Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 00:00:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: Latest on WTC Rebuilding Efforts (a few of you are new to my pro-Twin-Towers-rebuilding list...as ever,I promptly honor requests to be removed). Below I reproduce the commentary I have just sent Petra Todorovich of the Regional Plannning Association and its Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York. As a reminder,MONDAY JUNE 3RD is the last day to send her commentary on the "Framework" document,which is at the www.civic-alliance.org website as a PDF download.(Not sure if Google has yet cached it as HTML). If you are NOT able to attend the "Listening to the City II" event July 20th at the Javits Center,PLEASE send her comments on this document...like the Whitehead group's "Draft Principles and Preliminary Blueprint" (a revision is due out this coming week,did the hearing bend their thinking any?) it does not specifically SAY "the Twin Towers will not be rebuilt",but it talks about "human scale" and restoring the old street grid and other things that clearly indicate their desire to make the site as if the Twins had never existed,except for a memorial cleared by order of Uncle Osama who gave their planners a nice big sandbox to play in. If you ARE going to attend the July 20th event,at least consider sending comments,but since the Civic Alliance is running it and gets people's email addresses when they reserve seats,it might not be wise unless you have something significant to say.Read their document,speak with your own voice,and don't quote me in your own comments! If you would like to attend July 20th and have not yet reserved a place,DO IT NOW...call 800-862-3154!!! They'll want to know your email address and how you heard of the event,you heard about it on the Internet but don't sound like you're part of an organized pro-Twin-Towers infiltration,we do not want to be filtered out! Something else that has struck me about the possible unspoken motivations of a couple of highly placed men reluctant to rebuild... Among the tallest buildings currently under construction in Manhattan is an 868-foot structure named for a financial information firm whose founder renounced tax abatements granted for the building when he went into politics.He will presumably return to the building on leaving politics. That's right...the Bloomberg Tower. Across the river the tallest building in New Jersey, scarcely shorter,is presently rising...named for a very well known Wall Street firm...the Goldman Sachs Building. Goldman Sachs used to have a co-chairman by the name of John C. Whitehead. It may not loom too large in their thinking that they don't want "their" buildings outstripped...but I do think one can wonder. Other thoughts...rebuilding the Twins to make them stronger (and I hope a bit taller) will make them somewhat heavier... this will be compensated for by replacing 3-6 WTC by lighter structures so the columns below,built to take the same loads as before,can still support the complex. It looks much better that we will get the Twins back in SOME form than that we will get them back on the old footprints corner for corner,though standing on the old footprints I think sends the most authoritative message that we will not be cut down by the killers.I know the old RTT group voted to advocate abandoning the old footprints,not sure if this policy was something TTT inherited. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 23:35:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein To: petra@rpa.org Subject: "Framework" comments I am writing with regard to your draft report "A Planning Framework to Rebuild Downtown New York". The Civic Alliance is a broad coalition,members of various interest groups all rushing in to promote their visions of what is is most important to them, earnest in their focus...but forgetful of the wider circumstances. The present situation is not one where unbridled ambition to design from scratch is appropriate... the old "Radio Row" or "Little Syria" district did not quietly linger on and then evaporate into thin air to present a greenfield building opportunity. A horrific act of mass murder destroyed heroic landmark icons famed throughout the world,felled in a cataclysm fuelled by hatred.The idea that the lower Manhattan skyline should not be dominated by gigantic landmark twin towers is forever welded to that act of hatred for the free world,no more to be dissociated from it than the swastika,once an obscure device casually used as a good luck symbol on early 20th century Boy Scout shoes,is to be dissociated from Nazism. It was the desire of the killers of thousands of good people that America be "cut down to size",and any redevelopment that grants their wishes regarding the Manhattan skyline will necessarily be seen as surrender to their wishes by those who sympathize with them, no matter what differing motivations are cited. In the circumstances it is insensitive and outrageous to approach the rebuilding (not redesign) of Lower Manhattan with the question,"What to build?"...rather, we must proceed from the frameworks,"How do we best rebuild the Twin Towers to at least their former height?... and what ELSE do we build?". The member groups of the Civic Alliance need to temper their ambitions with the realization that this is not the time or place for opportunism that will do them discredit. With that said,there is certainly scope for improving the infrastructure,the amenities,and the spaces of Lower Manhattan. Restoring cramped streets in place of a spacious plaza would not strike many as an improvement,and it appears consensus is clearly against your proposals on this point...but subway and streetcar lines can certainly be constructed to make life easier for those who live and work there. A memorial to those killed on the 11th,centered on the restored Twin Towers as it must be to prove the killers rather than the victims died in vain,will of course be an important site,and its design should be considered carefully with a view to both its short and long term prospects. What has happened to other memorials built over the years? With regard to the demographics of the area,one must sensitively manage and intelligently anticipate change without acting to deliberately encourage it in a fashion that would seem intended to gratify the killers' desire for a change in the way Americans and New Yorkers live and think of themselves. The members of the Alliance are specialists in change, and thus less representative of Americans as a whole than they might like to think...monuments to resilience are clearly called for in the present circumstances, whatever opportunities may present themselves in less catastrophic ways in generations to come. Louis Epstein -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.