Casualties of Consensus

Until a few months ago, there was still something akin to a mass grave at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan. But with the human and architectural remains of the World Trade Center removed from that 16-acre, seven-story-deep wound, the site that once held the collapsed mass of the twin 110-story towers and the obliterated residue of 2,823 souls now resembles little more than a sprawling construction site. But how to contemplate building in the wake of such a catastrophe? And what to build?

There has been no shortage of rhetoric on this front. But the facts are these: Shopping-mall developer Westfield America has a 99-year lease on the retail space crushed beneath the towers. Developer Larry Silverstein holds the lease on the fallen towers themselves, and owned 7 World Trade Center, the building that collapsed late in the day on September 11. Since the fall, he has had architects on payroll at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill—the firm famous for pioneering glass tower boxes—tinkering with new plans.

In addition, a number of ad-hoc groups formed in the weeks and months after September 11 to represent victims’ families, Lower Manhattan residents, city planners, architects and Wall Street interests in the rebuilding process. Forums were held, discussions and arguments had. Should the lost office space be replaced? Can the city stem the corporate evacuation to New Jersey and Westchester County? What to do about the crippled transportation network of subways and commuter trains? How should a memorial look and feel? This back and forth continues, but much of the palaver seems beside the point.

The site is still owned by the Twin Towers’ original builder, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. This means that New York Gov. George Pataki holds the reins. In the fall he had the Empire State Development Corporation—empowered by law to build anything anywhere in the state with minimal concern for local zoning ordinances—spin off an entity called the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC). Charged with coordinating and directing rebuilding efforts on the Port Authority’s land, the LMDC, similar to the Port Authority itself, is one of those nebulous, little understood entities that determine much of what gets built in American cities. As a “public corporation,” this oxymoron is one in a long line of public-private partnerships that have remade so many downtowns across the country since President Nixon killed federal urban funding.

Combining the raw power of a public agency with corporate influence, efficiency and lack of accountability, conventional wisdom says the LMDC should have no problem getting done what it wants done. Most of the governor’s initial appointments to the LMDC’s top ranks were part of his coterie; the head is a former co-chairman of investment firm Goldman Sachs. After Pataki dispatched an upstate congressman to Washington to ensure that federal funds for rebuilding were funneled through Albany, not City Hall, it looked like the state was going to freeze the city out of the decision-making process altogether. But then Pataki’s fellow Republican Michael Bloomberg upset Democrat Mark Green in the mayoral race, and the governor threw the city a bone, giving Bloomberg four spots on the LMDC board to divvy up.

The LMDC, trying to deflect the impression that rebuilding would go ahead without any public input, went to great pains to assure the public, victims’ groups, elected officials, residents of Lower Manhattan and planners that their voices would be heard. In the spring, after months of surveying the various interests, holding forums and going about finding consensus, the LMDC issued a “blueprint for renewal.”