But exactly what will be built there is still anyone’s guess. One of the many remarkable stories of the last year is how public opinion, galvanized by the tragedy, has derailed the business-as-usual development plans that called for replacing the World Trade Center’s 11 million square feet of office space. In mid-July, the city-state agency charged with planning, along with the Port Authority–which owns the land–rushed out a half-dozen half-baked schemes. In the look-alike models, Styrofoam boxes choke the site, interspersed with green patches that vary in shape from plan to plan (“Memorial Triangle,” one was called, just to give you an idea). The reaction was swift. Newspapers labeled the plans “dreary,” “leaden” and “retarded.” But the most damning criticism came at a public “listening session” held on July 20 at New York’s Javits Center, where the 4,500 attendees could punch their comments into computers that collated responses and flashed them on JumboTron screens. At the sight of one clunky scheme, somebody typed furiously: “Looks like Albany.”
Just how deeply the wider world cares about rebuilding Ground Zero was driven home when the six plans were first unveiled. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had 50 million hits on its Web site that very day, and thousands of unsolicited schemes have poured into the agency. A private project called Imagine New York has collected more than 20,000 ad hoc proposals since last spring. This month the Venice Biennale in architecture will show WTC plans from dozens of the world’s top architects; next weekend The New York Times Magazine will publish schemes for the site by such designers as Richard Meier and Zaha Hadid. And architects including Frederic Schwartz, who designed the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, have been working on their own. (Schwartz’s plan: put a deck over the highway west of the site, build all 11 million square feet of office space there and leave Ground Zero for whatever–a memorial, museums, parks–or nothing at all.) “People aren’t going to stand for something not positive happening on the site,” Schwartz says. “It has to be the most magnificent thing for all time.”
No one would disagree. If the LMDC and Port Authority planning officials were embarrassed by the nearly unanimous rejection of their first efforts, they didn’t admit it. “These are concept plans, not schemes for the site,” explains Alex Garvin, vice chairman of the LMDC and a professor of planning at Yale. OK, whatever. Garvin is one of several officials who turn a conversation quickly to aspects of the plans the public actually liked. Those include keeping the “footprints” of the Twin Towers empty and creating more public spaces–especially a tree-lined memorial promenade–billed as Manhattan’s own Champs-Elysees–that could be built atop a submerged highway west of the site, linking the new WTC to Battery Park City. People also wanted culture, and LMDC chairman John Whitehead agrees. “Museums and various performing arts must be part of the future of lower Manhattan,” he says.
But the biggest beef with the plans was that the dense assemblage of office towers would dominate any memorial and make a humane mix of offices, housing, retail and such cultural amenities impossible. “What the public said is, they just don’t want to see this driven by a real-estate deal,” says Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association. Larry Silverstein, who holds the redevelopment rights under the terms of his 99-year lease of the Twin Towers, is still battling insurance companies over their payout for the disaster. (A trial date is set for November.) But his landlord, the Port Authority, in response to the public outcry, is considering options to reduce commercial space at the site. One idea came from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office: a land swap with the PA, in which the city would get the 16-acre plot in exchange for land it owns under New York’s airports, with their lucrative retail potential.
At the same time, the PA has also been talking with the Development Corporation about possible ways to cut down the office space by 2 million or 3 million square feet, according to Roland Betts, a member of the LMDC board. Even before the public trashed the six schemes, Betts was emerging as the leader in the planning process. Last month the agency announced a new competition to seek ideas from a wider range of designers; Betts will help choose five finalists at the end of September. “There’s a little bit of feeling our way here,” admits Betts. “It became clear that we’re missing the creativity and experience of some of the best firms in the world, and we have to go get it.” (The LMDC will also hold a separate competition for a design for the memorial, but not until next year.) It doesn’t hurt that Betts has been a close friend of President George W. Bush’s since they were at Yale almost 40 years ago. In August, Betts took a long ramble with the president through the canyons of the ranch at Crawford, Texas, and filled him in on the competition. “He’s rooting for us,” says Betts.
Meanwhile, despite the very public rebuke, the firm behind most of the rejected plans, Beyer Blinder Belle, continues to work as part of a consulting team under a $3 million contract. Along with giant engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, they’re envisioning a vast transit hub–a “grand central station,” Garvin calls it–much of it underground, that would link subways, commuter rail and ferries. Last month $4.5 billion in federal funds was earmarked for such improvements. And already, the consultants are mapping out the grand promenade, even engaging landscape architect Laurie Olin to think about the trees.
There’s never been a design project like this in history. The great urban places of the world are the products of kings (Place des Vosges in Paris) or tycoons (Rockefeller Center). And none has had to deal with the tragic symbolism of this spot. Yet here are ordinary citizens trying to bring democracy to the design of something great–and a transcendent new space may be the best way to honor those who died on September 11. But who in the end will decide what gets built? You still need a scorecard to sort out all the vested interests–including the governors of New York and New Jersey, and the mayor, who’s readying his own wish list for the site. “The next step isn’t going to be easy,” says Holly Leicht of Imagine New York. No, it won’t. And the public, from New York City and far beyond, will be watching the sky.
