The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 98

The National Trust For Historic Preservation now says that the memorial plan will adversely affect remnants of the Twin Towers.

To a growing chorus of criticism of the World Trade Center memorial and museum — that it may be unsafe, that it will not properly honor the dead, that it is too much of a fund-raising challenge — the National Trust for Historic Preservation has added its own concern: that it would cause the "substantial destruction" of the remaining foundations of the twin towers.

The preservation battle, occurring just as construction of the memorial is about to begin, turns in part on significantly different interpretations of what constitutes the towers' historically important footprints.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has planned memorial space, exhibition galleries and mechanical equipment rooms within the perimeters formed by the truncated underground remnants of the columns that once supported the towers' facades. This would require new walls inside the tower outlines and new floors over those parts of the original concrete foundation slabs that are heavily damaged or otherwise unusable.

Sixty-nine of 84 perimeter column remnants from the north tower and 35 of 73 column remnants from the south tower would remain visible and accessible as part of the memorial museum. (Almost half the south tower columns fall within the adjacent PATH terminal.)

The feds, meanwhile, are continuing to look at the possible health impact from the collapse of the WTC complex.

And in an interesting turn of events, Bruce Willis and Halle Berry are filming a movie in the nearly completed 7 WTC. They've turned the entire 25th floor into a set, and that can only help drum up business for the tower, which sorely needs more tenants.

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