The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 120

The City is locked in a legal battle with families affected by 9/11:

The city is locked in battle with thousands of Ground Zero workers who are demanding a piece of a $1 billion fund created to pay claims against New York City and its contractors arising from the cleanup of post-9/11 debris.
More than 7,000 rescue workers, volunteers and other laborers have joined in a class-action suit, filed in September 2004, that claims they became ill toiling in the toxic ruins.

They charge that the city failed to protect them, to reveal the full extent of the health risks and to enforce safety rules. They seek compensation for their illnesses, some potentially fatal, and medical monitoring for all who worked on or near the pit.

But in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, city lawyers argue that New York is not liable for the workers' medical problems. They say the city enjoys blanket immunity under New York's Disaster Act and Defense Emergency Act, since it was responding as a municipality to a terrorist attack and disaster.

The city "should be free from second-guessing" and from criticism for any mistakes found in hindsight, its lawyers state in the motion, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

The city argues "that the government's ability to engage public and private resources to respond . . . to cataclysmic events should not be compromised by concerns about potential future litigation."

On the one hand, you've got families and workers seeking to be compensated for their injuries, and on the other the City who has to manage to maintain its fiscal situation and may have the protection of sovereign immunity under the state's Disaster Act and Defense Emergency Act.

Meanwhile, Nicole Gelinas looks at 7 WTC and how it shows what private developers can do when unfettered by the political infighting that mars the rest of Ground Zero.

From Seven's top floor, one can see all of Downtown's real estate - and much of it is old. Besides Seven, the World Financial Center provides much of Lower Manhattan's modern office space. But when the rest of the new WTC towers finally rise, the WFC will be 35 years old. Many Downtown office buildings are fast becoming obsolete as office space; owners are converting them into condos.

It's good that Downtown is no longer just a business district. But it's bad for New York's growth if new office towers don't replace the ones disappearing from the market.

Other than Seven World Trade Center, tenants forced out of obsolescent space Downtown have three choices: high-priced Midtown, the World Financial Center (far from transportation) and New Jersey. Once Ground Zero's four modern office towers are done, they'll have another choice: Midtown-style towers close to mass transit.

By finishing Seven, Silverstein has replaced with hope the dread that infused Lower Manhattan after 9/11. Yet pols and the press condemn him - because he's in the private, not the public, sector.

The New York Times looks at the environmentally sensitive 7 WTC and the Hearst Tower, which was designed by Sir Norman Foster's firm (and who could have been the designer of the Ground Zero master plan had the design competition actually looked at whether the designers had experience building skyscrapers and marrying old and new.

New York now has two important test cases, as workers prepare to occupy the city's first officially green office towers. Seven World Trade Center, a 52-story, $7 million replacement for the building that fell at that address on 9/11, was certified by the U.S. Green Building Council last month. The 46-story Hearst Tower, on 57th Street near Eighth Avenue, is expected to follow suit after completion next month.

Certification was not a simple matter. (In fact the developers turned it into a marketing strategy all its own: "going for the gold" in the race to be first.) In 2000, the council — a coalition of construction-industry leaders — established the LEED system (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which grades buildings in areas like energy and water consumption, indoor-air quality and use of renewable materials. Ratings for this so-called sustainable design range from certified (26 to 32 points) to platinum (52 to 69 points); 39 gets you the gold. Seven World Trade Center received 35 points, which qualified it for a gold rating in the council's pilot program for "core and shell" buildings, with no tenants.

"All gold is not equal," said Frank A. Bennack Jr., former president and chief executive officer of the Hearst Corporation. "We made a basic decision to do a building for the 21st century. We knew it was going to cost more, but we thought it was the right thing to do."

Larry A. Silverstein, the Trade Center building's developer, said, "There was not a question in my mind" to go green. "I'm an asthmatic," he said. "When you have asthma, you realize how important it is to have clean air to breathe."

When Hearst's 2,000 employees return to their $500 million headquarters, expanded by the architect Norman Foster, they will enter an atrium lobby filled with air that has been ventilated and filtered. Hearst executives say it may even be superior to the air outside. "We will have the cleanest air of any other building in the city," boasted Brian G. Schwagerl, Hearst's director of real estate and facilities planning, on a recent tour of the building. "Everything else is gravy."

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