WTC rebuild needs your input, or will be a disaster

www.phoenixusa.org; various publications cited ^ | September 1, 2002 | Eli Attia

[demosthenes the elder]

Eli Attia, architect New York September 1, 2002

I have established an online petition at www.phoenixUSA.org asking for an open national competition to design Ground Zero instead of the behind-closed-door methods practiced by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority (LMDC/PA). Thus far we have received over 10,000 signatures from across the country, including Philip Johnson, the “Dean” of American architecture, Terence Riley, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator of architecture and design, Lily Tomlin, actress, the many professors of architecture, design and art, the thousands of architects, the fire fighters, soldiers the nurses, the family members of the victims of 9/11, and many more. We are about to commence a major public effort to make sure that what emerges from Ground Zero is the best that America has to offer.

If allowed to stand, all decisions made to date by the LMDC/PA regarding the rebuilding of Ground Zero will doom it forever to a national disgrace. Ground Zero has become a symbol to America. But instead of representing the best that America is -- a symbol of our aspirations and sacrifices -- what the LMDC/PA have done to date represents the worst that America is – a symbol of abuse of power.

As I predicted in my Newsday Viewpoint on May 20, 2002, the LMDC/PA have failed the nation in its expectation for a unique, uplifting and visionary project to rise from the ashes of Ground Zero. Remarkably, the same people -- led by the exact same leadership -- have been allowed to embark on an even more outrageous chapter of this fiasco.

The LMDC/PA enthusiastically presented six extraordinarily poorly conceived initial plans as the best options for the future of Ground Zero. Until the American public told them otherwise, they had no idea that the design schemes were an embarrassment. How can they be trusted to determine what the future of the most revered project in America will be?

All the LMDC/PA have done is to waste time and money (over six months and more than $80 million to date, not to mention the costs that will be incurred because of the delays in restoring lower Manhattan to full functionality) while continuing to exercise total control of what will be designed on Ground Zero, how it will be designed, and by whom. And as if this is not enough, the LMDC/PA now has the audacity to blame their failure to come up with a suitable design on the absurd notion that the 11 million square feet of commercial space are to blame. Not only is this idea completely false, but actions proposed by the LMDC/PA as a result of this erroneous conclusion will cost an additional several billion dollars of taxpayer money. In fact, it is the LMDC’s limited vision and assigning hand picked architects to design the project that are responsible for the substandard designs.

An open design competition solves these problems. An open design competition will harness the power of thousands of architectural minds on the project instead of a handful; that they will be competing for the right to design the site will ensure that nothing short of their best efforts will go into the project. The full execution of a competition would take less time than the LMDC/PA’s current plan will. Because of this, and because the proposals will be unpaid (this is standard practice for architectural competitions worldwide), all this architectural brainpower can be harnessed more quickly and at extraordinarily little cost. In the face of all these benefits, the question is: why NOT hold an open competition? This is a question that we have been asking, and that the LMDC/PA has thus far declined to answer.

Shortly after the 10,000th signatory placed her name on the petition, I received a call from the chairman of the LMDC, John Whitehead, who over the course of a one-hour conversation, in an obvious attempt to neutralize our petition, did his best to convince me to submit a design and thus become one of the chosen few to submit architectural solutions for the site. Needless to say, I refused the offer.

An open design competition is truly the only way that we can ensure that the best design that America can create will be used to rebuild the most significant, emotionally-charged tract of land in the United States. We cannot let Ground Zero be designed by bureaucrats while our enormous national design talent is ignored. Only the participation of the greatest architectural minds, selected through an open national design competition, will allow us to rebuild the World Trade Center in the most appropriate way possible. We must act now to make the site a lasting and fitting tribute to 9/11 and its victims instead of wasting precious time and spending billions of public dollars for a mundane project that will stand at Ground Zero for generations to regret.

Please visit the website http://www.phoenixUSA.org and sign the petition that calls for an open national design competition for Ground Zero - the only possible way to guarantee that what emerges from Ground Zero will be the best that America can create. Then forward the email on - for it is only by strength of numbers that we will be able to affect the future of Ground Zero.

(various published articles follow)

[demosthenes the elder]

Everyone needs to go to this website, read the articles, and sign the petition. There is space for your comments and ideas. The petition is in severe need of FReeping, and, from what I read, so too is the LMDC/PA.

Personally, I'd like to see a mile-high arcology like a big digitus impudicus with a big atrium filled with thousands of pikes... one for the head of each islamofascist terrorist we catch, try, and execute... Now, THAT's what I call a potent statement of American National Identity.

[IronJack]

I believe it is the right of the property owner to decide what -- if anything -- will be built on the site. Even though it is a scene of national tragedy and triumph, those facts don't override the right to property. It would be a supreme irony if, in the process of enshrining American values, we trod on the most sacred value of all.

[xrp]

A much cheaper and more reliable system would be pilots in the cockpit with guns.

[demosthenes the elder]

air-defense systems? I don't know... any misses have to land somewhere, as do the wrcked aircraft. that's a problem for wiser head than mine.
I would like to think that some company somewhere will begin offering emergency parachutes to all companies and their employees who work above the 40th floor in high-rises.

[demosthenes the elder]

I'd agree with you entirely, assuming the owner of the property was an entirely private entity. I believe the property is owned by the Port Authority, though, which is a government appendage funded locally as well as by the state and federal governments. That makes it a public issue, yes?

[demosthenes the elder]

agreed. as would be letting all passengers with CCLs to carry, providing they load low-velocity friable shot.

[Ohioan]

I believe it is the right of the property owner to decide what -- if anything -- will be built on the site. Even though it is a scene of national tragedy and triumph, those facts don't override the right to property. It would be a supreme irony if, in the process of enshrining American values, we trod on the most sacred value of all.

You are, of course, completely correct. This proposed competition is foolish in the extreme. Just who is supposed to pay for the construction of the winning proposal? Once built, who is supposed to maintain it?

Considering the fact that anything built on the site may likely become the next chief target of foreign terrorists, it would seem that the idea of another office complex is stillborn. Just who could be induced to locate in such offices?

It is a correct response to not be cowed by terrorists. It is another to deliberately propose giving them a target and assuming that you can just allocate live bodies as bait.

If the City of New York has the funds to acquire the area as a park, and if the owner is willing to sell for an agreed price, that might be the most practical proposal. But the site is too exposed, there on the waterfront, to be used as it was before. There are practical ways to show one's outrage, but some of these proposals are more in the nature of hysterical reactions than rational projects.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[demosthenes the elder]

so tell me, is the plot owned by a private entity or an organ of the government?

[Ohioan]

so tell me, is the plot owned by a private entity or an organ of the government?

I have no idea. I would assume, since it was a Commercial Real Estate venture, that it was owned by some private entity--probably Corporate. I do not know who or what. There is a possibility that it has since been acquired by Government or by an Insurance carrier in some form of settlement. But the time frame is still a bit short for such to have taken place. I just do not know.

If the New York County (Manhattan) real estate records are accessible from the web, you might be able to find out on line--at least who is still getting the tax bills.

William Flax

[Age of Reason]

I just wish they'd just build the thing already and get it over with.

[absalom01]

The land is owned by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The development corporation referred to in this article is a public entity, the The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.  

The question of what to replace the towers with is, of course, complicated by the symbolism, and by the normal concerns of real estate and the market.  My favorite suggestion so far is to build Frank Lloyd Wright's Mile High Tower as a replacement and a statement of America's Indomitable spirit.

The Illinois Building - A Mile-Tall Cantilever Skyscraper (Unbuilt) (99K) (81K)

[demosthenes the elder]

that makes it property of a branch of the government.
that makesa it property of the taxpayers of those two states.
if the port authority is federally subsidized, that makes this patch of land the property of us all.
that means we have a legitimate say in what gets built there.
thus, the petition has merit.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

Have seen this plan for the WTC site: http://www.wtc2002.com

[HitmanLV]

I think it should just be a memorial park, tasteful and subdued, honoring the victims.

But its up to the landowners. I suspect they will just build anothr big set of office buidlings.