Ground Zero

I've always seen the continuing hole at Ground Zero as symbolic of the last 8 years of political leadership. With the full weight of New Yorkers & the American people behind them to do what's right after a terrible tragedy, instead the reconstruction at what used to be the World Trade Center has been plagued with cronyism, flawed engineering, piss poor aesthetics, numerous design revisions, cost overruns and general ineptitude that has left more or less a 16 acre hole in Manhattan 7 years after the attack. It's basically the same quality of judgment exemplified with Iraq & the rebuilding of New Orleans.

To pour more salt on the wound, this week a report by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey said the project may go as much as 20% over its $15 billion dollar budget. Also, construction at the site, originally slated to be done by this year, may not be completed until as late as 2014. That would make the rebuilding process at Ground Zero longer than the time it took NASA to put men on the Moon.

I have not met a New Yorker yet (or anyone for that matter) that thinks the Freedom Tower and the other assorted collection of buildings of the New World Trade Center complex is what should be put at Ground Zero. It's one of those things that no one likes, but none are in a position to do something about it. And when those powers that be do get involved, it seems to make it a bigger mess. For example, former Governor George Pataki insisted on the architect of one of his contributors be chosen for the design of the Freedom Tower, and he's also responsible for the name & height of 1,776 feet (541 meters), which no matter how many design revisions the Freedom Tower went through, Pataki insisted the height remain at 1,776. Couldn't someone have told Pataki that over 95% of the world uses the metric system, so the symbolism of the height will be completely lost on them?

The original Freedom Tower design unveiled in 2003, created largely by architect Daniel Libeskind (chosen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation) & then overseen by David Childs (chosen by real-estate developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease on the WTC property) has been reworked multiple. It was originally an angular building with 75 floors, topped with an upper lattice work that would house windmills to provide a 1/5 of the building's power, and a spire that would house a television antenna. However, security & engineering concerns caused the chunking of the lattice work, turning the building into an obelisk with 88 floors offering 2.6 million square feet of commercial & retail space, and in order to address concerns about a truck bombing, the base of the building became a 200 feet by 200 feet windowless concrete reinforced structure, that will be covered in pieces of prismatic glass. Just this week, it was announced the design for the new World Trade Center PATH Station is being revised again.

Of course if they screwed up designing it, what made people think they wouldn't screw up trying to build it. According to the report by Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.....

• There are 19 different governmental agencies at every level of government which have laid claim to the project, stretching from Albany to Trenton. And "each entity makes daily decisions about their individual projects, but no streamlined process or authority is in place to... ensure that each decision is in the best interest of the overall project."
• 101 different construction companies or subcontractors are involved.
• There are 33 different designers, architects and builders.
• 15 "fundamental issues" critical to the project and its construction have yet to be resolved.

So what is the solution recommended in the report? Another committee to talk things over.

Christopher Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, didn't set new deadlines and budgets for the multibillion-dollar redevelopment at the destroyed trade center complex. He proposed that a committee of developers and government agencies involved in the project meet to set new, "clear and achievable timelines" by the end of September.

"The schedule and cost estimates of the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic," Ward wrote Monday to Gov. David Paterson, who asked earlier in June for a progress report on the site.

                 

Just to show some of the consequences of this mess, according to the NY Daily News one of the results of these delays & the "dicking" around being done by the powers that be, is that investment firm Goldman Sachs may be entitled to 64 years of free rent worth $161 million and recoup $160 million in sales tax payments.

Also, there are reports the Port Authority knew a year ago about problems with the project, while officials were still saying construction was on schedule. This has led to editorials & columns like this.....

This Fourth of July, 20 tons of beautifully polished national disgrace will be sitting in the work lot of a Long Island stone company.

"TO HONOR AND REMEMBER THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, AND AS A TRIBUTE TO THE ENDURING SPIRIT OF FREEDOM. - JULY FOURTH 2004," the inscription reads.

The second date marks the day this block of granite was laid with great ceremony as the cornerstone of the new Freedom Tower at Ground Zero. "Today, we, the heirs of that revolutionary spirit of defiance, lay this cornerstone and unmistakably signal to the world the unwavering strength of this nation and our resolve to fight for freedom," then-Gov. George Pataki solemnly declared that day. "Today, we build the Freedom Tower."

What ensued was senseless squabbling, near-criminal incompetence and bald-faced lies, all of which constituted a betrayal of the murdered innocents the stone purported to honor.

After two years, the stone was deemed to be in the way of the changing plans for the site. Early on the morning of June 23, 2006, it was loaded onto a flatbed truck, reveiled with a tarp and driven 45 miles back to Innovative Stone in Hauppauge, L.I.

The current plan (because it might be changed by one of those 19 agencies or another created committee) calls for 4 other buildings to go up near the Freedom Tower, ranging in height & space from Tower 5 (743 ft with 1,300,000 square feet) to Tower 2 (1,270 ft, taller than the Empire State Building, with 2,530,000 square feet).

To me, this entire quagmire has always begged a question that no one seems to be able to answer. If you're going to build over 10 million square feet of office & retail space, and have buildings taller than the Empire State Building, why not just rebuild the Original Two Towers? Why do you need all of the revisions and meetings for designs the public doesn't want, when you could just put back updated versions of the buildings that stood there?

•  Tips/Flames (n/t)

  by Rimjob on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 08:40:43 PM PDT

  •  i think i'd rather the new building.

    building the old ones back---

    i dunno

    it just seems like a reset, like we'll reset everything back to 9/10/2001. it's weird.

    by terrypinder on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 08:44:07 PM PDT

    •  it could be seen

      as an act of defiance. A statement that says, "try as you might, you can't take this away from us."

      Though, I can see your point of view, there is something ironic in the amount of time and money it has taken/will take to restore a space in one of the most prominent and economically active places in the country. We continue to let the attacks have their hold on us. And that is just what this administration wants.

      by UnaSpenser on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 08:47:42 PM PDT

      •  Perhaps the whole "f*ck you"...

        ...element of America is one reason we've become so unpopular in the world, and not a characteristic we should be promoting, though?

        by WayneNight on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 11:06:49 PM PDT

    •  Only if

      we can get a do-over of the entire last seven years.

      I'm not a New Yorker (and in fact I hate New York City with a passion), but I think rebuilding the Twin Towers would be strange. Talk about a daily reminder of a horrible tragedy.

      by PerfectStormer on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 09:08:19 PM PDT

  •  because some insecure jerks want to build

    something bigger & better to 'show the Islamofascists' that we will not bow down to them.  

    It's a particularly prominent attitude in the wingnut blogosphere and I always wonder why they don't erect their own in-your-face memorial or, say, burn Mohammed in effigy at a set time every day, on THEIR property.

    Does anyone even want to have an office on the top floor of a 1776' building?  It would probably take 10 minutes just to get to such an office from the ground floor.

    by YoyogiBear on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 09:15:27 PM PDT

•  I'm not sure how I feel about rebuilding the old

  and I'm not sure my opinion matters, since I'm on the other side of the continent - New Yorkers would obviously have a much more visceral response one way or the other.  Intriguing on one level, uncomfortable on another.  Has it ever been discussed?

  by lineatus on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 08:49:55 PM PDT

  •  It's Comes Up.....

    From time to time, but never really seriously by those with power to do anything.

    When the orignial Freedom Tower design had to go back to the drawing board in 2005, David Shuster of MSNBC and some others in the media asked why they couldn't just rebuild the original Twin Towers.

    There was a proposal called "Twin Towers II." The 2 footprints of the original buildings would be kept as part of a memorial. The 2 new Towers would be built to 1,475 feet with the latest technology.
    

    
    

    by Rimjob on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 09:01:34 PM PDT

    •  Whenever I watch the movie...

      ...this is what I tell myself eventually "happened."  Because that movie was "pre-9/11," and you can clearly see the twin towers sticking out of the ice at the very end of the movie.

      by WayneNight on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 11:04:53 PM PDT

    •  Sorry

      Whenever I watch the movie AI.

      by WayneNight on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 11:05:06 PM PDT

•  Don't like the designs, the name or the push

  I wish they could forget about making huge money on this, but that's the eventual goal.

  Build the towers all over again, this time with even more reinforcement in the design against obvious vectors for attack, if that's possible.  Enhance emergency escape routes.  Show the world that NYC just comes right back in your face and won't take shite from anybody.  Of course, businesses would be scared and NYC is all about bringing in businesses - whatever it costs to do so.

  Still, with corruption in the contracts and infighting amongst the state and local agencies, maybe the current Freedom Tower is perfect for the next century in NYC ;)

  by wader on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 08:52:59 PM PDT

•  With all the cronyism

  and all the bickering agencies, maybe we should call them the "Fiefdom Towers" instead.

  by Horsefeathers on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 09:01:57 PM PDT

•  Build 'em back.

  I've held this opinion since day 1:  The towers should built back exactly like they were, or taller, as an act of sheer, utter, fuck-you defiance.

  Just MHO.

  by browneyes on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 09:04:50 PM PDT

  •  Yep

    That works for me.

    by keirdubois on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 09:21:16 PM PDT

  •  They were failures

    The buildings were an aesthetic insult to Manhattan. They had no sense of scale. They were imposed on, rather than integrated into, the city.

    The plazas beneath were miserable wind-whipped voids unusable by any human activity.

    The external tube framing (the characteristic vertical columns) made extremely poor views for those who even had a window office. Your view would be one narrow vertical slice of the horizon.

    Just working in one of the towers gave you a long commute. Each floor was an acre, served by a central bank of local and express elevators.

    It took a long time to lease the office space in the towers before the development 'broke even'. With new "identical" towers, potential tenants would be even harder to find.

    And last point with a humongous bullet The building design was insufficient in a catastrophe (duh).

    by Lurtz on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 10:12:03 PM PDT

    •  To be fair...

      The building design was insufficient in a catastrophe

      I think this is one of those things that would be "updated."

      by WayneNight on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 11:03:20 PM PDT

    •  Yeah, that's exactly what I want.

      1960's technology and design with no new updates.  Give me a break.  /sigh

      by browneyes on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 11:35:14 PM PDT

•  Personally...

  ...I'd rather there not be buildings there at all.

  Build a memorial, and use the rest for a nice park.  An open, quite space where people can go to reflect.

  I suspect this might be one of the problems, though.  You state that you've yet to meet a New Yorker who thinks that the right thing is being done there.  However, have any two of those same New Yorkers ever agreed on what should be done instead?

  It's probably not possible to change the plans at all at this point.  But, you're certainly not going to be able to without a broadly supported alternative.

  by WayneNight on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 11:01:56 PM PDT

  •  In complete agreement. That should now be sacred

    ground -- a continuing memorial to those who died.  To rebuild is an insult to the tragedy, and the memory of all those who died there.  A park would be lovely.  Nothing commercial, though: it defiles the thousands of innocent deaths.

    by Yasuragi on Sat Jul 05, 2008 at 03:42:53 AM PDT

•  At the rate we are going, it will be an

  underwater site, the sea levels are rising.

  Rather than build monuments to the past, we should be building a future for our kids and their kids ..

  There are ways to honor those who died without building some edifice for profit like this.

  by shpilk on Thu Jul 03, 2008 at 11:10:56 PM PDT

•  The most offensive thing I've seen related...

  to 9-11 is the pure silver "20 Dollar" piece with a picture of the NYC skyline and the twin towers highlighted in the middle.  In one corner is a 9 and the other 11 to make the 20 bucks.  This is a government issued deal and only natural citizens can buy them.  All I could do was shake my head and mutter "un-fucking-believable".

  by TheKost on Fri Jul 04, 2008 at 10:22:49 PM PDT

•  I could care less if the new building was....

  1776 feet tall.

  I care even less than that what any metric using country would think, or if the message was "lost on them".

  The BIGGEST line of BULLSHIT that was spoon-fed to us in elementry school was "By the year 1970, we will ALL be using the metric system."  (They also did their very best to warp our minds with the "NEW MATH")

  Yep.  If it were not for drugs, I would have never bothered to learn metric measurements........

  by Sadameatsit on Fri Jul 04, 2008 at 11:17:46 PM PDT