Planners aim to transform New York

10/06/2001

By Thomas Huang
The Dallas Morning News

NEW YORK – From the ashes and sorrow of the World Trade Center site, imagine this: a complex of low-rise buildings for offices, hotels, shops and housing, surrounded by street-level plazas for a free flow of pedestrians. A museum or performance hall to infuse the new center with culture. A transportation hub to link Lower Manhattan with train stations and airports. And a memorial to honor those lost in the Sept. 11 attack.

The new World Trade Center could be all that and more, in the view of developers and urban planners. In the midst of their mourning, they are beginning to realize the challenge ahead will not simply be rebuilding two towers and a few city blocks. From the disaster comes an opportunity to reinvigorate Lower Manhattan, to make it not only a place to profit, but also a place to live.

"Manhattan was the first 20th-century city, with high-rises and mass transit – and now we have the opportunity to create the first 21st-century city," said Robert Yaro, executive director of the New York Regional Planning Association, a nonprofit economic development and community planning group. "The goal, of course, has to be commercial success. It needs to be a vital part of the city. But it can't just be that. It has taken on an important symbolic meaning.

"It's about the whole country's ability to get back on its feet."

The revitalization of New York in the last decade has been a remarkable story. But perhaps one has to go back 70 years, to the Great Depression, to find a time when the city, in crisis, required the scope of leadership and vision that it needs today. Back then, New York's economy had flat-lined, hundreds of thousands of residents were unemployed, and the city was on the verge of becoming one large slum.

With the help of the New Deal, Mayor Fiorella La Guardia and Robert Moses, his parks commissioner, devised an ambitious plan to put 200,000 people to work rebuilding the city. Through his friendship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. La Guardia got the federal money to build much of the modern city's infrastructure, including the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and La Guardia Airport, as well as reservoirs, bridges, sewers, playgrounds, and municipal swimming pools.

That parallels what could happen at the World Trade Center site.

"We not only have an opportunity, but an obligation to transform Lower Manhattan," said Jonathan Rose, a New York developer. "New York City is a place of buildings, and if we leave the site as an empty space, the heart of the city will have been blown up. Our standing up and showing who we are is to transform it and come up with something better."

'Place of life'

Mr. Rose has called for building a transportation hub that connects the neighborhood to the area's three major airports, the trains to New Jersey, and Grand Central and Penn stations. He thinks the site should have commercial office and retail space, a memorial, as well as a civic plaza that brings in pedestrians.

"It should be a place of life," he said.

Richard A. Kahan, former president of the State Urban Development Corporation, helped build Battery Park City, the neighborhood west of the World Trade Center. He has suggested moving the New York Stock Exchange to the site. "Whatever is done needs to make a statement, to say to the enemy that our economic system is in fine shape," he said.

For Mr. Rose, Mr. Kahan, and others, it's a time to ask the hard questions, and there are many: What should be built at ground zero? Should the skyscrapers be rebuilt, and if so, who would want to work in them? Does all of the office space that was lost need to be rebuilt, or can some of it be spread across the region? Would it be appropriate to have a center of commerce and a memorial to the dead at the same location? Who will make these decisions?

Mayor Rudy Giuliani has said he's committed to rebuilding at the site. He has suggested incorporating part of a seven-story remnant of the World Trade Center in a memorial. Some have called for the creation of a reconstruction authority, representing the interests of the Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center and is controlled by the governors of New York and New Jersey; as well as the interests of the leaseholder and the city, state, and federal governments.

Cleanup is expected to take two years, followed by another five years to build whatever goes there. The federal government has pledged $20 billion for the cleanup and rebuilding, but some have estimated that the project, which includes reconstructing a subway line, will cost nearly twice that. City officials said Thursday that the disaster would cost New York's overall economy as much as $105 billion over the next two years.

Developer Larry Silverstein holds a $3.2 billion, 99-year lease on the World Trade Center. He envisions four 50-story buildings to replace the 10 million square feet of office space that was lost. (A total of 27 million square feet of office space was damaged.)

Many New Yorkers feel the twin towers should be rebuilt to their original heights. "We need to get our skyline back, not only for New York, but for the world," said Joe Glanis, 36, who works in a travel business.

Karen Velie, 54, who sells candy at Evelyn's Hand-Dipped Chocolates, said, "Definitely. Oh, Lord, I miss them."

Resistance to rebuild

But urban planning experts say that it's not necessary – and probably isn't a good idea – to build such skyscrapers again, for economic and safety reasons.

"It would be possible to redevelop the site without going to super high-rise buildings," Mr. Yaro said. "And there would be resistance from the survivors – people who had to run down 80 flights of stairs and won't do it again."

Corporate executives will be reluctant "to put their employees in what amounts to a target," said Samuel Staley, director of the Urban Futures Program of the Reason Public Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Los Angeles. "They will ask: 'If there's a disaster, can my employees escape?' And: 'Do I want to put all of my talent in one place?' "

Mr. Staley said that, because of those concerns, and because of advances in communications technology, companies will spread their offices "out to Jersey City, Hoboken, Long Island, the boroughs – urban areas with access to Lower Manhattan. I see a lot of satellite cities."

"Lower Manhattan will continue to be a financial center, but we'll see a diversification, with more people living there," Mr. Staley said.

In the end, the center also would need to be a place for remembering, many said.

"It's a pilgrimage site," Mr. Yaro said. "There will have to be a national monument on the site. Imagine a national park, with a memorial and museum, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial or the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C."

Still, there are many others who say that it's premature to envision what should be built. Eric Darton, author of Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York's World Trade Center, urged patience.

"The feeling among the political leadership and the public is to do something fast," he said. "But that's not realistic, and it would be wrong-headed to do that. What goes there needs to grow out of a public awareness, not in a rush to rebuild. It can't just be left to planners and architects. It needs to arrive from a collective dream."

Reference librarian Julie Wilson contributed to this report.