NEW YORK, 14 September 2003 — Despite the solemnity of the second anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks last week, it could hardly have escaped notice that redevelopment of the site is bogged down by uncertainty and infighting.
The potent mix of emotion and money, bureaucracy and political power has made redevelopment plans uncertain at best and chaotic at worst. For the moment the 85,000 square yard hole in the heart of New York exists in a sort of limbo.
Last week, Larry Silverstein, leaseholder of the destroyed towers, was sued by bankers concerned that he is spending the insurance payout on the loss of the Twin Towers so fast that there may not be enough money left to rebuild.
According to GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp, Silverstein has spent $600 million of the $1.9 billion paid so far by insurers on rent on the site and the service of debts stemming from his acquisition of the towers in July 2001.
The lender is worried that, after Silverstein sinks hundreds of millions into developing the site and building the single 1,776 feet “Freedom Tower” designed by Daniel Libeskind, there will not be enough left to guarantee the loans on the original purchase.
The 72-year-old developer is still mired in a legal battle with insurers over the total payout for the loss of the towers. Silverstein continues to claim that for insurance purposes the terrorist attack amounts to two separate incidents — two planes and two collapses — and that he should receive $7 billion in compensation.
Insurers insist that the total payout should be no more than $3.5 billion, and could be substantially less. Last week, Silverstein sued his insurers and accused them of doing “everything they possibly can to disclaim responsibility, avoid liability, delay — some would say obfuscate, some would say misinform. It’s been excruciatingly difficult as a result.”
But the legal tangles over the financial aspect of the redevelopment pale in comparison with the feuding between Silverstein and the families of the victims, and the battle between Silverstein and architect Libeskind, winner of an international contest to rebuild Ground Zero.
The confusion over what will be built, and when, seems far from resolution as Silverstein, competing victims’ organizations, insurers, and city and state officials fight over usage of the site. The redevelopment is expected to include office and retail space, a memorial, cultural centers and a transit hub. Subject to the numerous lawsuits, New York Governor George Pataki says he wants construction to begin next summer.
Silverstein wants more office space than provided in Libeskind’s plan and has demoted the Polish-born architect from chief to “collaborating” architect. He has ridiculed Libeskind’s master plan as impractical and appointed another architect, David Childs, to be lead designer of the redevelopment’s centerpiece Freedom Tower.
Although Libeskind’s master plan for redevelopment was agreed upon more than six months ago, he will have to battle to see any of it realized. It turns out that the architect’s design — the Freedom Tower and spire surrounded by a cluster of four smaller towers — was no more than a starting point.
Libeskind’s role as a kind of executive producer is made no less complex by the fact that eight million New Yorkers see themselves as his clients. As Philip Nobel, an architecture critic for New York Times points out: “Everyone is looking to the site to make them feel better.”
In an interview last week, Libeskind expressed confidence that his vision would ultimately be realized. “You have to represent what you believe in,” he said. “And you have to remember that this design was selected ... not in a boardroom by some elite backroom dealers. It was done in a transparent process with all the citizens of New York and 50 million people voting on the Internet. My responsibility is to that great constituency.”
But not everyone sees it that way. Silverstein wants the tower moved to a site near to the subway line (to make it easier to let) but that would bring it close to the footprint of the original towers, that the victims’ families regard as sacred ground and want for a memorial.
But even in this there is argument. Some victims’ families want the site left bare except for a reflecting pool (like that commemorating the site of the Oklahoma City explosion); others want a full-scale design. The families of firefighters and rescue workers who died in the attack want a separate memorial altogether. They argue that the rescue workers should have their own because, as one said, “they went in together, so let them stay together.”
Many families of civilian victims oppose that plan, saying that it would denote a hierarchy and suggest some are more worthy of recognition than others. Even within the fire department there is a debate on how the dead should be listed — alphabetically, by rank, or by company.
Few elements of the plan are spared controversy. Even the amount of space respectively devoted to a memorial and commercial interests is hotly disputed: Silverstein wants more commercial space and less memorial; victims’ families want just the opposite and the design is to be tendered out, again, to competition. So far, 5,200 proposals have been submitted.
“The World Trade Center site generates billions of dollars,” says Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. “Lower Manhattan is the third-largest central business district in the United States, and the World Trade Center, before the Sept. 11 attacks, was a key component of that.”
Even a “Museum of Freedom” scheduled for the site has become laden with emotional and political baggage. To whose freedom should the museum be dedicated, general freedom or specifically American?
Nor is political control of the effort clear, or free from accusations of manipulation. In May Silverstein said the ground breaking for the signature tower would be timed to coincide with the Republican National Convention in Manhattan next summer, which prompted an outcry from Democrat-leaning activists and relatives of those who died.
