Posted on 07/26/2006 7:56:00 AM PDT by mazack
NEW YORK - The agency created to oversee rebuilding of the World Trade Center site and downtown Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will go out of business this fall, its chairman said Tuesday.
"We've completed our mission," said Kevin Rampe, who has served as president and chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.
The LMDC, created by Gov. George Pataki and then- Mayor Rudolph Giuliani months after terrorists destroyed the trade center in 2001, chose plans to redesign the 16-acre site with office buildings, a memorial, a performing arts center and a transit hub.
Rampe said the agency would stay open past the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Its 54 employees were notified Tuesday morning that it will shut down in a few months.
The agency, funded with more than $2 billion in federal housing grants, ran design competitions for the Sept. 11 memorial and paid to build new parks, fund local artistic institutions and help Chinatown recover after the attacks. It also took on the deconstruction of a contaminated skyscraper overlooking ground zero, where more than 700 human body parts recently were recovered along with trade center dust.
The agency has been supplanted by a number of other organizations, including the nonprofit World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which was given the responsibility of building and eventually running the memorial.
The site's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and a private developer are also at work building the first of five planned towers.
Yes. And as we all look out and see the lovely, rebuilt Twin Towers, we offer our sincerest thanks on a job well done.
What exactly did they accomplish? 5 years and we still have a giant pit where our buildings once stood.
What they accomplished was spending $2,000,000,000.00!
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