The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 52

So, people are finally realizing that Governor Pataki hasn't exactly done a stirling job of rebuilding at the WTC? NY Newsday ran a poll that said that 65% of participants would want Mayor Bloomberg to run the show at Ground Zero. Governor Pataki got 18%. That part got the headlines. This is the rest of the story:

But 47 percent of New Yorkers say redevelopment of lower Manhattan is going either very well or somewhat well, while 42 percent say it is going somewhat badly or very badly.

And despite ongoing controversies over the design of the Freedom Tower and the presence of cultural institutions at ground zero, 66 percent of city voters say they are confident that the site can be fully restored within 10 years from today, while 25 percent are not.

"Even with all the fuss about the World Trade Center, two-thirds of New Yorkers think it will be put together again within a decade," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Despite all the problems, many of them self inflicted by Governor Pataki himself, most people think that the site will be rebuilt in the next 10 years. That's a far cry from those folks who thought that the site would be rebuilt by 2011, the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, though the poll didn't check for that.

The poll also didn't compare whether people would rather see someone like Donald Trump in charge of rebuilding as opposed to Bloomberg or Pataki. I have a sneaking suspicion that Trump would have won that polling hands down. After all, the Mayor's redevelopment projects haven't exactly won folks over either; he lost on the West Side Stadium after being sabotaged by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (who got hundreds of millions from Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg and still voted the stadium down), and the Atlantic Yards project is still up in the air.

There's also the fact that the only permanent structure rebuilt after being destroyed on 9/11 was the one owned by Larry Silverstein, who has the 99-year rights to the WTC site. One could make an argument that if the LMDC and Gov. Pataki didn't hamstring Silverstein's efforts by placing more emphasis on cultural components that have nothing to do with the site itself, Silverstein could have gotten rebuilding on the WTC site underway far sooner.

We're also learning what kinds of artifacts and items will be housed at the 9/11 museum. The NY Post reports that the museum wont pull any punches, which is a good thing:

The preliminary plan for the 110,000-square-foot museum that will descend to bedrock around the footprints of the Twin Towers is based on recommendations of a panel of 9/11 families, rescue workers, survivors, neighbors and historians.

One message from family members was not to pull any punches in telling the story of Sept. 11 and the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers in order to convey the full impact of the loss and suffering.

Following that advice, Howard said, means that some of the exhibit will be too difficult for kids and family members to view. They will be able to ride an elevator past the mangled artifacts directly to memorial areas on bedrock, he said.

The museum will also include contemplative areas, including the truncated box-beams that mark each base of the Twin Towers and the slurry wall that rises 60 feet to street level, where an entry pavilion will be located.

Howard said the entry pavilion would have a "touchstone artifact," possibly a section of the trade center concourse exterior that included the signature "trident" shape as the steel columns at the base divided into three vertical columns.

The memorial and museum will be overseen by the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which has to raise $500 million for the project.

So far, so good. Here's the troubling part:

Plans laid out this week do not include possible uses of an above-ground museum building that was going to house the controversial International Freedom Center, which was yanked from Ground Zero last month by Gov. Pataki.

It's silly not to include an above-ground component for the museum and instead forcing people to move to the underground museum complex. In a site where the developers are often caught complaining about a lack of space, we've got an opportunity to use over 100,000 sq. ft. of space that has been opened up by the departure of the IFC and The Drawing Center for additional museum space. Use it.

UPDATE:
Suitably Flip wonders whether the usual suspects will seek to sanitize the museum because it might get people emotionally involved. I think the usual suspects, like the New York Times will carp about it. They'll worry about the emotional impact it will have on kids and sensitive people. I say - if you're going to recount the story of 9/11 the only way to do it is to put it all out there - the horrors of the day and without holding anything back.

If that gets visitors to Ground Zero, it should. 9/11 was about premeditated murder by suicidal terrorists who wanted to kill tens of thousands of people on that day. They succeeded in killing 2,749 at the WTC alone. We'll be living with the repercussions of that day for years to come. And I'm not just talking about the war against the Islamofascists, but with the rebuilding in Lower Manhattan.

UPDATE:
New York Newsday is carrying a story that some families are fighting the Santiago Calatrava transit hub. They're complaining that it would intrude on the footprints of the former twin towers.

This isn't a new issue; it's been known from very early on that the rail lines that make up the PATH system would crisscross the footprint of one of the towers. What is new is that they're suing the Port Authority:

A lawsuit seeking to stop the construction of the permanent station for the Port Authority Trans-Hudson service commonly known as PATH trains was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Thursday.

The Coalition of 9/11 Families Inc. brought the action against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the 16-acre site where the trade center stood, and federal transit agencies that are funding the building of the PATH station.

Construction on the transportation hub, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, began on Sept. 12. Part of the five-level station, which would connect several downtown subway lines with the PATH trains to New Jersey at the trade center site, would build over part of the footprint to the south tower, the lawsuit said.

While the families always knew that about half of the south tower would be covered by the PATH development, the latest plans propose extra train tracks that were never there before Sept. 11 and extra platform, said Anthony Gardner, a member of the coalition who filed suit. The changes would cover a greater part of the south tower and encroach upon the north tower footprint, he said.

"They've never justified the need for this extra platform," Gardner said Friday. "The priority is the commercial and then the history is secondary."

The lawsuit said the proposed PATH terminal should be rejected because there are feasible alternatives that would not intrude on a historic site.

This lawsuit should not go very far, and I doubt that the families will get much mileage out of this suit. This isn't a situation where there is a fear of sharply divergent cultural or political views, but making sure that the rebuilt transit hub meets the City's needs into the future. Also, note that the suit claims that the changes would cover a greater part of the south tower and merely encroach on the north tower. I'm not quite sure that there is an actionable legal theory that the plaintiffs can succeed on. Merely tugging at the heartstring wouldn't normally win the day, even for families of 9/11 victims.

WEEKEND UPDATE 10/15/2005:
The various parties to the rebuilding of Ground Zero have agreed on setting the height for the plaza that runs across the entire site. This is a fundamental necessity to building out the site because various components are keyed off the height, including mechanical spaces and underground spaces. It was a matter of inches.

After months of pushing and pulling, the plaza elevation was finally set last month at 313 feet above a subterranean benchmark known as the World Trade Center Downtown Restoration Program Datum.

"Giving up inches got a lot done," said Steven Plate, deputy director for priority capital programs of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site. "As a result of this effort, we've been able to move forward."

A datum is an imaginary horizontal plane against which a construction project is measured. Typically, it is set far below ground to ensure that all elevations - even those in the deepest subbasement - are above that plane, to avoid construction mistakes.

The trade center datum, related to one originally used for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, the predecessor to PATH, is 297.347 feet below mean sea level.

A higher plaza would have meant more room for utility lines, ductwork, mechanical areas and public spaces below ground. Too much height, however, would have set the memorial plaza apart from its environs, recalling the Austin J. Tobin Plaza of the original World Trade Center, which met West Street as a formidable wall.

In recent weeks, the calibration of the plaza level - which must be set before final construction drawings are prepared - turned largely on reconciling the difference between the Freedom Tower lobby and the roadbed of Greenwich Street.

By adjusting the height, developers were able to get the site to match up at both the east and west sides of the site to the adjacent street in a gentle slope, rather than the abrupt wall that used to exist along West Street. This, in turn, forces compromises in the size of underground spaces, such as where and how PATH utilities may run. And that, in turn, will play a role in how the lawsuit I mentioned yesterday will proceed.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center.