Architecture’s Defining Moment

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How bold can plans be?
Just how bold the community’s aspirations could be turned out to be key as LMDC and the Port analyzed the schemes. “In this ballet of billions, the pubic must decide what it is owed,” observed Rafael Vinoly, member of the team called Think, at Record’s forum. His team’s three schemes represented three different levels of public commitment, from largely commercial to almost entirely cultural. None of them, added team member Fred Schwartz, “depend on office buildings to have meaning or as an iconic image.”

The Think scheme offered a resonant response for those who believe it was not just people and buildings that were attacked, but ideas and values. Their schemes most clearly framed the all-important question: How are the aspirations of the public to be represented? “The apparently irreconcilable desire for memorial space and city life is a spur to architectural invention, said Stan Allen, of United Architects.

In selecting the Libeskind scheme and the twin latticework towers Think proposed, LMDC and the Port seemed to focus on culture and commemoration as a spur to redevelopment in Lower Manhattan. Given the amount of vacant space available in New York, real-estate analysts have predicted that the square footage lost in the towers won’t be needed for anywhere from 10 to 30 years. The well-connected real-estate industry early on secured a federal guarantee of a whopping $5 billion in incentives for tenants willing to locate in Lower Manhattan. They are going begging.

One-way “dialogue”
What bets to make nowadays must inevitably involve the public. Officials touted a public process that was still based largely on the one-way communication via public hearing and exhibition comment cards. Both LMDC and the Port chose not to subject the December schemes to the large-scale “electronic” town meeting that so embarrassingly repudiated the July plans. But neither did they proposed the kind of interactive dialog that would help people sort through the dizzying range of issues the designs engage.

Officials also have closely held plans for the most costly aspect of the rebuilding: public-transportation improvements. A range of options had been proposed by officials and interest groups, some of which would require new river tunnels and new stations at the site or elsewhere in Lower Manhattan. Costs could run into the tens of billions. Funds currently available will not go far in completing the most ambitious plans, and yet the mayor and business groups adamantly proclaim substantial mobility improvements to be key to revitalization.

The decision to award finalist status to Studio Libeskind’s proposal and the World Cultural Center, which was the most ambitious and costly of the three options offered by the Think team, appeared to defy expectations. Both of the schemes put the memorializing aspect of the project in the forefront, arguably to the commercial detriment of the vast office space. The final decision for Libeskind (February 27, 2003) was made by Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki, with much behind-the-scenes political manipulation, claimed observers. In making the memorial so important, both officials hoped to defuse the emotions of survivors, who are the one group arguably most empowered (due to public sympathy) to veto a rebuilding plan.

The Port all along indicated that it expects the existing leaseholders to rebuild largely that which was lost and in pretty much the same way that commercial space is always built—even as the success of the “innovative” study seemed to make business-as-usual untenable. The hoopla over Libeskind’s proposal obscured revisions he had made that considerably dumbed-down the office blocks and reshaped the memorializing pit. A costly lid over a depressed West Street appeared in the revised scheme, a gift to the well-connected Brookfield Properties that manages much of the office space in Battery Park City.

Rallying Around—what?
The leaseholders did not publicly embrace the work of the teams, instead claimed significant deficiencies in Libeskind’s provision of retail (Westfield). Silverstein over ensuring weeks appeared to be reserving the right to choose his own architect, presumably Skidmore Owings & Merrill, which has continued to advise the company. Real estate figures contended that the entire competition was citizen-mollifying window dressing unconnected to market forces. Tenants, they assured us, will drive the rebuilding, presumably to the conventional inspiration-free norm that prevails in what is probably the most innovation-averse industry in America. Indeed, no developer has stepped forward to map a marketworthy approach that would as well represent the inspiration and idealism that the enormous public concern would seem to demand.

“I reject the notion that these plans [those of the seven so-called innovative teams] are infeasible,” said Richard Kahan at Record’s forum. A veteran of government and semi-public agencies akin to LMDC, he claimed, “it’s all doable if we want it. The program that applies to the site today is arbitrary, driven by the Port and by developers who signed a piece of paper weeks before the disaster. This is correctable.”

The firm political leadership Kahan says is needed is not yet much in evidence. . “You can’t do this without a great client in the mold of the Rockefellers at Rockefeller Center,” added Kahan, echoing sentiments expressed over the months by architects like Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Richard Rogers, whose great works they credit to clients. To get a plan that recognizes not only the way the disaster affected Lower Manhattan but New York City and the region will, as Alexander Washburn, a veteran of many intergovernmental battles, says “require the expenditure of someone’s political capital.” Kahan thinks “the city and the mayor should take over the process.”

In Spring, it looked like the city might move more aggressively. It began negotiations with the Port to remove it from the process—proposing to swap ownership of the two airports in the city limits (which the Port now only operates) for better revenue terms and for ceding control of Ground Zero to the city. The city would then be free to redevelop the site as it saw fit, possibly replacing the Port’s main lessees, Silvertein, and Westfield America, a mall developer that has adamently insisted that the predisaster size and configuration of its underground retail mall be restored. The rub is that the Port would rebuild and continue to operate the PATH commuter-rail lines under the site—which would allow it to retain substantial control over what would be built.

The official with the greatest clout—New York’s Governor Pataki—only began using it in early May, as business leaders assailed the lack of progress or consensus on the site. He signaled a diminished role for LMDC and an acceptance of the Port, Silverstein, and Westfield as the key agents of rebuilding. He proclaimed an aggressive schedule that said the first and tallest of the office towers would soon get underway. Critics said the last thing the city needed was yet more office space, and that subsidies would eat up funds needed for other aspects of the rebuilding.

By mid-May, an open, international competition for a memorial had been announced. Otherwise, progress appeared to have stalled on several fronts. Silverstein’s insurance claims remained unresolved. The land swap appeared dead. The planning for the transportation hub—-one key to luring more businesses back downtown—-went on, if it did at all, in secret. The prospect of raising the funds needed for government reinvestment and rebuilding seemed to become more remote than ever as Congress set about cutting taxes and state and local government began to take drastic budget-cutting action. Several of those who had long lead the process, in particular, Alex Garvin, and the governor’s point person, Roland Betts, had resigned. The Port let Eckstut go, but the actual scope of Libeskind’s responsibilities remained unclear. The massive emptiness of Ground Zero began to look more forlorn than ever.

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