The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 70

Both the NY Post and NY Times are reporting that the Port Authority has asked the WTC Memorial Foundation to take over the construction of the memorial at Ground Zero.

From the Post:

The Port Authority has created a new furor at Ground Zero by trying to grab control of the construction of the World Trade Center memorial, The Post has learned.

Sources said the bi-state agency suddenly asked the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation — formed a year ago to oversee the funding, construction and operation of the memorial — to halt plans to hire a general contractor.

"They want to do it themselves. This makes it a government project," said a source. "This basically kills the fund-raising."

The foundation has already taken in more than $100 million toward the estimated $500 million cost of the memorial and associated structures.

Debra Burlingame, a member of the foundation board, said she was surprised to hear of the PA's move.

Meanwhile, the Port Authority has released new drawings of how it would like to see the retail corridor. The Times notes:

Renderings released by the authority offered the first glimpse of what stores might look like between Liberty Street and the future PATH terminal, even before two planned office towers get built there. They showed two short structures linked by a covered galleria where Cortlandt Street once ran, with almost as much retail space above and below ground - 375,000 square feet - as there was in the original trade center concourse.

The stores would not begin to open until around 2010. No tenants have been chosen, though large multilevel spaces suggest the possibility of mini-department stores. And there are many points of potential dispute yet to be negotiated, including the fate of Cortlandt Street, which the city would like to keep open.

Other talks about the trade center site in coming weeks will involve the possibility of the Port Authority assuming construction duties from the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, the 11-month-old private nonprofit corporation that is to finance, own and operate the memorial and the memorial museum.

That would probably simplify the engineering of an extraordinarily complex three-dimensional underground puzzle. It might streamline construction, reduce the haggling over who pays what for the common infrastructure, and even cut costs.

But it could also complicate the foundation's fund-raising if donors balked at giving money under the impression that the project was being financed by the authority.

It is that last part that has people involved in the project, like Debra Burlingame, worried. People who are donating to the Memorial Foundation may balk at contributing if the Port Authority is in charge of the construction. I think that fear is unwarranted, and the benefits of having the Port Authority involved not only means that the memorial will get built, but it will be done with the Port Authority's considerable expertise in managing large projects.

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