The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 234

Business leaders have sent letters to Congress demanding that more money be set aside for medical concerns for workers suffering from ailments apparently linked to working on the Pile and around Ground Zero following the destruction of the WTC.

Meanwhile, concern over the construction of a new JP Morgan Chase building with it's cantilevered trading floor space overhanging a plaza and church is an outgrowth over sticking to a flawed master plan put forth by Daniel Libeskind. We're living with the fallout from that decision suggests Julia Vitullo Martini. The Chase building would go up where the badly damaged Deutsche Bank building is being deconstructed.

No one doubts the importance of a permanent memorial to the thousands murdered on 9/11. But New York needs Downtown to thrive once more. And what Downtown requires now is not open space but office space - and not just any office space, but the equivalent of the spacious, gigantic, luxurious buildings constructed in the Docklands of London, New York's aggressive competitor for financial supremacy.

"The city lost 15 million square feet of Class A office space on 9/11," notes Robert Sammons, Director of Research for Colliers ABR, a real-estate brokerage. "We lost another 15 million square feet in Class B space to residential conversions. We've seen very strong office-sector job growth, but we only have 32.7 million square feet in the pipeline. So we aren't much further ahead, despite the appearance of a great deal of construction."

The large memorial site isn't the only problem. The LMDC plan also stipulates a new house of worship for St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, whose original building was destroyed in the terror attack. The new church is to stand directly in front of JPMorgan - which brings up the other conflict.

With a mere 32,000 square feet, the footprint for JPMorgan's site is the smallest of the Ground Zero sites. Yet the optimal size of trading floors is nearly twice that - 50,000- 60,000 square feet, with columns some 40 feet apart and 15-foot-high ceilings.

To provide the five massive venues that JPMorgan requires, architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox started them at the 12th floor - yielding the "beer belly" derided by The Post's Steve Cuozzo. But better a beer belly than no trading floors: That would leave JPMorgan little choice but to go elsewhere - most likely Stamford, Conn., which has already attracted Swiss banks with its large trading spaces.

UPDATE:
The City Council has adopted a new building code that will "...sprinkler requirements for smaller buildings, raises standards for smoke detectors, strengthens safety regulations for high-rise residential buildings and provides for rebates on permit fees if buildings meet higher environmental design standards and undertake more environmentally friendly practices."