But in the ever-expanding bureaucracy that surrounds ground zero, a new committee established last week by Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is starting a similar but separate exercise with its own experts. That committee is to present its results to the governor and the mayor on June 15.The memorial was accepted by the LMDC nearly 3 years ago, which means construction costs increased by $180 million in the interim - not an insigificant sum of money.
No one knows exactly what the relationship is between the working group and the newly created Memorial and Master Plan Design Committee, led by the developer Frank J. Sciame.
But the creation of yet another organization downtown reflects the suspicion and distrust that exist in the bureaucratic alphabet soup that simmers around ground zero and the memorial.
Some critics, who concede that Mr. Sciame is a talented and knowledgeable developer, suggest that the committees are duplicative and are delaying the process at a time when construction costs are rising at the rate of $5 million a month.
Rebuilding officials disagree, saying that the men who lead the working group — Roland W. Betts, a former director of the development corporation, and Peter M. Lehrer, a construction consultant working with the memorial foundation — were overseeing construction of the memorial. The situation changed, they said, when the estimated cost of the memorial shot to nearly $1 billion and it became clear that the memorial design would have to be changed to save money.
Curbed and Gothamist have more. Gothamist wonders how anyone is going to maintain the integrity of the slurry bathtub wall.
Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein.
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