Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 23:44:33 -0500 (EST) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #192:More Reactions,More Plans,Write Cuozzo! Something I'd intended to include in #191 was this summary of a Charlie Rose interview with Silverstein I got from Jason Fane: "Larry made the following points clear: "1. He accepts the Libeskind block and street plan with Greenwich and Fulton Streets going through the site. "2. He says he likes the Libeskind development "concept" but that the actual office building designs will change to make them workable as office buildings and that the David Childs group at SOM are the experts in high rise office buildings. "3. He is open to whatever memorial design is selected and that he will give his complete cooperation the memorial built by the Parks Dept. or the U.S. government, or whomever. "4. He expects to win the two events decision and collect $6.7 billion in insurance money and that will be the source of funding to rebuild the office buildings. "5. 10 million square feet of office buildings will be built. He is only interested in the office component of the project. The retail will be at least 600,000 SF, maybe as much as 900,000 SF. Much of the retail will be ground floor space with some below and above ground. "6. As he will be paying for the buildings, he will make the decision about their design. "What he did not say directly, but I interpreted his comments to mean (numbers correspond to those above): "1. Let's make some decisions about a plan and get on with rebuilding. Larry would probably accept almost any plan if he could start building his office buildings. "2. Larry doesn't care that much what the concept is, but he doesn't want to get into any battles with the mayor or governors or others and wants to get on with building offices. He will design the office buildings and that's the part he cares about. "3. Somebody else can do whatever they want for the memorial so long as somebody else is paying for it. "4. He will spend what is necessary to get his 10 million square feet of offices in service, but he'd be delighted if there is some money left over for other uses. Even a small percentage of $6.7 billion is serious money to most people. "5. I wonder whether Larry gets something for the additional retail area. "6. He was extremely firm about this point." So let's do our best to make sure that he sees the way forward on rebuilding as least obstructed if he accomodates the public demand for occupied height of truly heroic scale! Also omitted last time,to my regret,was mention of Jonathan Hakala's pro-rebuilding television appearances yesterday...badly edited on WPIX, but live and effective on CNN that afternoon. Normally I'd just give the http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/69757.htm URL,but Cecil Shepherd sent me the whole article below, though not the images it refers to... unusually for his columns,it includes Cuozzo's email address there... read it... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 08:22:25 -0500 From: Cecil Shepherd Subject: THE 'FINAL' WTC PLAN: GRADE IT ZERO (from today's NY Post) By STEVE CUOZZO ----------------------------------------------------------------------- March 3, 2003 -- SO now Gov. George Pataki has made his choice for Ground Zero. It will be for future governors, and for all New Yorkers, to live with its consequences. In the end, Pataki wanted the Studio Daniel Libeskind plan - and that was that. He overrode the preference of his own Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s steering committee, which preferred Think's twin, lattice-work towers. He ignored the savvy lobbyists at the Real Estate Board of New York, who came out for the Think plan. He ignored the recommendations of the editors of these pages and of the New York Times' architectural critic, who found themselves in rare agreement on the obvious superiority of the Think plan. Well, isn't that what a leader is supposed to do - make tough decisions that can't please everyone? Of course. But it doesn't follow that every tough decision is a good decision. Pataki's 12th-hour intervention makes nonsense of the 18- month "open" planning process. The revised Libeskind plan is equally dismissive of both of the main warring factions in the debate over Ground Zero's future. It affronts cultural utopians who argued against restoring the World Trade Center's office space: The new Libeskind scheme puts back all 10 million square feet. It affronts urbanologists who argued against a return to the discredited "towers in the park" philosophy that gave us the deeply flawed WTC: The new site plan is worse than the original. THE Pataki-Libeskind pact is in fact little short of a civic scandal. Let us count the ways: 1) For all the malarkey about Libeskind's "vision," the plan unveiled the other day looks exactly like the site plans released to citywide derision last July. Look at the images on this page. Just like last summer's "memorial Garden" and "memorial triangle," the new Libeskind scheme wastes most of the site on a broad, open space. Just like them, it clusters a half-dozen buildings of roughly the same height in an L-shape around the open space. Just like them, it features one structure much taller than the others, to create a "skyline element." The difference is that Libeskind's structures are dolled up with shapes and facade treatments and colors - what Beyer Blinder Belle was not allowed to do last summer, when it was merely asked to come up with rough siting plans. But because Libeskind's name carries far more weight among the Architecture-with-a-capital-A crowd than does BBB's, it's regarded with reverence. 2) The new Libeskind plan fails even on its own terms. Although Pataki paid no attention to those who feared Libeskind's original proposal would stifle Downtown's commercial rebirth, somebody on the LMDC was paying attention to the criticisms raised on this page and elsewhere. IN fact, the design unveiled Thursday bears little resemblance beyond the superficial to Libeskind's plan shown in December. Gone is the exposed-bedrock pit, replaced by a sunken lawn of the sort you see on state college campuses. Instead of an impassable, deep trench between Greenwich Street and the World Financial Center, we will have a shallow, windswept park reached by ramps and stairways - but which no one will have any reason to visit. Gone is most of the ridiculous, 6-level sky garden inside the 1,776- foot ornamental tower, replaced by viewing platforms and - how's this for originality - a restaurant on the 110th floor. Gone are the Kafka-esque, knife-edged facades, replaced by smoothed- over shapes and gently-sloped roofs that any architectural student could sketch on a napkin. The revisions are so untrue to Libeskind's original concept, we can only wonder why he stood for them. As unpalatable as the original design was, it had a certain bleak integrity: The architect clearly believed in its morbid iconography even if many of us did not. That Libeskind was amenable to the changes implies an ambition to win the commission at virtually any cost. 3) The plan squelches any hope of restoring the Downtown skyline. For one thing, its needle-thin minaret-like spire barely hints at the heroic skyline proclamation most New Yorkers expected. LMDC Steering Committee Chairman Roland Betts knew the Think towers were the better option. He told the Times the other day he believed they "would be a magnet, an inspiration, for the city and the country and so on, that would propel tourism and commercial development" - exactly as this page called it back on Feb. 3. Think's hollow steel towers were inexpensive enough to be constructed first, before the economy picks up enough to let the office buildings go up. But we are unlikely to see Libeskind's cloud-busting spire any time soon, despite WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein's cheery statement that he'll pay for it. The proposal calls for a memorial at the southwest corner of the park to come first. (You wonder: If a largely ornamental shaft that would be the world's tallest structure is not itself the memorial, what else would be? How many memorials does Ground Zero need?) The spire clearly would come last. It is, in fact, not free-standing, but an appendage to the bulkiest of the office towers, for which there is no current demand. 4) The "vibrant public plaza" is a fraud. The planners were full of self-congratulation over a pedestrian-friendly intersection where the extended Greenwich and Fulton Streets would meet, the site of an "interpretative museum" and supposed gateway to "cultural facilities" and a new transit hub. But creating artificial streets does not mean anyone will use them - especially if they lead mainly to an exposed slurry wall. The only streets people want to walk on are real ones with continuous facade lines and lots of entrances to stores and businesses - the urban fabric that makes Manhattan unique. IVORY Tower master plans meant to generate lively street life nearly always flop. Think of London's windy Canary Wharf or Berlin's under- trafficked Potsdamer Platz - no fun for anyone who doesn't have to work there, though they are full of stores, restaurants and hotels. The only big office tower complex ever to achieve truly felicitous pedestrian flow day and night, in all weathers, was Rockefeller Center - the product of genius nowhere in evidence at Ground Zero. There is one ray of hope. The years it may take to bring the Libeskind scheme to fruition might advantageously allow wiser heads to correct its myriad mistakes. New York has seen splendid works grow out of early blunders and false starts. Today's vibrant Battery Park City bloomed after its wretched beginnings as the Gateway Plaza superblock. The new AOL Time Warner Center is unrecognizable from its vapid antecedents. PERHAPS the lessons of their iterations can be applied to Ground Zero. Perhaps one day, we will look back upon Libeskind's abomination as we do upon Robert Moses' scheme for a cross-Manhattan expressway - as one of the city's mercifully unrealized follies. E-mail: scuozzo@nypost.com _______________________________________________________________________ ---------- End forwarded message ---------- I wish he acknowledged pro-rebuilders as a "warring faction" that has not been satisfied! I recommend reading his article and writing him at the supplied address,scuozzo@nypost.com,about the need for designs that are fearless of market demand,that provide better support for 110th-floor restaurants,that more strongly reaffirm what was there before! The letter column in the Post today: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/letters/69771.htm Overwhelmingly against Libeskind. Even the Times letters have been of that tenor. An interesting NYCS quote on having Libeskind's greenhouse spire instead of real new twin towers: "like replacing a child with a pet fish". I attended a small pro-rebuilders' networking dinner last night and a memorable analogy was drawn by Andrew Oliff,since posted by him on NYCS...after the 1993 WTC bombing one of the key planners, under arrest,had his blindfold removed to force him to look at the still-standing Twin Towers.Humiliating him with the evidence of his failure. Now we have arrested Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,uncle of a key 1993 plotter and understood to have been in the chain of command above those who actually carried out the 2001 destruction of the Towers... recruiting,financing,and directing them.Can you imagine showing him Libeskind's pit,his minions' handiwork lovingly preserved under glass? Even if he were on his way to being executed,would he not feel a sense of triumph,rather than humiliation? http://www.msnbc.com/news/878525.asp?0cv=CB20&cp1=1 (from Newsweek) tells that Libeskind "spent the first 20 years of his career without building so much as a birdhouse".Unfortunately it treats his selection as a triumph for the public opinion it disappoints! The Post board is still there: http://www.webforums.com/forums/f-read/msa154.69.html The Gotham Gazette rebuilding page has refreshed with new news articles. Libeskind's email,once again,is info@daniel-libeskind.com for those seeking to influence him "inside" the official framework...the Imagine NY comment board is also there for "official" reactions to Libeskind.The promised general public hearing on the plan might be restricted to environmental scope events,we should push to see the timeline promise kept. But though this should be pursued we must also work "outside"... pushing for new plans and a reopening of the sorry mess of a process. Yesterday I went to Manhattan and saw Rene Peter De Boer's triple-towered "Free World Center" plan,which he came to New York from the Netherlands to present (and was predictably shut out by officialdom).Today I received Erik Sieb's official presentations of his "Memorial Circle". There are many better plans than Libeskind's that the officials want to suppress...we can not disgrace the free world by allowing them to succeed. -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.