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Who will--and won't--be deciding what gets built at the World Trade Center site.
By Martin C. Pedersen
The Metropolis Observed
February 2002
The good news: rebuilding the World Trade Center site would be the most
scrutinized real estate development in United States history. The bad news:
it would still be a New York City real estate development, subject to the
same nefarious forces that have produced 30 years of design mediocrity (and
worse). The latter fact struck fear into architects, designers, planners,
and residents. Even as rescue workers pulled survivors from the WTC wreckage,
political coalitions formed, intent on influencing the site's redevelopment.
It was a very New York response. So was a meeting on September 12 at which
real estate developers asked mayor Rudolph Giuliani for help in speeding
the approval process for new buildings--reportedly to compensate for office
space lost at the WTC. Clearly this would require bending environmental
and zoning laws. "I found that very disturbing," says Beverly
Willis, president and director of the Architecture Research Institute. Soon
afterward she talked to Susan Szenasy, editor in chief of Metropolis, and
the two, joined by downtown businesswoman Liz Abzug, organized a brainstorming
session. "We wanted to establish some sense of the public voice,"
Willis says. "We also wanted to look at some of the immediate problems
downtown. The biggest one is health. People are getting sick." Out
of that meeting evolved Rebuild Downtown Our Town (RDOT), a coalition of
residents, small business owners, nonprofits, elected officials,
designers, and Community Boards 1 and 2.
At about the same time, a design committee was beginning life as the technical
support arm for NYC Rebuild, an affiliation between the New York City
Partnership and the Real Estate Board of New York, the city's business leaders
and landlords. Its Infrastructure Task Force was made up of professional
organizations (local chapters of the American Institute of Architects, American
Society of Civil Engineers, and others) and civic groups (such as the Architectural
League, Municipal Art Society, and Design Trust for Public Space). But the
design professionals began to see their future role as limited. "It
was almost like we were becoming a subcommittee of a subcommittee,"
says Ray Gastil, executive director of the Van Alen Institute. "It
became clear that we had to have our own identity to become a strong entity."
So 16 professional and civic organizations formed New York New Visions (NYNV)
with the goal of developing planning and design guidelines for Lower Manhattan.
In the middle of these simultaneous and overlapping committees was Robert
Yaro, executive director of the Regional Plan Association (RPA) and founder
of his own WTC effort, the Civic Alliance. "We want to shape the program
that will guide development of the master plan," says Yaro, who has
become the liaison between the three groups. "Our role is not to be
directly part of the public process but to be a resource to people who make
the decisions."
"There is an awful lot of jockeying for position going on here,"
says a longtime observer. "All of these groups are trying to do good,
but each has an agenda. The RPA, in particular, has been marginalized in
decision making in recent years, especially in the Giuliani era. They think
downtown redevelopment can be a vehicle to help revitalize them."
Still, there is a fairly broad consensus among the groups on the important
issues: a memorial for the victims on the WTC site, improved public transportation
downtown, environmental concerns (both short- and long-term), and mixed-use
development ideas for the area. "We're not just talking about the World
Trade Center site, but a strategy for all of downtown," Yaro says.
The larger question of course is whether the 80-plus organizations in these
three coalitions can influence New York real estate deal making, a
notoriously undemocratic process (of which the World Trade Center itself
was a product). "There are two default modes in New York," Yaro
says. "One is nothing happens. Two is bad things happen. We have to
get a third thing to happen, which is exemplary design, exemplary development."
Experienced activists assess the chances for design excellence with an equal
dose of optimism and realism. "I've been around development for a long
time and know how it works," Abzug says. "It's going to take enormous
pressure. Fortunately the governor is running for reelection, and that helps
us."
Republican governor George Pataki will be the real power behind rebuilding
efforts; he announced the formation of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment
Corporation in November. By making it a subsidiary of the state entity responsible
for Times Square and Queens West redevelopment, Pataki was able to appoint
seven of the eleven board members himself; lame-duck mayor Giuliani picked
the remaining four.
The redevelopment corporation will determine how federal aid is spent, remap
transportation systems downtown, appoint advisory panels, and approve master
plans for both the 16-acre site and all of downtown south of Houston Street.
It will also have bonding and eminent domain. The board's chairman is John
Whitehead, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs and deputy secretary of state
under Ronald Reagan. The other board members are Frank Zarb, former CEO
of Smith Barney; Roland Betts, owner of Chelsea Piers and a Yale classmate
of President Bush; Lewis Eisenberg, a financier and former chairman
of the Board of Commissioners for the Port Authority; Ed Malloy, a construction
union leader; Deborah Wright, a banker (and the board's only person of color);
Robert Harding, a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration; Dick Grasso,
CEO of the New York Stock Exchange; Howard Wilson, chairman of the New York
City School Construction Authority; Paul Crotty, a former Giuliani administration
official; and Madelyn Wils, chairperson of Community Board 1, a member
of RDOT, and the neighborhood's lone voice at the table. Wils, a Pataki
appointee, was clearly an election-year concession.
At first glance this does not look like a board long on enlightenment.
So how much democratic opportunity will there be for design and planning
input? "The one thing I can tell you is that all the civic groups put
together, collectively, will not be the major force, even if they're able
to get their acts together and not squabble," says a well-placed skeptic.
True, under normal circumstances. But this is not your typical real estate
deal. And the latest, perhaps most influential, player is not your
typical good-government group. The 9-11 Widows and Victims' Families Association--founded
by the wives of fallen firefighters--will demand a voice. "There
will be almost no choice but to hear what the families have to say,"
says firefighter Joseph Miccio. "This organization is prepared
to do whatever is necessary through the courts, through the media--but that's
not how we would like to do it." Governors, mayors, and developers
routinely ignore architects, planners, and critics. But in Lower Manhattan
in the year 2002 they ignore the Widows at their moral and political peril.
If groups like RDOT and NYNV are smart, they will reach out to the families.
There is no reason why excellent urban design can't be one of their collective
demands.
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