The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 116

Corzine says he isn't to blame for the holdup. Sure he isn't. Corzine, Pataki, and Bloomberg held a 2-hour meeting yesterday (it isn't a secret if we hear about it) to try and hammer things out.
All that you need to know about the problems with the rebuilding process can be summed up with the following description of what happened at the meeting:

It's expected a "joint detailed proposal" from Pataki, Corzine and Bloomberg will be ready to be presented to developer Larry Silverstein within a few days, the source said.

Far from this being a disagreement between Silverstein and the Port Authority, it's a problem that emerges from the competing interests within the Port Authority, and Silverstein is caught in the middle of a bistate battle over rebuilding and allocation of assets. That's not to say that Silverstein shouldn't bear some of the blame for rebuilding, as he tries to get as much money from his deal as possible. There has to be some give and take, and it definitely appears that the Port Authority and Pataki are mostly at fault for the continuing morass at Ground Zero. With a flawed master plan, everything that follows is a result of decisions made months and years ago that are now being reexamined as construction start dates approach.

One has to wonder why Silverstein is now looking to get out from operating the Freedom Tower when he knew that this building, while being the first to be rebuilt on the Ground Zero site (within the bathtub, that is), was in the worst possible location for the initial buildings - as the Church Avenue corridor is seen as being the better location due to proximity to NYC subways and the rebuilt PATH terminal.

Elsewhere, the City Council approved the Yankee Stadium project, which will cost $800 million to build, and the city and state will chip in to build certain infrastructure improvements. At a tune of $200-300 million.

And you mean to tell me that the City can't find a chunk of change to get all the sides to agree on the deal and start the building at Ground Zero? Does no one at the City Council think it odd that they voted on a deal that will result in the city and state spending hundreds of millions on infrastructure at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and that they can't find the money to get Ground Zero rebuilt? Curious. Where are their priorities? I can certainly understand the need to get infrastructure built in the South Bronx to improve traffic and help the economic development of that area, but when we're talking about limited resources, shouldn't they be directed at the area that needs it the most - Ground Zero?


Meanwhile, more bone fragments have been discovered at the Deutsche Bank building. The building is being prepped for deconstruction because it was severely damaged by the attacks and could not be salvaged. The reports that additional bone fragments were discovered comes on the heels of reports that other fragments were found earlier this year at the same site.

Also, investigators reviewing emergency calls from the morning of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks also identified eight more recordings of emergency dispatches and 911 calls from the towers that had previously been overlooked.

Most of the bone fragments discovered over the weekend were found mixed with gravel that had been raked to the sides of the roof of the Deutsche Bank building, which suffered extensive damage when the twin towers collapsed. (Watch as 911 operators struggle to help during the World Trade Center attacks -- 2:31)

"This is the largest find from the Deutsche Bank, and I would not be surprised if additional quantities of remains are found there," Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner's office, told The New York Times in Thursday's editions. "They are still doing the cleanup."

More than four years later, and personnel are still finding remains. Hopefully some families will be able to finally be able to bury remains of their loved ones. Only about half of those killed at the WTC have ever been formally identified through remains.

The medical examiner's office has more than 9,000 unidentified remains from the 2,749 victims of the trade center attack. The remains are being are being stored in the hope that more sophisticated DNA technology will allow for identifications in the future.

Many of the remains being stored are too damaged by heat, exposure, and the elements to be identified using current technologies, even as the medical examiners office and various companies pushed the boundaries of DNA identification to help bring closure to as many families as possible. Every few weeks the office does manage to identify a victim of the terrorist attacks through DNA matches, though the pace has slowed.

UPDATE:
And the battle over the memorial construction is far from over. The memorial foundation wants the Port Authority to pick up the tab for the infrastructure so that the memorial can actually be built. That's a $100 million right there. And the foundation has fallen short on fundraising for the $500 million it says it needs to get the memorial built and funded.

Meanwhile, as noted, the facility's planners have raised a mere $100 million to cover the memorial's putative $500 million cost; taxpayers are locked in for another $200 million.

That still leaves at least $200 million to go - not even counting infrastructure and other costs. And Mayor Bloomberg recently put the bill for the project at a cool $1 billion (about 1,200 times more than the cost of the Vietnam Memorial).

This being New York, that figure is only likely to grow. Not to mention ongoing operating costs.

No wonder Dykstra said last week that she wants to charge admission - a grotesque notion, but understandable, given the memorial's financial hurdles.

And no wonder New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is trying to shake down developer Larry Silverstein for $100 million for the memorial - to the extent that Corzine seems willing to hold up the entire Ground Zero project unless Silverstein antes up (though he denied it yesterday).

There's got to be a better way.

In fact, The Vietnam Memorial can be a useful model.

For $8 million, America got an enormously powerful and majestic monument to the courage and sacrifice of its Vietnam soldiers. Why can't planners do something similar at Ground Zero?

Lest anyone forgets, the Maya Lin design was widely criticized by groups who thought the stark and post modern design wasn't appropriate. The memorial planners even required a traditional statue be built nearby to allay the concerns. It was only after it opened that people realized the design was extremely powerful and a fitting memorial to those who died in Vietnam. Maya Lin is among those who were involved in the memorial selection process.

UPDATE:
Some additional thoughts on the discovery of remains at the Deutsche Bank building. Are there remains to be found at other locations in and around Ground Zero? Just how thorough was the earlier search? These are questions that being raised by families who lost loved ones on 9/11. And they deserve the honest answer.

Some Sept. 11 family members have urged the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. rebuilding agency to have forensic experts search the building first, and many planned to ask Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday to require a team from the medical examiner's office to be on the site at all times.

"This is an abomination that we are putting this on construction workers," said Sally Regenhard, the mother of a firefighter killed at the trade center.

The medical examiner's office has more than 9,000 unidentified remains from the 2,749 victims of the trade center attack. The remains are being are being stored in the hope that more sophisticated DNA technology will allow for identifications in the future. The remains of more than 40 percent of the people killed at the trade center have not been identified.

The newly discovered 911 recordings were identified on two previously overlooked tapes as investigators searched for the voice of a fire department official who died in the trade center.

The fire department said the recordings would be released after they are processed by the city law department. Roughly 130 calls were released Friday after the voices of the callers had been edited out. The voices of the fire and police operators who heard the calls for help were released after The New York Times and victims' relatives sued.

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