WTC Rebuild News: Expect Noise During Construction

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced that the WTC rebuild "would necessarily involve significant traffic, noise and short-term air quality impacts during its construction period." Thanks for pointing that out! Gothamist guesses that it's the LMDC's job to put it on the books that they know these things, but we feel that most people might infer that building an almost 2,000-foot high skyscraper, a new PATH station, a memorial, new plazas, parks, streets, etc., would involve serious construction and construction byproducts. The most interesting thing is that the LMDC has pinpointed 2006 as being to busiest year of construction.

Additionally, The architecture firm Davis Brody Bond was appointed to help with work on Michael Arad and Peter Walker's Reflecting Absence Memorial. WTC memorial jury chairman Vartan Gregorian said, "They would not do anything, in my opinion, to scuttle the vision of Arad and Walker, and they also know the ways of New York and how things are done," and the Times notes that two members of DBB's design team are black, whereas all the designers involved with the WTC rebuild so far have been white. Davis Brody Bond projects around the city, besides the Harvard Club and NYPL expansions mentioned in the papers, include the NYU dorm on East 14th (between 3rd and 4th Avenues), the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, and that ugly Union Square Building, Zeckendorf Towers.