Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 22:33:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #203:Garvin OUT,Silverstein Picks Aide The main piece of rebuilding news since I last wrote is the sudden resignation of "Leave Manhattan Destroyed Committee" planning vice president Alexander Garvin. This was first reported in http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/73609.htm and then there was a longer story in the NY Times: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 06:27:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Planner for Trade Center Rebuilding Resigns \----------------------------------------------------------/ Planner for Trade Center Rebuilding Resigns April 17, 2003 By EDWARD WYATT The director of planning at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, who personally invited Daniel Libeskind to enter the design competition for the World Trade Center site, has resigned, officials said yesterday. The planning chief, Alexander Garvin, notified the development corporation of his resignation, effective April 25, in a letter submitted last week, the rebuilding officials said. It was accepted after a meeting on Monday between Mr. Garvin and John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the corporation, at which Mr. Whitehead was unable to persuade Mr. Garvin to stay. "In the last 15 months I've achieved most of what I set out to do," Mr. Garvin said yesterday in an interview. "We put design in the forefront of not just the city's but the world's agenda." Mr. Garvin was instrumental in the selection of Beyer Blinder Belle as the architecture firm that designed the first set of plans for the rebuilding of the trade center site. Then, when those designs met with near-universal rejection, from the public and from the architecture and design community, Mr. Garvin led the effort to attract world-renowned architects to a design competition for the site, one that resulted in the selection of Mr. Libeskind's winning design, "Memory Foundations." But Mr. Garvin also clashed sharply with other participants in the rebuilding effort, including officials from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and representatives of Gov. George E. Pataki on the development corporation's board and staff. Rebuilding officials said that Louis R. Tomson, a longtime Pataki adviser who was president of the development corporation at the time, became incensed at Mr. Garvin after the publication of an article in the Jan. 6 issue of The New Yorker magazine about the design competition. The article, by Paul Goldberger, the magazine's architecture critic, focused on Mr. Garvin's role as a key player in the process. Allies of Mr. Pataki said they thought the article did not give proper credit to the role of the governor in pushing the rebuilding effort forward. Mr. Garvin was known to be more closely tied to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, Daniel L. Doctoroff, had hired Mr. Garvin to work on the design of the city's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. One person close to the rebuilding process said Mr. Libeskind was upset over the resignation, which was first reported yesterday in The Daily News and The New York Post. The person said Mr. Libeskind viewed Mr. Garvin as a professional ally who would help him navigate through the bureaucracy that could put up any number of roadblocks to the fulfillment of his design. Mr. Libeskind did not respond to a request for comment yesterday. Fredric M. Bell, executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said he was saddened by the resignation. "With his status as a member of the City Planning Commission and his teaching at Yale, Alex brought together in one mind an understanding of all the complexities that made the World Trade Center so daunting a project," he said. Mr. Garvin teaches "Introduction to the Study of the City," one of the most popular undergraduate courses at Yale, and he is the author of "The American City," considered by many in the field to be the definitive textbook on urban planning. No successor has been named, but rebuilding officials said Mr. Garvin's top lieutenant, Andrew Winters, the agency's director of design and development, is a leading candidate for the job. "Alex has obviously done a great deal in terms of moving the process forward, getting us to the point where we have this tremendous design and laying out a real vision for Lower Manhattan," said Kevin Rampe, the interim president of the development corporation. "We're going to miss him greatly. This is going to be a long process. We're going to see a lot of personnel come and go. We're very fortunate because we have Andrew Winters and the planning team still at the L.M.D.C." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/17/nyregion/17REBU.html?ex=1051575273&ei=1&en=ab7b86d9df8358db Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company ---------- End forwarded message ---------- Of course I recounted my recent exchange with Garvin in the February 28th list email,see http://www.put.com/wtc/archive.html for the quotes. As to the implication,also in the Post story,that this is a loss for the mayor in his tussles with the governor... the rebuilding movement can't trust either side there. Bloomberg wants housing and less office space,his deputy Doctoroff says "zero chance" the Towers will be rebuilt and wants the office space near his Olympic projects on the west end of Midtown,which may be moot as early as next year if the city doesn't make the IOC short-list. Pataki said "we will never build where the towers stood" and pledges to make sure we do no better than Libeskind. I don't know if a replacement for Garvin would be less wedded to Libeskind's plan,which is basically guesswork anyway...the man has still never designed an office tower in his life. Meanwhile Silverstein has appointed John Lieber as his "director of development" in charge of getting stuff built at the site...his instructions presumably include Silverstein's 70-stories-or-less blueprint,which we have to obstruct vigorously while offering inducements to discard it. I will shortly send the list a draft letter to Bank of America; I have seen the ones Andrew Oliff and Joe Wright have sent. See you on the 111th floor on 9-11-11! -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.