LMDC Board Voices Anger at Pataki By Etta Sanders Members of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) spoke out against Gov. George Pataki's sudden removal of the International Freedom Center (IFC) from the World Trade Center site, saying the decision had undermined their authority. "I think it's appalling, the decision by the governor regarding the International Freedom Center," said board member Ed Lewis at the LMDC's Oct. 6 meeting. "But more importantly, too, as a result of that decision, it really calls into question what is the purpose of our board." The board's comments were unusual. Most LMDC board meetings, which are public, involve little more than rubberstamp votes for decisions that have already been made behind closed doors. The International Freedom Center (IFC), co-founded by Chelsea Piers president Tom Bernstein, was one of two cultural institutions chosen by the LMDC last year to occupy a building alongside the memorial. But a coalition of victims' family members loudly objected to the museum's location, saying it may contain politically controversial exhibits that would be inappropriate at the memorial site. This summer the LMDC requested that the IFC submit a more detailed report of what the museum's content would be. The IFC, a new institution created specifically for the World Trade Center site, submitted the material on Sept. 23. That submission was to be followed by two meetings to gather public input. But immediately before the first of those meetings, a community board meeting on Sept 28 at which Bernstein was to make a presentation, Pataki announced the Freedom Center would not be on the site. Shortly afterwards Bernstein issued a statement saying that they would not pursue an alternative location. Roland Betts, an LMDC board member and a partner with Bernstein in Chelsea Piers, said there had been no communication between Pataki and the LMDC before the decision was announced. "There's no question that the L.M.D.C. has been deeply wounded here," Betts said, adding, "We need to call upon the governor and the mayor to reaffirm their commitment to this institution, to reaffirm its role in the planning process and to assure us in a meaningful way that the efforts of that planning will not be wasted and that they will be respected. And I think without that, there's no future to this organization." Other board members said that no one group should dictate the rebuilding of the site. "We have to remember that the 16 acres that we are developing, and that we have gone through an enormous public process on, belongs to everyone," said Madelyn Wils, LMDC board member and former chairwoman of Community Board 1. "This is not a process that should be dictated by one particular group with one particular set of ideas," While it is not known what the fate of the IFC would have been if decided by the LMDC, board chairman John Whitehead opened the meeting by saying he was "quite distressed that that a process which we had established two years ago with full public approval was not allowed to work its way through to conclusion."