Panel Makes Unexpected Choice for World Trade Center Site
Wed Feb 26, 2:01 PM ET Add Top Stories - The New York Times to My Yahoo!
By EDWARD WYATT The New York Times
A key committee recommended yesterday that Lower Manhattan be rebuilt along the lines of a plan that had seemed out of favor, a proposal by the Think architectural team for two soaring latticework towers as the centerpiece of a memorial area. The unexpected decision appeared to set the stage for a showdown today among city and state officials.
In the last two weeks, Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had expressed support for the other finalist plan, by Studio Daniel Libeskind, which features an excavated pit on the site of the former World Trade Center towers.
But The Associated Press reported that Mr. Pataki, when asked yesterday if he had a favorite, said that he did, but then refused to say what it was. "The mayor and I are going to be talking about that this week," Mr. Pataki said. The final choice is to be announced tomorrow.
The group that made the recommendation yesterday, the site planning committee of the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, acted after a four-hour meeting at which the seven committee members reviewed the architects' revisions to their plans for the trade center site, according to people involved in discussions about the designs.
The committee's preference is not binding on a broader group of rebuilding officials who will meet today to decide whether to select the Think plan or the Libeskind plan. But the committee's move represents a direct challenge to Mr. Pataki and Mr. Bloomberg, who now face a choice of following or rejecting the recommendation of the people they appointed to the rebuilding effort.
That broader group includes officials from the development corporation, the governor's office, the mayor's office and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site.
The committee's action yesterday reflects a vigorous lobbying effort by Roland W. Betts, a director of the development corporation, who has been leading both the site-planning committee and the broader rebuilding steering committee.
"It's going to be a close one," a director of the development corporation said yesterday following the meeting. "It could simply come down to how the governor and the mayor feel."
Mr. Pataki and Mr. Bloomberg are scheduled to be briefed on the final plans of the two architecture teams this afternoon. After those briefings, the eight-member steering committee will meet to agree on a winning design, and its decision will be announced tomorrow morning at a press conference at the World Financial Center's Winter Garden, which overlooks ground zero.
Several people involved in the rebuilding process said they remained uncertain about which way the decision would go. But one member of the committee that recommended the Think plan yesterday, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said several committee members believe that the mayor and the governor should pay heed to their preference.
"We don't expect anyone to overrule us," the committee member said.
The members of the steering committee are Mr. Betts; John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the development corporation; Louis R. Tomson, the corporation's president; Charles Kushner and Anthony J. Sartor, directors of the Port Authority; Joseph J. Seymour, executive director of the Port Authority; Diana Taylor, deputy secretary to Mr. Pataki; and Daniel E. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding.
People involved in yesterday's meetings said much of the discussion focused on the revisions proposed by the two teams. The Think team, which originally planned to make its latticework towers of forged steel, now plans to build the towers of stainless steel, making them far lighter, according to people who have been briefed on the plan.
That change could address a primary concern of Port Authority engineers, who previously said the towers would be too heavy to be supported in their proposed location directly above the rebuilt PATH station at the trade center site.
It also reduces the expected cost of the design, which according to estimates released by the development corporation was at least $800 million, far more than the $330 million estimate for the Libeskind plan. One official said that the revisions make the plans approximately equal in cost.
The Think team, led by Rafael Viñoly, Frederic Schwartz, Ken Smith and Shigeru Ban, also agreed to alter the cultural components of their design, lowering a proposed museum from the 85th floor to about the 30th floor of the towers.
The museum would be built within the latticework so that it appeared to be suspended within the towers. But many rebuilding officials objected to the original proposal, saying that placing the tower so high would present engineering problems and discourage visitors who might fear another attack on an occupied portion of the buildings.
The Libeskind team also made changes to its plan, agreeing to raise the level of the pit that would serve as the site of the memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attack. It was originally designed to be 70 feet below ground, at the level of bedrock. Mr. Libeskind's revised design has the pit about 30 feet below ground level. Below it would be mechanical and electrical systems for the PATH station and, perhaps, a bus parking area to serve visitors to the memorial.
