Residents Take City to Court Over Plan to Bomb-Proof World Trade Center

The Police Department's proposed security checkpoint at West Broadway between Barclay and Vesey streets. Rendering: NYPD

Fearing the NYPD’s plan to bomb-proof the World Trade Center will cut them off from “free access to the outside world,” residents who live near the site were in court last week to try to stop the plan from moving forward.

The residents, most of whom live on Liberty and Cedar streets, view the barriers and checkpoints that will ring the site as overly cautious and sure to hem them in with crowds and traffic. And they claim that the city failed to adequately study the environmental impacts of its security measures or to fully consider alternatives.

In their first court appearance since the lawsuit was filed in November, lawyers for the city and for the opponents, who call themselves the “World Trade Center Neighborhood Alliance,” argued their cases before state Supreme Court Judge Margaret Chan.

The judge withheld her decision pending a “field trip” to the area. “My assessment,” she said, “is that Liberty Street doesn’t want to be renamed ‘No Liberty Street.’”

Under what is being called the World Trade Center Campus Security Plan [1], vehicle screening stations would be installed on streets leading to the World Trade Center. The plan also involves closing off the west lane of Church Street, between Cedar and Vesey, to general traffic. Pedestrians could freely access the site, and a “Trusted Access Program” would allow “expeditious entry” for the vehicles of area residents and businesses.

Although construction has already begun on some of the security installations, the opponents are holding out hope that they can convince the judge that the city needs to stop and reconsider its plan.

“We’re trying to impress upon you that they’re overpolicing, that it’s security for security’s sake, and that it doesn’t benefit anyone including the people who live there, who work there, who are going to museums,” argued their attorney Dan Alterman.

“When you’re considering this,” he added, “consider the fact that the plan should be scaled down.”

The city, arguing that the Campus Plan was “well considered” and “publicly vetted,” accused the residents of second-guessing its anti-terrorism experts.  It did consider alternative security measures, the city contended in court papers. Those proposed by the opponents, it said, would be “inadequate because they would not enable the NYPD to stop hostile vehicles from entering the campus, which would leave the WTC campus vulnerable to further attacks.”

Traffic patterns will be monitored, the city said, and adjustments to the plan will be made as needed.

In the meantime, petitioner Kathleen Moore, a resident of 125 Cedar, an apartment building that faces the World Trade Center, said the judge’s wish to tour the site’s perimeter is “extremely promising.”

“If we can at least reconsider what’s been developed by the Police Department and take a new look at the neighborhood,” she told the Trib, “it would be wonderful.”