WTC Memorial: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Bureaucracy

If you want to be thoroughly depressed by the rebuilding process at Ground Zero in a matter of pages, versus a matter of years, Gothamist highly recommends reading New York magazine's cover story about the WTC Memorial and its architect, Michael Arad. It's an exclusive interview where Arad spill his guts about the process, but also gets worked over as one of the many egos in cast of a million egos and billion interests. Arad seems to have clashed with all the important players - original WTC redesign architect Daniel Libeskind, the firm Davis Brody Bond which is the associate architect, the LMDC, "partner" Peter Walker (who designed the landscaping elements for the memorial), you name it. For instance:

Arad immediately started behaving as if he had a powerful public mandate, which didn’t exactly put him in the right frame of mind to negotiate with Libeskind about fitting the memorial into the master plan. Libeskind, for his part, was enraged that Arad’s design had won. It effectively obliterated his original design for the memorial, which called for the area to remain a sunken pit with an open lawn at the bottom. “I will fight this!” he yelled during his first meeting about it with the LMDC. “I am the people’s architect!”

Libeskind and Arad are friendly now, but the process just seems nutty and horrible. Arad also says he'd be willing to give up the waterfalls, which seemed to be a beautiful, dreamy component of the memorial (if potentially dangerous during the winter), since costs have been escalating. Waterfalls are only the tip of the iceberg for what's wrong with the memorial situation. Let this cover story be yet another reason why Governor Pataki cannot run for higher office.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on the memorial. Remember when Arad (and Walker) were selected as the winning design? And the Maya Lin connection to the design is still intriguing.

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By Jen Chung in News on May 15, 2006 9:02 AM

Comments [rss]

pugsley

Arad comes out looking great in this article. The memorial is still one of the best parts of the WTC site. I'm assuming the billion dollar budget was something rigged up and leaked to the press to discredit Arad and his project for who-knows-what-reason. Arad seems to be one of the few who has the right attitude for working at the WTC site. The squeeky wheels need to be taken out of the process. Pataki really has no motivation to stall the process. If it were up to me, I'd dump Liebeskind then just build it already.

simion

not gonna happen, you are so very right - though I have to say there are some developments that should never happend - MSG as the poster child. But we have swung way to far in the other direction with respect to large public projects.

jack oneil

What a joke, spoiled little rich kid is mad and stomping his feet because he is not getting his way. A year off to snowboard! Not only does he seem like a jerk, his design sucks.

not gonna happen

The times you people are looking back upon fondly are gone forever. When they were building the bridges it was not common for there to be dozens of fatalities per project. One lost finger today costs about $10 million in legal bills and worker's comp. And in the past there would be thousands of workers ready to take their place.

If the GW Bridge were being built today the residents of Upper Manhattan and Fort Lee, NJ would be suing. The siting would be decried as racist. Environmentalists would say the impact studies were inadequate. Local politicians would be running on an anti-bridge platform. So I would be hesitant to put all of the blame on the Port Authority or the governor.

jmchez

Interesting how far the Port Authority has fallen from its proud "can do" attitude. The GW bridge got built in 4 years. Now the PA has taken more than four (and counting)to merely repaint it. Back in the sixties the PA also added a second level to the GW and an extra tube to the Lincoln tunnel as well as planning and starting to build the WTC. Can anyone imagine the intereference, the environemtal lawsuits, the political infighting and the delays if they attempted that now.

Bob A Booey

I feel horrible for anyone who lost a family member/friend/loved one at the WTC but these people need to relax with their demands. They do not have the right to dictate what is built at the site, plain and simple.

When a bus goes off the road and 30 people die, do the families of the victims get to dictate that the highway is closed forever?

Then there’s Pataki who is the most inept and unqualified politician I have ever seen. Oh wait, I forgot about Dubya…Pataki is a close #2.

There’s lots of blame to go around here.

Tim N.

Is there anyone associated with this that isn't a complete jackass?

This is the legacy of Governor Shitforbrains: Millions of dollars wasted; community alienated, depressed, and divided; and now he's going to Iowa to take bows for this.

By my count, we defeated the Nazis in 1,247 days and ended the Civil War in 1,460 days, but after 1,738 days we can't get one brick in the ground.

Wipe it clean and start all over again.

famdoc

I take what I read in New York magazine with a grain of salt. Their writers play free and loose with quotes, often using them out of context.

Toby

Libeskind is another hack architect. You get hack architects with big egos, politicos, and add a healthy dose of Port Authority incompetence and you get this sort of crap. Tbe big empty hole in the ground is a more striking and moving memorial than anything a bunch of hacks and politicos can come up with!

jack dong

This is what you get for having an unlimitless budget. I think the first world trade center got built in 3 years right? When you know that you can stretch every dollar and the union can just loaf around with their mob mentality then you are going to get this. Trust me, if it weren't for those crazy 9/11 relatives clinging to the deaths of their lost ones this thing would have been built, but the architects and caretakers will just take advantage of those crazies and push this to the max.