Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 01:33:23 -0500 (EST) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuiilding #197:Libeskind Contracts,Other News I thank Erik SIeb for some additional email addresses of supporters of his project.As ever,ANYONE CAN BE IMMEDIATELY AND PERMANENTLY REMOVED FROM THIS LIST ON REQUEST. The past week has been slow for rebuilding news...we're going to have to start making news of our own. This NY Times article from a week ago is a main recent development: ==================================== Designer to Oversee Most Trade Center Projects March 21, 2003 By EDWARD WYATT Daniel Libeskind, the architect who created the winning design for rebuilding the World Trade Center site, will soon be offered contracts to oversee nearly all of the development projects at the site, rebuilding officials said yesterday. The contracts, to be offered within 30 days by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, are intended to ensure that Mr. Libeskind's plan will guide development at the site, said Kevin M. Rampe, the interim president of the development corporation, and Joseph J. Seymour, executive director of the Port Authority. The contracts are also intended to reassure doubters who have assumed that the concept laid out in the Libeskind plans will never actually be realized, or that other architects working for commercial developers will ignore his specifications, the officials said. The two agencies will jointly hire Mr. Libeskind as the site's "master design architect." In that role, he will refine his master plan, a process that he said would take five to six months. Among his tasks are leading the design team for the new transportation terminal and underground concourses at the site, and overseeing the development of the memorial to victims of the 9/11 attack. "We need to refine the master plan," Mr. Seymour said. "There still are a lot of minor details that need to be worked out, particularly engineering, street alignments and honoring and enhancing Daniel's wedge of light," one of the signature design elements of a central piazza at the entrance to the memorial park. Mr. Libeskind will also lay out the design guidelines for commercial buildings at the site, including their height, square footage, building outlines and floor sizes. "The Port Authority and the development corporation are equally committed to ensuring that Daniel Libeskind's vision is realized," Mr. Rampe said. The remarks by the two officials came at a meeting of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, a civic group of downtown business leaders and residents. Mr. Libeskind's work on the site will take place under several contracts, the officials said. They would not discuss the amounts that Mr. Libeskind will be paid. So far, he has earned $548,817 for his work on the site. On the transportation terminal, which some rebuilding officials have likened to a downtown Grand Central Terminal, Mr. Libeskind will work for the Port Authority, which owns the trade center site. The Port Authority has spent months working on designs for both the transportation hub and the underground concourses that will link, from west to east, the World Financial Center, the PATH station, the subway lines that run through and near the trade center site and the transportation terminal building. Those plans drew intense criticism from some civic groups, which accused the Port Authority of ignoring the public design process. But yesterday, Mr. Seymour said those plans would essentially be scrapped in favor of Mr. Libeskind's design for both the terminal and the concourses. For the development of the memorial and cultural space at the site, including a museum devoted to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Libeskind will be employed by the development corporation. That agency will oversee the competition to design a memorial within the 4.7-acre Memorial Garden area that will include the footprints of the twin towers and will lie 30 feet underground. In laying out the guidelines for commercial development, Mr. Libeskind will be jointly employed by the two agencies, "working in partnership with the city, the state and the leaseholders to develop commercial design guidelines," Mr. Rampe said. "Those guidelines will bind all future commercial development on the site," he added. Mr. Libeskind said he had had discussions with the site's leaseholders, including Silverstein Properties, which controls the office space, and Westfield America, which has the lease on retail space at the site. But he said the parties had not yet reached agreement on how the retail square footage would be divided between the below-ground concourse and street-level buildings. "We have to work out the exact proportion," Mr. Libeskind said, "not only to have them on both levels, but to connect them in a beautiful way architecturally." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company ========================================= As was pointed out on the NYCS board by Jack from Save the WTC, Libeskind has NOT been hired by SILVERSTEIN,who does maintain he gets to decide the design of the office buildings.Unfortunately Silverstein has lately been pressing in the wrong direction (resisting the Libeskind concession of a new 110th floor restaurant despite there being a publicly willing tenant...this undermines Silverstein's claim that nobody wants to rent above the 70th). Meanwhile,the city government land swap deal is still being pressed,with unclear implications for how much this would affect the planning. Joe Wright has located a second judge for our architectural competition; we need at least one more before we can proceed,which we would prefer to have done months ago!! The Gotham Gazette board has been quiet lately,I encourage people to visit (follow the link from http://www.put.com/wtc/ where I have also added a link to a plan announced there by its Australian architect) and attempt to respond to my ""Why Rebuilding Advocacy is still Relevant" thread...even if your posting does not pass the censors it will still bounce that topic up to the top.Sometimes messages can be accepted only days after submission. The THINK board is still there,but I don't see that it has much chance of influencing decision-makers.Keep pushing politicians and potential tower tenants. Last weekend I was at a science fiction convention...didn't get petition signatures this time,but did pick up WAR OF HONOR,latest in the Harrington series by David Weber...I believe the same David Weber who's on this email list.There's a pointed reference at the start of the second chapter to towers that were destroyed in a nuclear explosion...REBUILT as part of the recovery thereafter.(This hardcover comes with the entire previous series,and more,on a CDROM bound into it). Keep your eyes on the prize in the skies. -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.