WTC memorial

[NY Hoya]

Towers' Land to Remain a Memorial, Pataki Says
By JACOB H. FRIES


Gov. George E. Pataki vowed yesterday at a memorial ceremony for Sept. 11 victims that there would be no commercial development on the land where the twin towers stood.

"Where the towers stood is hallowed ground," said Governor Pataki, who received a standing ovation from about 400 family members at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for the memorial service.

Mr. Pataki said that he would do "everything in my power" to ensure that those who died in the attack were properly honored. "There will always be a permanent and lasting memorial to those we lost," he said.

The Coalition of 9/11 Families, a group that helped to organize the service, recommended to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on Friday that development be barred from the spaces once occupied by the two towers, said William Doyle, vice president of the coalition.

The amount of the 16-acre World Trade Center site to be devoted to a memorial will ultimately be decided by the urban planners hired to design the site and the people who head the development corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, many of whom are longtime allies of Mr. Pataki.

At the service, the coalition distributed questionnaires asking relatives whether they wanted the entire 16 acres devoted to a memorial or favored a smaller monument surrounded by businesses.

Speaking shortly after the governor, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said that he also envisioned a large memorial. Afterward, he said: "The memorial should be a soaring, dramatic statement."

If such a memorial is built, "then we will repay the debt we owe to people who died there," he continued, adding that the site should include a museum and a library.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not attend the service. He appeared instead at a ceremony honoring the 14 Emergency Service Unit officers who died in the attack. The mayor, who was not available for comment yesterday, has said that he prefers a small, graceful memorial alongside business development.

The remarks by Mr. Pataki and Mr. Giuliani won approval from the victims' relatives, who had expressed concern their vision for the trade center site might be ignored.

Bruce DeCell, 52, whose son-in-law Mark Petrocelli was killed in the north tower, said he wanted the entire site to be a memorial, but he said he trusted the governor to construct something that would last for generations. "Everything has to be done slowly and with taste," he said. "It's something important."

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I think this is a bad idea. I prefer plans to build large office buildings on the site alongside a memorial.

 

[nixon]

Me too. I think they should rebuild the twin towers just as they stood, alongside a memorial of course.

 

[insurgent]

Wouldn't it have a huge symbolic effect to rebuild the towers, so that they looked exactly as before, with the same name and purpose. Of course it should be stronger built, so that it could stand another attack, but the symbolism would be good, right?

 

[CurtSibling]

I have always thought the WTC would rise again as a symbol of defiance to terrorists.

We should honour the innocents, but we should also rebuild those beautiful towers.

 

[G-Man]

Along with the twins a few smaller buildings were destroyed. You can build a great memorial on these areas and still rebuild the twins. Or uoi can rebuild the twins with the bottom floors as a memorial and a museum.

 

[CurtSibling]

Originally posted by G-Man
Along with the twins a few smaller buildings were destroyed. You can build a great memorial on these areas and still rebuild the twins. Or uoi can rebuild the twins with the bottom floors as a memorial and a museum.

I concur.

The WTC had a big plaza with a silver sculpture at the main entrance, if my memory serves me well.

Something along those lines, only more respectful would be good.

 

[NY Hoya]

I agree with everyone here. I also think that rebuilding the towers would be the best possible memorial.

 

[Sh3kel]

There isn't enough metal in the world to build a building strong enough to withstand a 747 impact.

 

[IceBlaZe]

I second all of you.

 

[CurtSibling]

Originally posted by Sh3kel
There isn't enough metal in the world to build a building strong enough to withstand a 747 impact.

True, in that case we just make sure a repeat of 9/11 never happens.

And rebuild the towers.

 

[Switch625]

There does need to be some sort of memorial to the attack, but putting the entire site out of commission is overkill. I'd personally like to see commercial towers and other buildings there, with a small memorial park among them. Living well is the best revenge. They need businesses, not a sixteen acre headstone.

 

[Hamlet]

The problem in my mind with having tower reconstrution take priority over a possible memorial is the fact that is that you seem to be ignoring the human tragedy of the incident over the desire to 'rebuild'. It's almost ignoring the human impact event. You may as well take the terrorists out of the equation.

Who exactly would want to work in a rebuilt WTC, anyway? I wouldn't.

I say build a big memorial park or something.

 

[damunzy]

Either way is fine by me...as long as there is a memorial.

 

[Lucky]

I would have let the last remaining steel pillars stand. They were THE perfect memorial.

And I would rebuild the towers, too! Twice in height and size to symbolize the gain of even more strength.

 

[Immortal]

I think they should rebuild the towers exactly as they were before, with the first floors dedicated as a memorial.

 

[BlueMonday]

Ok let me get this straight. A mere 400 hundred family members from the some 5000 people who died at the WTC want nothing to be built there. There are tens of thousands of victims not recognized here. Far be it from me to jump the gun, but what do the rest of those people want?

I've been hearing a lot about this subject on the net and the news on this subject over the last few weeks, and the impression I'm getting is that most Americans and New Yorkers want both an elegant memorial and a big building to both honour the memory and send a big F-U to the middle east. Watching FoxNews last week I saw a poll where about 75 percent of people wanted a rebuild, not to mention an architect who is submitting a proposal to build a 175 story, 2200 foot tall skyscraper on Ground Zero.

Bebuild them as they were? Hell no. The WTC towers were built using a form of construction found in no other skyscraper in the world, a design that failed. Most skyscrapers are built using a steel box skeleton where steel girders and columns are spaced evenly thoughout the structure. The WTC towers however, used a core made of that steel box skeleton and the outer shell also made of load bearing steel; in between were only long floor trusses. The design was brilliant, in fact it had the best weight to strength ratio of any skyscraper design.

However, in the 9-11 attack, the burning kerosene weakened the welds that held the trusses to the steel columns. As the weldings heated up, the welds stretched and broke. As more and more of these floors fell from thier moorings on the load bearing structure, the steel structure started to lose stability.

Imagine if you take a few wooden blocks and attach them with wooden dowels like the blocks are the floor of the WTC and the dowels are the load bearing members. If you start removing blocks the distance between the seperate blocks increases and exposes the structural members.

Although the trusses in the WTC had no load bearing purposes, the did prevent the two seperate steel structure from tortion (twisting). Without the trusses, the steel frame started twisting and eventually snapped .

Rebuild I say, it will be like a 1500 foot tall middle finger pointed at all the camel-f***ers who wanted them to come down. We'll build a bigger, better, and more elegant structure. Who would work in them? I certainly would. No fig-eating, camel-humping jerk-off is going to stop me from anything. I'd work in a new WTC...but I'd keep a parachute in a closet somewhere near my office.

>>If you're wondering where I got my info on the collapse of the WTC, there's a show on TLC called "World Trade Center; Anatomy of the Collapse." I caught it last week, but I'm sure they'll show it again sometime.

 

[RedWolf]

Here's the thing to keep in mind... A private Citizen OWNS the plot of land that the WTC was built on and it is PRIME COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE.

I bet it's worth HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars.

The guy that owned it apparently had just purchased it (I think it's a lease of some kind) shortly before September 11th and I also heard how much insurance he got after the disastor (the figure was HUGE I wish i could remember these numbers)

(part of the lease stipulated that if anything ever happened he would HAVE to re-build commercial structures - for obvious reasons - the city or maybe state didn't want someone buying the land in the midle of their hommercial core and then turning it into a playground)

Is the city willing to buy that property from him so that they can build this massive memorial and if so are they also willing to have the heart of their commercial district torn out?

BlueMonday: The death tole from the WTC disastor is estimated somewhere around 3200 (It's irrelevant of course - when that many people die it's still a tradgedy)

 

[BlueMonday]

Ahh, I've heard so many numbers since September, it's hard to pick out which one is good.

Larry Silverstein, BTW. He's the guy who leased the WTC from the Port Authority two months before F-day. He's also the guy who wants to put in a bunch of 50-60 story skyscrapers where the WTC used to be. I'm trying to find the name of the guy who wants the 175 story skyscraper, but no luck yet.

 

[RedWolf]

Originally posted by BlueMonday
Ahh, I've heard so many numbers since September, it's hard to pick out which one is good.

Larry Silverstein, BTW. He's the guy who leased the WTC from the Port Authority two months before F-day. He's also the guy who wants to put in a bunch of 50-60 story skyscrapers where the WTC used to be. I'm trying to find the name of the guy who wants the 175 story skyscraper, but no luck yet.

I use the 3200 because I saw it on CNN... Whats my world coming to when I'm saying "I saw it on TV so it must be true"?

However I see you know more details than me about the ownership etc... Does the city/state have the right to build a huge memorial there instead of a huge building against his wishes?

 

[BlueMonday]

Well, it's a little fuzzy what Silverstein can or can't do. He doesn't exactly "own" it...it's still legally owned by the Port Authority. What he's done is leased out that space, meaning he's the one who collects rent, maintains the building, pays the utililties and such, and also pays out a regular amount to the Port Authority. He's also the one who collected the insurance money when the towers collapsed (hundreds of millions of dollars right into his pocket).

Now in order to build anything on the land, he needs the Port Authority and the City's permission. So if either one of those want the whole thing to just be a giant 16 acre memorial, he can't do jack squat. But on the other hand, the city can't force him to build anything unless they buy the contract (or land from the PA), and meanwhile the Port Authority can't build anything untill the contract expires.

In the end, all three parties will have to work together before anything new can be built. Unless the city wants to pull the imminent domain clause (something that hasn't been done since 1950s Boston) the three are stuck with eachother. If the city or state called imminent domain it would bog down the whole thing in the legal system for years, so the best thing would be for the three of them to just work it out.