CB1 Anger Grows Over Plans for WTC Site

 by Etta Sanders


There was more controversy last month over what will be built at the World Trade Center site, as Community Board 1 lashed out at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in with suggestions that could radically change the redevelopment plans.

LMDC Chairman John Whitehead and Gov. George Pataki at an announcement last month on fundraising for the WTC Memorial. Earlier in the month, Whitehead publicly complained about the governor's unilateral action to remove the Freedom Center from the site. Photo: Allan Tannenbaum
CB1 chided Gov. George Pataki and the LMDC for ignoring community input regarding the rebuilding at the Trade Center site. In two resolutions passed on Oct. 18, the community board called on the agency to bring retail businesses to the site more quickly, to restore cultural institutions to the planning, and to keep the rebuilding on schedule.

Bloomberg, in an interview with the Daily News, said he favored building housing on the site in place of some of the 10 million square feet of office space that is currently planned.

The community board was reacting in part to the recent removal of two museums, the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, from a cultural building planned alongside the memorial, after some relatives of Sept. 11 victims objected to their presence. Board members said that the decision to oust the museums ignored community opinion that culture will be an important enhancement to the site.

"We have to consider the effect of this on our community, and our wishes are not being heeded," Peter Braus, a CB1 member, told LMDC vice president Michael Haberman at an Oct. 17 meeting of the board's WTC Redevelopment Committee.

Haberman said that community opinion is important, but is just one consideration. "The LMDC cares deeply about what the community wants in their neighborhood," he said, "but as we all know there are a lot of constituent groups-other New Yorkers, family members-all weighing in on this issue."

Less than two weeks earlier, LMDC board members themselves railed against the governor's actions in removing the Freedom Center from the planned cultural building, saying that the corporation's authority had been undermined.

John Whitehead, chairman of the LMDC, said he was "quite distressed that a process which we had established two years ago with full public approval was not allowed to work its way through to conclusion."

LMDC board member Roland Betts resigned late last month after saying at the October board meeting that serious harm had been done to the agency's role. "There's no question that the LMDC has been deeply wounded here," he said.

Gov. Pataki announced on Sept. 28-an hour before the Freedom Center was to give a presentation to CB1-that the museum would not be on the site, effectively ending community comment on the plan. That action "made a mockery of the public review process," a CB1 resolution stated.

"We should have been given a chance to give that input and that was circumvented, and that to me that is what is so distressing," said Julie Menin, CB1's chairwoman.

The community board, citing its lack of input into the selection last year of four cultural institutions for the site, also said that the LMDC and Port Authority should give "a significant advisory role" to the local community in the choosing of new cultural institutions and retail stores for the site.

"Those [changes] have been done because of other groups, primarily the families [of victims]," said board member Marc Donnenfeld. "I have a major concern that this is going to end up being a large mausoleum and not the vibrant center that's supposed to celebrate life as well as respect the death that occurred there."