Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 17:21:13 -0500 (EST) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #343:Rebuilding Voices Heard,Libeskind Design Crumbling Wednesday evening's hearing was dominated by pro-rebuilding voices; Thursday and today articles have been published indicating the "Freedom Tower" may in fact be impossible to construct,as we have warned. The Wednesday hearing was actually two events in one, accepting comments on the latest "Amended General Project Plan" and,under the Eminent Domain Procedure Law,on the proposed forced acquisition of 140 Liberty Street (the parcel between the Deutsche Bank building and West Street). The EDPL aspect was perfunctory...the property owners apparently were completely unrepresented at the event. The audience was significantly smaller than for Monday's hearing on the far narrower issue of Deutsche Bank demolition.However,the contingent of known pro-rebuilders was higher. Kevin Rampe introduced the proceedings and immediately left, though there had been a place set for him on the stage. Diagrams showing the proposed changes in the plan were distributed and slides were shown.They have encroached further on West Street and want to close a block of Washington Street to make a park and move the Greek Orthodox Church east,even as they propose to extend Dey and Cortlandt streets between the office buildings next to Church Street.The condemned parcel is to be used to move the truck ramp south of Liberty Street with an underground road doubling back north of it. I was the first speaker,giving the speech I wrote on the train and will transcribe below,though my written commentaries will be more extensive and I will announce their availability to the email list when they are ready.THE DEADLINE FOR COMMENTS HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO MARCH 10TH. Tal Barzilai followed with a less structured but clearly pro-rebuilding comment. The third speaker was a Joe Garofalo,who after some comments about the subway signal room fire Monday proceeded to what he called his "speech", an incoherent sequence of what sounded like news headlines spread over decades. Fourth was Jonathan Hakala,who while not directly addressing the desirability of tall new Towers this time,went through a long list of things wrong with the official plans.The notice requirement,as usual,was barely fulfilled,and this time entirely during the holiday season for minimum visibility.He noted various laws that the officials wished to sidestep with the excuse that compliance would delay their plans,pointing to the lack of tenants indicating that delay would inconvenience no one.Pointing to the various introduced variations in the plan,he called for a new Environmental Impact Statement to be prepared for the current version. Frank Silecchio,the rescue worker who found the "cross" beam, and was the unplanned speaker at our July rally,followed and concluded his speech by complimenting me and saying that putting back the Towers would be best. Sixth was Steven Lefkowitz,a lawyer for Verizon.Other Verizon people there showed diagrams and distributed copies of their statement.It appears that the insistence of the officials on extending the redevelopment south and putting in the underground truck route under Liberty Street means a multi-year Verizon project relocating substantial infrastructure now underneath Liberty Street,which could be further complicated by the West Street project.They castigated the officials for their ever-changing plans never giving them a place to start the work that has to be done before the redevelopment can be done,and extended this to the issue of providing infrastructure to the WTC site buildings as well. Seventh was veteran pro-rebuilder Andrew Oliff,who gave an angry complaint as to how the officials have resolutely ignored all the pro-rebuilding sentiment in their zeal to enact Pataki's mistakes. Eighth was Michael Bobrow,who has never gotten over the 1960s demolition of old Penn Station and was calling for it to be reproduced as part of the redevelopment.I hope it will take us less than forty years to get back towers truly in the spirit and on at least the scale of the old! No one else wanted to speak,so Jonathan and I gave briefer follow-up remarks once again making our points. Jonathan gave me a copy of the New York Press (website nypress.com) which had an article that both picks up on Philip Nobel's book and refers to work being done by Deroy Murdock and Justin Berzon to further document the Lauder-Pataki-Libeskind connections,giving the dates of various payments and other arrangements.It doesn't get into the pro-rebuilding issues but further discredits the way the official plans have been imposed. My speech as delivered was approximately as follows: We're here to comment on the "Amended General Project Plan", a plan of which one must say "End it,Don't Amend It"--it's no use putting lipstick on a warthog!No amount of tinkering can make the God-awful Libeskind site plan anywhere close to adequate. The first time we saw the plan with a tapered building at the northwest corner much shorter and smaller than the Twin Towers, with a pole on top to pretend it was taller,and even smaller buildings crushed against Church Street by an unwisely restored Greenwich Street,it was called Memorial Plaza,and it was a bad idea and there was no reason to proceed further. When the very characteristics that made that plan ugly and unpopular were made binding requirements and plans not making these compulsory mistakes disqualified from consideration, it was a bad idea and there was no reason to proceed further. When Libeskind retooled that layout to actively emphasize the success of the murderers of thousands,and it was selected after finishing last in the official public poll of the final designs, it was a bad idea and there was no reason to proceed further. Blind insistence on charging down wrong paths does not make them right.Building on a lesser scale than before,which clearly demonstrates retreat in the face of terror; restoring streets as if the Towers and those in them had never existed; forcing stores that merchant and shopper alike would prefer to have underground onto the streets,to make the streets more active than appropriate for either an office district or a memorial; a memorial designed to set surrender in stone,disgracing those it purports to honor; ALL BAD IDEAS! Do not tell us it is too late to undo what you are to blame for doing.It is not our fault that so much time has been wasted on specifying,selecting,and promoting such wretched plans. There has never been any excuse to do anything with these plans but tear them up and start over.And if the planned structures are built,so long as they stand there will be no excuse to do anything but tear them down and start over! The next day the New York Times printed a very interesting article Joe Wright alerted me to,and which I found reprinted at http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=13466_0_24_0_M and I recommend that everyone read. The 1776-foot spire that Libeskind is so proud of,would not allow Childs to move or build taller than...may be IMPOSSIBLE TO CONSTRUCT! Where is the "world's tallest" pretense of this structure with a roof hundreds of feet lower than the old Twin Towers if the empty cage on top can't be topped with that oh-so-precious ornamental spike? The broadcasters,who wanted a 2000-foot antenna that Libeskind would prefer not exist either (the Skyscraper Museum's diagram identifies the spire as the broadcast antenna),are upset with this,as the edge placement Libeskind demands has a bad effect on their signals transmitted between antenna and equipment over an unnecessary distance. The plan continues to crumble,we just need to ensure that its supporters' ridiculous commitment to it crumbles too! Post columnist Steve Cuozzo picked up on this, http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/38917.htm although he continues to regard Pataki's efforts to leave no one time to undo his mistakes as positive. I recommend sending letters to letters@nypost.com agreeing that the West Street tunnel (and West Side Stadium) diversions are bad ideas,but also calling for the Libeskind plan to be scrapped outright in favor of tall-tower-centered rebuilding more like what was destroyed. I've revised http://www.put.com/wtc/ to reflect the current comment period and added other old list emails to http://www.put.com/wtc/archive.html (up to #339). These were good days for us...keep fighting and there will be more! -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.