The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 156

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will soon close up shop. Well, they're doing the post mortem a bit early, though I've been blogging the ups and downs of the LMDC for a couple of years now. While there are some items that were completed by the LMDC, there are a few items left to complete. And those items are pretty significant - like the design of the remaining office towers to be built on the site.

“The L.M.D.C. had a mission and we’re nearing the end of the mission,” said its chairman, Kevin M. Rampe.

By that, he meant selecting a master plan and a memorial design for the trade center site; allocating more than $2.7 billion in federal grants, including support for downtown residents and businesses; financing park renovations and cultural programs; and planning the revitalization of Fulton Street, from river to river.

Stefan Pryor, the president of the corporation and its first employee, said its role as a planning and financing body was always intended to be temporary. “The greatest accomplishment of a public agency such as ours is to successfully work itself out of existence,” he said.

Among its legacies, he said, was Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for rebuilding ground zero, adopted in 2003, “which has held through all the controversies, debates and negotiations over the years.”

There are currently 54 employees, Mr. Pryor said. Almost all attended yesterday’s meeting at the agency’s office at 1 Liberty Plaza, opposite ground zero. They were told that the agency would effectively come to an end within months.

The corporation will probably endure as an entity for legal purposes, with little or no staff. It is a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation, which is the sole stockholder. Its 16-member board is composed equally of directors appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said it was an appropriate moment for transition. “The L.M.D.C., through a very often excruciating period, managed very effectively the many difficult tasks of the recovery, then the planning and now the implementation of a really fabulous plan for Lower Manhattan,” he said.

An important bit of unfinished business is the completion of design guidelines for the office towers at the trade center site and for public spaces, storefronts and signs. Mr. Rampe said he hoped they would be ready in the fall.

Other unfinished jobs will be passed on.

Construction of the memorial, for instance, will fall to the private World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The Fulton Street revitalization project may end up in the hands of the Department of City Planning and the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Cultural grants may be administered by the Department of Cultural Affairs.