Posted on 06/12/2006 9:19:11 AM PDT by mazack
NEW YORK - When a jury chose a Sept. 11 memorial design from more than 5,000 entries, the panel praised it for the "powerful, yet simple" use of reflecting pools to represent the destroyed World Trade Center. More than two years later, nothing is simple about the memorial, called "Reflecting Absence," which was sent back for a redesign after contractors concluded that it could cost nearly $1 billion.
A builder appointed by Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg is due to present new options Thursday that would cut the memorial's cost to $500 million. Officials hope to open the memorial in three years; preliminary construction that began in March has stopped.
"There's no reason that this memorial should be $1 billion. Absolutely none," said Daniel Libeskind, the architect who created the master plan for the 16-acre site known as ground zero.
While builder Frank Sciame was told to stay true to the original design, a rebuilding committee has considered everything from the cost of maintaining oak trees that would surround the pools to the skyrocketing prices of concrete and steel.
Sciame recently met with some family members who say that setting a Sept. 11 museum and parts of the memorial below street level as planned would be unsafe to evacuate and disrespectful to the nearly 3,000 people killed.
Much discussion has focused on whether to reduce the size of a planned museum, priced at around $150 million.
Bloomberg has suggested locating the museum, planned to fill several hundred thousand feet, in the lobby of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower now under construction.
"That's the iconic building and its fits, it really makes some sense and you're going to build it anyways," he said earlier this month.
Family members said that would do a disservice to their loved ones and to Americans who want to hear the story of Sept. 11.
"It's simply inexcusable to say today ... that after all this spending, `Gee, I'm sorry, we don't have enough money to secure the story,'" said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
Burlingame, a board member of the foundation raising money for the memorial, noted that the Freedom Tower has been slow to attract tenants because of terrorism fears.
"I know you have armed federal agents who do not want to be in that tower and now you have the mayor talking about bringing schoolchildren in there," she said.
The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation struggled to raise $130 million from private donors in a year; its president, Gretchen Dykstra, resigned last month. Up to $350 million in government money has been committed so far.
Some officials have said the museum was not part of the original plan for the memorial. But Libeskind said his master plan called for a place to display large artifacts on the site.
Officials are also considering shifting the cost of preparing the site for construction to government agencies overseeing rebuilding. Pataki said last week that "government resources" should pay to make the site buildable, which would knock more than $200 million off the memorial's price.
Bloomberg initially said the $500 million budget should include all costs. He said last week he wouldn't support a budget "unless it's something that I believe we can identify the funding sources before we start."
The underground design, which would lead visitors from the pools to galleries where visitors can view the names of the dead, is said to be favored by many architects on the committee.
Officials also are struggling to reduce the costs of restoring the slurry wall that prevented the Hudson River from flooding the site — one of the last remnants from the trade center.
"The integrity of the memorial, the integrity of the footprints, the slurry wall," Libeskind said. "All of that needs to be maintained, and it will be."
http://www.twintowersalliance.com/
Bring back the Twin Towers!
Anything else is just a monument to the enemy.
The cost to display the slurry wall is an cut to make. Liebskinds idea of showing off the slurry foundation was always just stupid.
The memorial will end up without fountains, but retain reflecting poools which will still be powerful.
Rebuild the towers, put a hundred foot finger on top.
Trump said he'll rebuild the Towers at not profit. GIVE IT TO TRUMP, he'll do it, do it well, it will come in on time and under budget. DO IT NOW.
Trump said he'll rebuild the Towers at not profit. GIVE IT TO TRUMP, he'll do it, do it well, it will come in on time and under budget. DO IT NOW.
Where's emminent domain when ya need it? The federal government ought to take over the site and make it into a national memorial.
"Anything else is just a monument to the enemy."
BUMP!
A builder appointed by Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg is due to present new options Thursday that would cut the memorial's cost to $500 million. Officials hope to open the memorial in three years; preliminary construction that began in March has stopped.
500 million to a billion bucks to build a memorial? My my, the cost of graft has gone way up in New York.
Spitting On Your Grave
September 29, 2005
The controversial International Freedom Center (IFC), a facility dedicated to articulating a particular view of multiculturalism, was removed from site which it wanted to occupy at the World Trade Center Memorial.
...
According to Michelle Malkin, the moving spirits behind the IFC were Michael Posner, Anthony Romero, Eric Foner and George Soros. If the International Freedom Center had been built it would have been the companion to the Crescent of Embrace, the proposed memorial to the Flight 93 victims in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
...
The effort illustrates the extraordinary importance that the Left places on the control of symbols. By preference, a good Marxist symbol should represent the very opposite of its counterpart in reality because its foremost goal, in common with unscrupulous Mesmerists, is to emasculate the mind.
All the concern is really wasted. The only thing that should matter is what the 4 Jersey widders want.
It's been five years and these jerks are still playing with themselves.
Here was my suggestion then, and now.
Build a circle of 7 skyscrapers on the site. Interconnect them at the floors where the 2 planes hit.
Make one of them, the southernmmost one, the tallest building in New York.
Have the outside of them with the mirror finish, similar to the motel in Detroit.
In the interior of the circle, at ground level, build the monument to the twin towers.
This entire complex would be called the Crown Plaza of New York.
In effect, the complex would be the "crown" on the city of New York.
I am NOT so "worried" about what decisions are made or the "Political" in-fighting between those who SHOULD have a SAY- and others.
But what I DO know is that it:
DOESN'T STOP THERE!
OUR "JOB"; the OTHER HALF of the Responsibilities concerning that Day of Infamy is to make sue it is
" NEVER FORGOTTEN!! That Means GETTING OUT THERE!!:
@ With POSTERS!!
@ With BANNERS!
@ With PHOTOS!!
On STREET CORNERS! In our TOWNS! on MAIN STREETS! and at GROUND ZERO!
We do it with RESPECT! and with Reverence!..but..
WE DO IT !!
See you all down in NYC 9/11
Darth Airborne
Don't know what they're going to do. I kind of liked the idea of building several buildings in a spiral that got progressively taller as they went out from the center. At the center would be the Memorial to the folks who died there on 9/11. But there is absolutely NO reason for any memorial to cost a half a billion dollars! That is just ridiculous!
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