Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 23:32:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein
Subject: Day-After-Hearing Thoughts


I urge everyone,once again,who can possibly make it to
the Javits center morning-afternoon July 20th to try to
register for "Listening to the City II" as soon as possible.

At the hearing Ron DeVito and I were told that we were
good-as-registered if we handed in the flyers with our
addresses and phone numbers there.Otherwise...

CALL 800-862-3154 (24 hours a day,they say!) or
EMAIL listening@civic-alliance.org
and look at http://www.listeningtothecity.org/
which will be taking reservations starting May 28th.

DO NOT DELAY!
Get EVERY rebuilding supporter you can drag to
register too!

Any of us who get filtered out,can demonstrate about
our exclusion...whether for being from out of town or
what.

Being overt about Twin Towers support when you register
may lead them to start filtering us out,but on the day
we should wear shirts and bring flyers if we have got
them ready.

I realize a significant number of you were at the hearing
last night but we didn't get to meet each other because
of the line-up-through-metal-detector-sign-in-take-seats
management of the event.I trust we can meet with each
other next time!

It's been noted to me that Team Twin Towers is a couple
hundred dollars short on their incorporation fees,and
they're looking for donations.See www.teamtwintowers.org
for more about them if you need to know more...Randy
Warner (jbcreole@adelphia.net) is taking money via PayPal
or mail.

News coverage of the hearing has been mixed.
The story that got quoted on the NYCS board (where was
it from?) is the most favorable I've seen...the Newsday
one of course is the only one that mentioned me.
The reporter first showed up when Robert Borg
(the structural engineer I mentioned last night),
Deirdre Shanahan Harvey (the pregnant woman I
mentioned last night),and I were the whole line.
I gave him a copy of my full written commentary
but he didn't draw on it for his article.

The New York Post was not very effective in hearing
coverage,giving it paragraphs at the end of an article
abour rescue workers complaining about Bloomberg's
management of the end-of-cleanup ceremony excluding
them.They downplayed Jonathan Hakala's connection
to the attacks,saying only that he lost a friend on
the 77th floor,not that he was there on September 11th
and got out alive,and wants to go back to the 77th floor.
He was only quoted as saying that he didn't want "a
string of mediocre buildings",not dismissing 70
stories as an example of mediocrity.

I like to think that he has shifted the goalposts...
Whitehead might have thought he could offer us 70-story
buildings and seem generous since he spoke of 50 before,
now he knows there's a survivor who thinks that's shameful.

John Whitehead can no longer claim that everyone he's
talked to thinks giant new Twins would not be appropriate!

Beyer Blinder Belle have been tasked with coming up
with six design options by July 1,which will then be
narrowed to three.After the response at the hearing
I think it's possible a twin-tower plan will be among
the six even if they have no intention of letting it
be among the three...at the July 20 event we have to
put on a good show of support for any twin-tower option,
urging amendment to be closer to the original as necessary,
but simply dismissing any non-twin-tower plans offered.

(If they follow the hearing remarks too closely,however,
most of the six options will focus on monuments to disabled
non-English-speaking environmental activists from the Lower
East Side of Chinatown.:-))

July 20th is of course a rather auspicious day...33rd
anniversary of the first man on the Moon,26th anniversary
of the first soft landing on Mars...the same spirit that
brought us these accomplishments brought us the World
Trade Center,and must bring it back again!

(Our lack of follow-through on space advances has bothered
me,but let us show that this time there will be no falling
back!)

At the hearing,Joe Wright brought a copy of the New York Sun
newspaper witrh a front page picture and third-page article on
Derek Turner's plan (now promoted at http://www.wtc2002.com/)
for five round towers on top of a dome and under a pyramid.
The article includes a predictable claim there will be no
more 100-story buildings in Manhattan by Paul Goldberger,
and ends with something curious:"As a celebration of the
80th birthday of the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development
Corporation,John Whitehead,$525,000 was donated to the charity
Take the Field for use in building a new track and field
complex at the South Shore High School in Brooklyn that will
bear Mr. Whitehead's name".

I HOPE this means they used his birthday party as a fundraiser
for TTF,rather than spending corporation money on this field
irrelevant to their mission!(He did not attend that school,
he spent those years of his life in New Jersey).

The superscraper-hostile Goldberger has been succeeded as
New York Times architecture critic by the not-much-friendlier
Herbert Muschamp,who architect Michael Molinelli (a recent
addition to this email list) took to task for not advocating
the return of the Twin Towers.Recently,Muschamp had some unkind
things to say about newly-chosen lead WTC-site architects
Beyer Blinder Belle...they are considered anything but bold.

As identification for myself,I took a nametag I have for a
chamber of commerce on whose board I serve and covered over
the chamber logo with "World Trade Center Restoration Movement"
next to "Louis Epstein Director".Having told Joe this in advance,
I found he had printed up a tag for himself with his name,
"World Trade Center Restoration Movement",and my sig-slogan.
So I guess an organization is forming...if you want to be
considered a member of the WTCRM,let me know!

At the urging of my parents,I made copies of my written
commentary(previously sent to the list),and handed some
out...I noted before that I'd given some to the Newsday
reporter and to Alex Garvin,Whitehead's VP for planning
and development.(I didn't give one to,but did speak to,
the Port Authority chief engineer...he says he'd ideally
like the Towers back but doesn't see the financial possibility).

One copy I gave out was to an engineering type behind me
in line who said he'd like the Towers back in principle but
doubted it could happen...more about him below.He asked for
my email address but I haven't heard from him yet.

Another copy I gave out was to the State Senate Minority Leader
(i.e. one of Pataki's chief political opponents).He hadn't been
making pro-rebuilding noises when he got up to speak,but if he
sees support to be gained by following my arguments,maybe he
can help.

The last one I gave out was to Kathleen Shanley,who recognized
me at Grand Central Terminal as we were checking train connections
after getting back there from the hearing site.She's an associate
of architect Marcia Esquivel,who was also at the hearing,and both
of them had copies of Esquivel's plan for rebuilding the Towers,
intended for board member Billie Tsien...since Esquivel got to
Tsien with a copy,Shanley gave me hers.

It's a variation on the "empty towers" concept,but DEFINITELY
better than Bowstead's...they are not uniformly false fronts
from the 50th floor up...rather,in each tower is a memorial
atrium (a garden on the base floor in the North Tower,and a
museum in the South) ranging upward from the floor where that
tower was hit.At night each would be lit up.

The North Tower atrium would run from the 90th to 110th floors,
the South Tower atrium from the 78th to the 90th,and the two
90th floors would be connected by a skybridge.The South Tower
would be 111 floors rather than 110,and would have offices
from the 91st floor up.

(Note that in the old Towers the North was taller by 6 feet;
in these that would be reversed).

As for Monica Iken at the hearing...as I noted,her comments were
surprisingly moderate...during other speeches,before I knew who
she was,she tended to applaud memorialists sometimes and never
rebuilders,and to look rather serious...but who knows,maybe we'll
make a rebuilder of her yet.

May 27th IS THE LAST DAY to send comments to renewnyc@empire.state.ny.us
about the Draft Principles and Preliminary Blueprint,so if you have yet
to do so,DO IT!...the overriding flaw of this document is failure to
commit to rebuilding the Twins,much else there's little or nothing wrong
with...DO give it a read first so they understand you are writing from
some knowledge,but target your criticism on the need to rebuild the
Twins if certain parts of their claimed mission are to have credibility.

"Phase I" is next...and comments for that are accepted until
June 26th,right before BBB come out with their six design options
on which we have to enthusiastically extol any with twin towers
and dismiss all others.(I hope we get 1 out of 6!)

Comments on this need to be more technical...involving specifications
that BBB should have to follow.

Naturally,we feel that there should be a requirement of two
buildings of 110 stories or more and 1368 feet or more in height.
Beyond this dimensional specification,probably they should be urged
to use the Yamasaki design as a baseline...alterations from it not
a matter of discretion,but each needing to be justified as to why
it is an improvement.Why does it make the Twins better?

It is of course vital to show that we CAN build better Twin Towers,
and have learned to do that...NOT learned NOT to build Twin Towers!

The man behind me in line who I gave a copy of my commentary to
said that making the bearing walls have an inner and outer shell
would make the Towers withstand the impact...we didn't get into
details,but this would be some form of strengthening the walls.

(He did NOT believe the press reports of Professor Astaneh's
concept,developed in years of study of disaster-proofing large
buildings since the Oklahoma City bomb,of a concrete skin designed
to carve up airplanes on impact).

At the hearing they gave the woman from the Skyscraper Safety
Campaign (who Ron and I also saw interviewed by Japanese TV)
the last word...she is very concerned with having all building
codes be followed,and wants them toughened too.We'd want the
walls of new Towers to be ones she couldn't help be impressed by.

Of course the Empire State Building is an example of "skeleton"
construction,where the WTC design uses "bearing wall" construction;
philosophies that have been described(beyond the issue of making
column-free space within) as "build tough" vs. "build flexible".
I have considered trying to use advantages of both...a single
ring of interior columns,with hardened stairwells at the corners,
within bearing walls at least as strong as the old ones.

This ring could form the outer walls of a setback at the
110th/111th floor level,a comparatively minor number of
additional,smaller floors forming a sort of small building
in the sky...the center of the 111th floor would open onto
a memorial garden with a retractable glass roof,and a single
pair of elevators would continue through the upper floors
to a top-floor observation deck.From a 112th or 113th floor
office one could look down at the garden and almost believe
one was on the 2nd or 3rd floor...or one could look out.:)

But make your own comments,advocate your own beliefs...just
don't be silent or sound too simple-minded!

Note that a 115-story WTC...about what it would take to raise
the broadcast antenna to 1776 feet...would actually be shorter
than the 110-story Sears Tower.

One battle that may be lost soon is over the actual "footprints"
of the old Towers,which many want to see used for memorials and
not all rebuilding advocates see as necessarily the sites of the
new Towers as long as they're within the old superblock.

While some movement of the Tower sites may be unavoidable,be
aware that it negates any advantages/cost savings of having
what's left of the old foundations...those foundations would
then be filled in.

Personally I can see yielding anything LESS than 100% of the
footprints without much fuss,but COMPLETE surrender of them
would make,seen up close,the same statement we don't want to
see made for the skyline..."Uncle Osama said not to have
buildings here,so that settles it".Even a symbolic overlap
(one corner footing of one new Tower within a footprint of
one old Tower) would be much better than none whatsoever.

With regards to the comments on the proposed 2000-foot TV Tower
on the NYCS board...if it gets built it will be the tallest
free-standing structure in the world,AND BY GOD THAT MEANS IT
BELONGS IN MANHATTAN!!

However,the broadcast tower for New York stations belongs on
the tallest BUILDING in Manhattan,previously the ESB and then
the WTC North Tower.Something temporary may be needed while
the Twins are rebuilt,but I can't see the broadcasters wanting
to step down to a shorter tower once they've had a taller one.

So if they get a 2000 foot interim facility,we'll need towers
maybe 1660 feet or so for a TV antenna on top to be taller
than that?:)

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.