WORLD TRADE CENTER 2.0
Rebuilding Bigger, Smarter, Sooner
Op/Ed - Ted Rall
Thu Aug 15, 7:02 PM ET
By Ted Rall
NEW YORK--The people have spoken, but--shocker!--their politicians aren't listening. That's representative democracy for you. But when it comes to replacing the World Trade Center complex destroyed last September 11, New York officials don't have their own ideas--these clueless fools have no ideas at all.
That was clear to anyone who looked at six schematics presented by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, in late July. Limited by an ill-advised lease to developer Larry Silverstein and the mall developer Westfield America, all the ideas--er, plans--featured sets of 60-to-80-story-high office buildings comprising 11 million square feet of office space, plus a hotel and mall. These basic components of the original World Trade Center were incorporated into the designs created by the architecture firm of Beyer Blinder Belle.
"They were all based on the Port Authority development program," says Robert Yaro, president of New York's Regional Plan Association, "which I would argue didn't make sense 40 years ago and doesn't make sense now." New Yorkers, typically a quarrelsome bunch, agreed on this score; their reaction in letters-to-the-editor and at an exhibit unveiled July 16 can be summarized by the following succinct phrase: The plans all suck.
There is hope, however. The Port Authority may get Silverstein and Westfield off its back by swapping their lease for land it owns at LaGuardia and/or John F. Kennedy International airports. And the Port Authority, recognizing reduced demand for office space as more and more companies go belly-up, is in any event willing to accept a one-third reduction in square footage.
But there are also the families of the 3,000 victims to contend with. Calling the site of the former World Trade Center "sacred ground," they're demanding that nothing be built on the "footprints" where the original Twin Towers stood. "I don't want it to be like it was before," said Tessa Molina, whose husband died on the 105th floor of the North Tower. "We should put the names of all of those killed where the towers used to be."
"That's where a lot of the remains were found," Kathy Ashton, whose son Tommy died in the attack, notes.
So here we are, a year after the suicide attacks, and there is no rebuilding plan. The money men want to make money, the families are lobbying for nothing that distracts from the disaster and the public prefers something in between. "There's no clear consensus on the major ingredients," says New York Building Congress president Richard T. Anderson. "There is a lot of sorting out that needs to be done."
The legal wrangling between city agencies must run its course. But rebuilding at the World Trade Center site is really quite simple. What's necessary is for New Yorkers to accept some simple realities.
Something must be built at Ground Zero. Leaving the site empty or turning it into a memorial park, an option favored by slightly fewer than half of New Yorkers surveyed in a recent poll, would essentially accept that the terrorists were right. It would be a symbolic surrender, similar to San Francisco's idiotic decision not to rebuild its freeways after the 1989 earthquake ( news - web sites). (That fiscally-motivated conclusion, taken under the cover of an effort to increase waterfront access, left residents of the Bay Area choking in traffic jams throughout the `90s dot-com boom.)
Furthermore, the permanent loss of 35 percent of lower Manhattan's commercial real estate would lock in already-increasing rents during an already sluggish economy. Finally, a simple memorial park wouldn't enjoy significant use by the public. Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants planners to add residential apartments to a World Trade Center 2.0, but the fact remains that Manhattan's financial district becomes a ghost town at night. Whether or not a few thousand more renters move downtown, that's not going to change during the foreseeable future.
A grander, taller building should be the site's new centerpiece. The old Twin Towers failed architecturally, economically and as integral parts of the neighborhood where they stood. World Trade Center office space was atrociously designed; if you worked inside you had higher chances of winning Lotto than spotting a window. But they were spectacularly tall, and breathtakingly huge. Whether throwing down an overpriced drink at the Windows on the World restaurant while looking down at the Statue of Liberty or gazing up from the Soviet-style plaza below (which I never did without contemplating the mess they'd make if they fell), you couldn't help respecting the World Trade Center as a colossal triumph of engineering and American hubris. New Yorkers didn't admire the buildings. Most people thought they were ugly boxes. But we miss them in part because a city like New York, the biggest city in the richest nation in the history of humankind, must have an architectural statement on a monumental scale.
Richard Sherman of Brooklyn sums it up: "We should rebuild two towers to at least the levels they were before or the evil has won." And so we should: whatever goes up should go up at least 110 stories. Hell, why not 150 or 200? Of course, the new structure should make a bold, dramatic aesthetic statement. America may have given up on sending men to the moon, but we can rebuild our dreams on Ground Zero.
We should rebuild on the building footprints. If the World Trade Center site is "sacred ground" because thousands died there, so are the sections of Brooklyn where so much dust--including human remains--settled during the next few days. 15,000 bodies are buried in the potter's field that still lies beneath Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, yet no one suggests that these departed New Yorkers be memorialized with a simple plaque, much less a permanent ban on development. The truth is, New York is all sacred ground; just about anywhere you stand in a densely-populated city is a spot where someone died violently.
Designating the foundations of 1 and 2 World Trade Centers as a no-build zone is an emotional, illogical conceit--understandable during the heartbreaking weeks after the tragedy, but unbecoming for a living, breathing city getting back on its feet. What of those who leapt from the burning buildings? Are they less worthy because they landed outside the border of the "footprints"? Yes, let's honor the victims of 9-11 with a tasteful memorial somewhere on the site--only a fool would suggest that they be forgotten. But the only legitimate concern related to the "footprint" issue is whether the September 11 collapse made the site potentially unstable.
We should rebuild safer. Any building taller than the fire department's longest ladder faces intrinsic safety problems. Many of the deaths on September 11th testify to this fact. Nonetheless, long and careful consideration must be given to realistic evacuation facilities and procedures for New York's next big skyscraper. Perhaps helicopter landing pads can be placed at strategic intervals, or insulated elevators can be incorporated into the design so that those who work on the 100th floor aren't forced to walk down 100 flights of stairs in the event of an emergency. Fire safety and architectural standards have come a long way since the early `70s. Those innovations must be fully incorporated into New York's symbol of renewal.
We should rebuild soon. It is imperative that ground be broken soon to the successor to the World Trade Center. The world is watching us; this is no time for the customary delays that characterize construction in New York City. After years of official hand-wringing, the pervasive problem of subway graffiti was finally defeated in the `80s by a simple policy: repaint every vandalized car the moment the damage is spotted. Similarly, the terrorists' handiwork, the great, terrible gap in the Manhattan skyline, must be erased and replaced.
We can't afford to wallow, as Europeans do, in the sorrows of our history. As New Yorkers and Americans, we must rededicate ourselves to what we do best: working and moving forward.
(Ted Rall's new book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan and Back," is now in its second edition. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.)
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