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How unlikely is it that after the public fuss of choosing a new building and complex for the WTC site and a WTC memorial, the Port Authority now seems like the smartest city agency for simply choosing a brilliant designer to design the new transit hub? Daniel Libeskind seems like a tyrant, David Childs is Silverstein's man, the LMDC seems hopelessly caught between a number of constituents. Whereas Santiago Calatrava swoops in and proposes a transit hub that might be the most magical and rapturous structure that breathes life and brilliance into the WTC site. Maybe that's why Gothamist likes the transit hub better than Freedom Tower: It's at street level, where you can appraise it better, versus a tall building you just see from afar; it's for everyday use as a commuter station, versus an office building we may never work in. Thank you, Santiago Calatrava and Port Authority. And thank you, Daniel Libeskind, for graciously working with Calatrava to make sure his design fit in your master plan.
The Times, Post, and Daily News on the the Calatrava design, whose bird like wings will open on every September 11. The Times' Herbert Muschamp is a fan of the design as well: "With deep appreciation, I congratulate the Port Authority for commissioning Mr. Calatrava, the great Spanish architect and engineer, to design a building with the power to shape the future of New York. It is a pleasure to report, for once, that public officials are not overstating the case when they describe a design as breathtaking."
More on the downtown transit hub design.
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Hahaha. Silly Gothamist, don't you know the Port Authority well enough by now? Somehow, some way, the PA will screw this up. It's as predictable as the sunrise: the PA turns everything it touches to shit.
Yes, that's why it's so surprising that they managed to hire Calatrava. The PA is so crazy - that Air Train to JFK - but this transit hub, by God, I think the whole city will storm the PA's offices it they try to screw with it.
I see a problem - as you enter Calatrava's brilliantly designed transit center you're introduced to "a new world, life, flight and hope,". All well and good, but then you get onto one of those horrid PATH trains. And it takes you to New Jersey.
As a NJ native, though a current New Yorker, NJ is a wonderful place. You get to develop NY envy while you're there.
im not quite a fan of calatravas design approach, but im sure that when its finished, ill still stand inside of it and stare stupidly around.
and ny envy? thats rather sad. yes, nyc rocks...but if you did grow up in nj, have a little love.
I'm a native of NJ as well, born and raised... I do have to admit that there are a lot of nice things. It just seems that there's no real identifying characteristic - NJ just takes on whatever its neighbor may be and then gets watered down as you move in towards the center.
Maybe being that inbetween state *IS* what NJ's purpose is; how weird would it be to drive out of the Holland Tunnel straight into Wilkes-Barre, PA? :-P
new jersey=tofu
I'm sure the germ of the screw-up has already rubbed off on the project. Heck, the project itself is the screw-up - the temporary WTC station is already 100 times nicer than any other permanent station in the PATH system. While the Journal Square and Newark stations are fairly nice; and Hoboken, Exchange Place, and 33rd St. aren't awful, nearly all the rest are just plain awful, if not in desperate need of a Superfund clean-up. (What exactly is that vaguely irridescent green stuff that forms stalagmites in the Pavonia/Newport station? It looks like something out of a Troma film.)
For the love of God, couldn't the PA spend a couple hundred grand to air condition the Pavonia/Newport, Christopher St., 9th St., and 14th St. stations? It seems like every other day in the summer there are delays in the PATH system because someone has collapsed from the heat in one of those stations: "We apologize for the delay, but there is a medical emergency at the Pavonia station. The train will resume forward motion immediately after the Jersey City Fire Department figures out a way to get an unconcious 500 pound man up a four foot wide staircase."
Before the PA invests hundreds of millions of dollars in some modernist pipe-dream, it ought to address some of its core infrastructure problems. And besides, everyone knows that the Port Authority is totally incapable of building this new project within a decade of schedule or $100 million of its budget. (Especially since it's clear the PA couldn't maintain or manage the proposed facility properly over the long haul.)
Where do you people think the money for this is coming from? The Port Authority will issue more bonds, and then raise fares and fees on PATH trains, bridges, tunnels, air and seaport facilities to cover the debt service. You're going to be paying more for plane tickets and orange juice, and why? All so that when this thing is finally finished in 2026, the AFSCME-sponsored, nepotism grandkid hires of the current lifers at the PA can submit photos and diagrams of the completed albatross to their professional associations and win a plaque for "Most Innovative Use of Cost Over-runs" or "Most Gratuitously Shameless Allocation of Kickbacks in a Transportation Project Boondoggle".
I know everybody's so impressed that the thing's pretty, but "functional" and "practical" are infinitely more important qualities in a train station. And even just "functional" is a lot to ask from the Port Authority.
Whew, remind me never to post after drinking. Did I write all that? (I could be the Jack Kerouac of public policy writing.)
Can we at least wait until the PA screws this up before lamenting it? I like the design and am choosing optimism.
The Port Authority eats glass-half-full naifs like you for breakfast.
I used to work for the PA; I know what a cluster*(&@ it is. I'd still rather be optimistic when a good design is presented. Arguing that the PA will screw up whatever it doss, ergo anything it chooses to do must be a mistake doesn't really get us anywhere. What are the actual design flaws wrt functionality and practicality?
In any event, since I concede that they are going to screw it up financially, I'll take my glass half full.