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Residents,
9/11 Families Vie over Site
by Ronald
Drenger
As the redevelopment
of the World Trade Center site moved forward last month following the selection
of Daniel Libeskind as master architect, tensions emerged between Downtown
residents and relatives of Sept. 11 victims over details of the site plan.
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The sharpest differences were over a proposed tour bus garage within
the Trade Center’s “bathtub.” Residents, worried
that Downtown will be overrun by buses, supported the idea, while
family members said that placing the garage under the memorial would
be disrespectful to 9/11 victims.
The two groups also found themselves at odds over Libeskind’s
design for a sunken memorial park and a proposal by some families
to return remains of unidentified victims to Ground Zero.
Family members, many of whom have never recovered remains, refer
to the site as “sacred space” and “hallowed ground.”
Residents, especially those in Battery Park City and the neighborhood
immediately surrounding the site, say it is their “front yard,”
a place that is (or once was and promises to be again) tightly intertwined
with the activities and pleasures of daily life.
Members of both groups have acknowledged one another’s feelings,
and some have tried to foster dialogue. But on some questions they
have become reluctant rivals, calling their counterparts demanding,
selfish and insensitive. And each group complains that the other’s
concerns get more attention from planning officials and the public.
The competing interests surfaced on March 20, when Libeskind presented
his designs to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s
advisory councils, including groups representing residents and families.
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Residents raised concerns about inadequate pedestrian access to
the site. Some say the planned 6.5-acre sunken memorial park, incorporating
the bathtub walls, is a potential barrier. They also questioned
how much open space the site would offer.
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Family members focused on memorial as the centerpiece of the site.
with one questioning whether it would be big enough to accommodate
the anticipated visitors.
Libeskind’s answers at this forum gave more comfort to the
families than to the residents. He frequently referred to the sanctity
and gravity of the memorial park, which he said needed protection
from “mundane” and commercial activities.
“To what extent should this sacred site be traversable in a
secular, profane way?” he asked rhetorically, in response to
a resident’s question. Libeskind said he had considered running
a path from the southwest corner diagonally across the site, but
“I thought, that’s not a great way to do it.” Walking
around rather than through the site, he said, would take two extra
minutes, and “for two minutes extra, I thought it was important
to preserve the site, to protect it, to give people on the site
a very special feeling.”
Relatives of 9/11 victims nodded and murmured in assent. “He
gets it,” one woman whispered.
Several residents, standing at the back of the room, looked uncomfortable
with Libeskind’s remarks as they spoke quietly to one another.
“I’m concerned that the entire site is being memorialized,”
Liz Berger, who lives a block away, said later.
Michael Connolly, a Tribeca resident, said he worried “about
setting up this dichotomy between the so-called sacred and profane.”
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“I want the plan to evolve in a way that ensures that Downtown
remains livable for families and that the memorial is placed within
a design that takes into account all our different interests.”
George Olsen, a Tribeca resident and president of the P.S. 234 P.T.A.,
said that Libeskind’s comments had changed his mind about the
need for more access through the site, and that he understood the
desire to keep the memorial park separate and solemn.
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At a more contentious meeting
of Community Board 1’s WTC Redevelopment Committee earlier in
the month, at which the Port Authority presented its plan for a new
transit hub on the Trade Center site, the issue of the bus garage
dominated the discussion.
Paul Goldstein, CB1’s district manager and a resident of the
Southbridge Towers complex, said that a glut of tour and commuter
buses has been a problem for years.
“This is an opportunity that we, unfortunately, like it or not,
have to grab, or we will have a problem that we won’t be able
to handle,” he said, eliciting applause from other residents.
Family members, however, said that a garage under the memorial, in
the area where most of the remains were found, was inappropriate.
Diane Horning, whose son, Matthew, died in Tower One, said that the
families had already compromised enough after initially calling for
preserving the entire 16-acre site as sacred ground.
“It was dwarfed down to two and a half acres and now they’re
asking us to give up even more,” she said. “For what? For
a bus depot.”
Horning and other 9/11 relatives pleaded with planning officials to
look for alternatives. They said that the garage could be placed in
New Jersey or elsewhere in the city and that visitors could use ferries
or other public transportation to get to the site.
Tribeca resident Madelyn Wils, chair of CB1 and a director of the
LMDC, questioned the notion that the bathtub should be off limits.
She noted that some residents near the Trade Center had found human
remains in their homes. “Would you suggest that we mow down their
apartments?” she asked.
When Wils tried to prevent Horning from responding, Horning said sternly,
“Your callousness is unbelievable.”
Charles Wolf, a Greenwich Village resident whose wife was killed in
Tower One, favored a flexible approach. “If we can put the buses
within the bathtub, but not under the footprints of the towers, I
think that would be okay,” he said.
At its full board meeting on March 18, CB1 passed a resolution recommending
that the space under the memorial, including the footprints, be used
for the garage and other infrastructure improvements.
Later, Port Authority Executive Director Joseph Seymour said his agency
was “looking at designs to avoid the footprints” and planning
officials said they were exploring alternative garage sites in Lower
Manhattan. Seymour said a decision may be up to six months away.
Some residents have also raised concerns about the suggestion from
some family members to return human remains to Ground Zero. In February,
CB1 drafted a resolution opposing “turning the WTC site into
a cemetery” or “any plan to bring back any more than a symbolic
amount of remains.” But the board later tabled it for reconsideration.
Still, one family member, Thomas Meehan, launched an online petition
drive to oust Wils from the LMDC board because of her alleged opposition
to the proposal. By the end of last month, more than 1,000 people,
not all 9/11 relatives, had signed. Many added bitter attacks on Wils.
The petition “totally misrepresents our position,” Wils
said at a meeting of the community board’s executive committee.
“It does not speak to anything that we’ve supported.”
Other board members were quick to defend Wils. Raising questions about
the proposal for the remains “does not fly in the face of our
compassion and concern for these families,” said Paul Hovitz.
“But it does talk about those of us who live here.”
[Read "Residents,
9/11 Families Clash Over WTC Bus Garage"]
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