Ground Zero Proposals
Ignore Important Facts
NEW YORK (Aug. 12, 2002) -- The gentlemen upstate and downtown who control the future of Ground Zero seem to have gotten half the message -- 11 million square feet of commercial space plus a hotel and 600,000 square feet of shopping in a blockbuster cluster looming over what Governor Pataki refers to as "hallowed ground" is no one's idea of what to do on the World Trade Center site except the Port Authority's and those who hold the leases of the twin towers and its shopping mall.
The only concept apparent in the six concept plans released by the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is the restoration of all the commercial real estate by dumping it back in the same place in a slightly different form. The only interests served are those of the Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center land and buildings, the developer, Larry Silverstein, with a 99-year lease on the twin towers, and Westfield America, the shopping-mall developer that operated the stores beneath them. This is déjà vu all over again for those who remember the urban-renewal destruction of Lower Manhattan in the 1960s.
The other half of the message is taking much longer to get through. This is the obvious (to everyone else) fact that Ground Zero is part of Lower Manhattan. You would never know it from these proposals; it might as well be on the moon. That understanding should have been step one in the planning process. The reconstruction of the World Trade Center site has been conceived in a vacuum, unrelated to the needs of a downtown that was changing radically before 9/11.
The two schemes that went beyond Ground Zero to include a memorial park or promenade outside of its boundaries were the only ones that suggested other possibilities or evoked a positive response. But even these were restricted by the failure to consider building beyond the site. Those plans that made a gesture to housing put it in an airlock. Cultural facilities were plug-ins. The only recognition of the fact that reconstruction cannot be limited to filling that awful hole in the ground is the acknowledgment that restored transportation will need to provide improved connections to other parts of the city.
Whatever is built must function organically with the rest of Lower Manhattan. The developers' specifications need to be studied in the context of existing conditions and future needs that include office space and housing, updated transportation and communication networks, and the essential revenues and services to maintain and strengthen the area's economic base while encouraging a mixed-use community. Vision is knowing how to make this happen. It means being able to conceptualize solutions, turning statistical projections, land-use patterns and legal and financial tools into real places. It supplies the connective tissue that brings it all to life.
Inevitably, market conditions will be a controlling factor. But the formulaic sterility of all six proposals suggests that this creative assessment of conditions and options either never took place, or was aborted early on. That is why starting with the plans as they exist now will take us nowhere.
One would have to be from Mars not to know that there are other places, and other ways, to go. The Port Authority and the LMDC failed to identify potential development sites beyond Ground Zero, including land, buildings, roads or rights of way owned or controlled by state and public agencies, opportunities for linkage, trades, or air-rights zoning transfers, and the list does not end there.
These devices are all available, but both the Port Authority and the Empire State Development Corporation, New York state's construction agency, to which the LMDC answers, have much stronger planning and development tools. They can override local zoning completely, issue bonds to finance construction and use the power of eminent domain to condemn and purchase land. These instruments open the door to much broader planning possibilities than have been presented.
Caught by surprise by the negative response of a public far ahead of them, and mindful of upcoming elections, officials are beginning to look for other answers. Talk has begun about properties surrounding the World Trade Center site affected by 9/11. There is an encouraging report that the city is offering to trade the land it owns under La Guardia and Kennedy airports, for which the Port Authority pays a substantial rental due to increase shortly, in exchange for the World Trade Center site, which would bring Ground Zero and its rebuilding under city control and get the Port Authority out of the downtown real-estate business and back to the airports where it belongs. This shows how creative the political establishment can be when the pressure is on.
One important message doesn't seem to have been communicated at all. Just widening the pool of talent -- a concession in the making -- is not going to get the right results; all the talent in the world cannot produce a plan without a program that offers more information and wider opportunities than were given to those who produced what we have seen. The process has been controlled by the developers' wish list; its only concession has been to honor the mandate for a memorial.
The LMDC has been conscientious in gathering opinion from concerned groups affected by the catastrophe. The need for public hearing and consultation has been respected. But that does not make a plan. Planning is a complex process that takes time and work and gifted professionals. The basis of this process is sufficient preliminary analysis. A wealth of information is available from city agencies and individuals and organizations involved in past and ongoing studies of the area. If the program is good, the result will inevitably be different, and better, than expected. You really have to want the same old thing to get it.
There is no law that says everything that was on that spot has to go back there. What is at issue are revenues, which will be generated wherever the new construction takes place. The critical mass of consumers and captive commuters that the twin towers provided has been a gold mine for Westfield; the location has been more profitable than any of its suburban malls. Just as Mr. Silverstein has hastened to prepare potential semi-skyscrapers with the hope of jumping into construction, Westfield's plans are well beyond the concept stage; this includes the travesty of a glass-enclosed shopping street on the reopened old street pattern. They don't cross streets in suburbia. That even drew protests from the consulting architect.
Rebuilding Ground Zero must begin with a commitment to both physical and symbolic renewal and the hopes and concerns of those whose losses were so great. The memorial cannot be separated from the planning process. From the ideas being floated it is clear that whatever form the memorial takes, it will be both conspicuous and controversial. Style will be an explosive subject. Its constituency, the bereaved, already feel shut out of the design process. No one has dealt with how memorial space should coexist with commercial or residential development. A soaring something has already become the pious fallback for politicians who are unable, or unwilling to come to grips with the larger planning problem.
The last opportunity to create significant open green space in Manhattan was the building of Central Park a century and a half ago. Quite possibly, it will never happen again. There are new parks of elegance and originality -- Barcelona has built a number of them -- but none here. Paris's recently designed Parc Citroen has changes in scale and elevation, open spaces and intimate areas, lyrical, programmed fountains and pavilions that can be adapted to active and passive pleasures or simple remembrance and contemplation. Genuine memorabilia could be incorporated. What could be wrong with a similar work of landscape art devoted to memory and open to all in this overcongested, hard-edged city?
New York is known for its creative talent and negotiating skills. This is an unparalleled opportunity for great city-making, if we still have any idea in the age of bottom-line building what that means. The city's land-swap offer is a heartening development. It would be both ironic and fitting if Ground Zero were rescued by a beautiful deal.
-- Ms. Huxtable last wrote on the original six concept plans for Lower Manhattan.
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