The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 141

This is pretty significant Friday night news dump. Gretchen Dykstra, who leads the WTC 9/11 Memorial Foundation, has quit.

"There is general agreement that the multiplicity of authorities and the unclear roles has made it difficult for anyone to move expeditiously," she wrote in a letter to Thomas S. Johnson, the chairman of the foundation's executive committee.

"Perhaps it would help if there was one less player. Therefore, it is with sadness and regret that I hereby tender my resignation, effective immediately."

She held the job for 13 months.

What had seemed to be a fairly orderly, if plodding, course toward the construction of a memorial dissolved in recent weeks as cost estimates rose significantly, new concerns were raised about the security and safety of the design and disaffected victims' relatives began demanding an above-ground memorial.

The Times would like you to believe that the memorial had been progressing in a somewhat orderly fashion, but that's far from accurate. The only way you can call the memorial design and construction orderly is to compare it to the development of the rest of the site.

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