a great source for news on Lower Manhattan happenings. For instance, they caught a story about the Tribute in Light finding an interim home atop the TBTA's parking garage at the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.