North Iowa Opinion Story

Leave the cannon alone

By RHONDA K. SULT, Marble Rock

In regard to our veterans' memorial, the cannon, leave it alone. The veterans have spoken from their hearts.

As for the Park Board member who is irritated by the people being prematurely upset, she needs to talk with the veterans and the widows of veterans who do not want their veterans memorial moved.

Mayor Ackley has even stated that the cannon has never been proclaimed as a veterans memorial. Does he believe the Army brought it here to honor the water department?

There has been talk of moving it back to City Park, which is on a back street that is seldom used and has a broken-down bridge (which is on the Historical Registry) leading to it.

Please, City Council, get your priorities straight. Get your grants, fix your bridge, fix your railroad crossings. Leave our veterans memorial alone. We have always been a community that stands together. This is no time to start pulling apart.

Lest we forget, it is only because of our veterans' sacrifices that we have our freedoms.

As for our veterans, thank you. As for your veterans memorial, leave it alone. Let the cannon stay at its home on the four corners of Main Street.

http://www.globegazette.com/articles/2005/...ccd8f2376588477.txt

Close-knit hamlet honors residents killed on 9/11
CARMEL
By Bond Brungard
For the Poughkeepsie Journal


Steve Driscoll made a big impact on his community, and when the New York City policeman died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Kevin Radovich did not forget about his late neighbor.

"He's one of the reasons I became a cop," Radovich said, behind the counter of the family business, Radovich & Dean Music, in the Putnam County hamlet of Carmel.

In a former vacant lot alongside the store is a new park dedicated to eight members of the community, mostly firefighters and police officers, who died responding to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

The memorial at Spain Cornerstone Park includes metal from the towers.

After the attacks, the scarred community gathered to honor its fallen residents.

"As a community and as individuals, we gathered around the victims and the families of victims, offering what we could," said Jane Garbo, one of Carmel's historians. "The roads were practically closed for the funerals of our local citizens who were murdered on 9/11."

"We have a close-knit, caring community and we welcome the chance to demonstrate our respect and concern for our neighbors, whether they be next door or in the next town. To this day, we hold these people in our hearts."

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pb...WS01/507270324/1006

Pataki: Freedom Tower Does Not Have To Be World's Tallest Building
  
July 26, 2005

Governor George Pataki says the possibility of a building in Chicago rising higher than the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center doesn't bother him.

A Chicago developer plans to construct a building in the Windy City that could climb to 2,000 feet by 2009, if he gets the funding.

Pataki says he knows the Freedom Tower isn't likely to keep the title of the tallest building forever. He says what’s important is that the tower rise to 1,776 feet, and stand as a symbol of independence and liberty.
 
 http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=203&aid=52370

The Desire for Tallest Building Persists

By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: July 27, 2005
Given the haunting image of the collapsing twin towers, it's hard for many Americans to fathom the enduring urge to build tall.

Yet now come plans for the nation's tallest skyscraper, a condominium and hotel building designed by Santiago Calatrava for Chicago's Near North lakefront. At 2,000 feet, the building, the Fordham Spire, would beat out the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower planned for ground zero.

Santiago Calatrava S.A.
At about 2,000 feet tall, the Fordham Spire would be the tallest building in the United States when all building elements are counted.
Internationally, both of these designs are dwarfed by the Burj Tower under construction in Dubai, which is expected to reach 2,300 feet. Once completed, the Burj will overtake Taipei 101, a 1,667-foot office tower, as the world's tallest. And the Taipei building is certainly a short-time record holder; only in October did it surpass the 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Malaysia.

"There are real bragging rights to being the tallest that go back 3,000 years," said Carol Willis, the founder and director of the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan. "Exceeding or exalting for spiritual reasons or a demonstration of power dates back from Babylon on - wanting to take a place in history, reserve a place in the timeline. Height is a fixation."

For all the talk about jitters deterring potential tenants of a future Freedom Tower, the 9/11 terrorist attack has done little or nothing to diminish a global appetite to touch the sky. "The number of tall buildings being built around the world is at an all-time high," said Ron Klemencic, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a professional group.

Chicago already has three of the 15 tallest buildings in the world: the Sears Tower, the John Hancock Center and Aon Center.

"The skyscraper was born in Chicago," said Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, director and president of the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design. "The whole concept of the skyscraper has always been indigenous to the city."

Developers are planning four buildings of around 80 stories in the city, Mr. Klemencic said. (The Fordham Spire is to rise to 115 stories by 2009.) Miami, San Francisco and Las Vegas are also in the midst of bustling high-rise construction.

David M. Childs of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the architect who designed the Freedom Tower, said he was not at all troubled by the notion that its height would be eclipsed by that of Mr. Calatrava's building. "More power to him," he said.

Mr. Childs pointed out that under current Federal Aviation Administration rules, Mr. Calatrava's proposed 2,000-foot tower is as tall as any building is allowed to be. And the Freedom Tower was not meant to be higher, given the patriotic symbolism of 1,776 feet mandated by Daniel Libeskind's master plan. Mr. Childs designed the roof and rooftop parapet to match the height of the two original World Trade Center buildings (1,362 feet and 1,368 feet); the antenna completes the distance to the top.

But the developer behind Burj Tower, Balfour Beatty, has made clear his intention to set - and keep - the record for the world's tallest building. "If anyone comes close," Ms. Willis said, "they'll build a taller spire."

That, of course, raises that perennial question in the skyscraper world: Does the spire count? Isn't it kind of cheating?

The Council on Tall Buildings, which certifies the tallest structures, has determined that the spire counts if it is "integral to the architecture of the building," Mr. Klemencic said.

"If you take off the top of the Chrysler Building, it doesn't look like the Chrysler Building anymore," he explained. "But if you take the antennas off the Hancock Tower, it still looks like the Hancock Tower."

The Freedom Tower's spire is expected to set off some squabbling. "I'm sure there will be heated debate," Mr. Klemencic said.

The 2,000-foot-high Calatrava building in Chicago, to be built by the developer Christopher T. Carley, would be 1,458 feet without its spire - only eight feet taller than the Sears Tower.

Architecture buffs revel in the lore of such competition, recalling how the Chrysler Building beat out the Bank of Manhattan tower in 1929 with the last-minute hoisting of a secretly planned stainless steel top. In 1931, of course, the Chrysler was bested by the Empire State Building, which yielded the title to the World Trade Center four decades later.

While the Calatrava building may be major news for the country, experts say it is old hat for much of the rest of the world, particularly Asia. Hong Kong, with its notorious population density, has more skyscrapers than New York, Ms. Willis said, and its residential buildings typically reach 60 stories these days.

Along Shanghai's jostling skyline, plans are under way for an 1,614-foot tower, China's tallest, as part of the Shanghai World Financial Center. "They're not afraid of height at all," Ms. Willis said of developers in Asia. "There is no anxiety. They both need the space and want the attention."

Some New Yorkers no doubt remain deeply wary of living or working in skyscrapers in the aftermath of 9/11. More than any other building, the Freedom Tower is a natural locus for fears of a violent recurrence.

But architectural experts say that in general, plenty of people and institutions will succumb to the spell of an architecturally prominent tall building, not to mention the view. "All you need is the right number of people with sufficient money," Ms. Willis said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/27/arts/des...OTWhgg5BYKhUlt/TdRg

Index on Censorship

http://www.indexonline.org/en/indexindex/a...o-locate-at-g.shtml

Flight 93 memorial in the works
Federal legislation is moving ahead for site at the Capitol
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Washington -- San Francisco-bound Flight 93 has already notched its place in American history, but Congress now wants to make it indelible.

Forty ordinary passengers and crew members decided to fight back against their plane's four hijackers Sept. 11, when some 3,000 people died in terrorist attacks. Their efforts, launched under the now-famous oath, "Let's roll,'' prevented the plane from reaching it presumed target -- the U.S. Capitol or the White House in Washington, D.C.

Instead, the United Airlines plane slammed into the ground at 580 mph in the green countryside near Shanksville, Pa., population 245, incinerating everyone onboard.

To honor the 40 men and women hailed as American heroes, a grateful Congress is finally moving ahead with legislation to create a rare memorial in the Capitol that they may have saved from destruction.

A House panel sent legislation along on Tuesday calling for such a memorial, a bill the Senate has already passed twice. A full House vote is expected shortly after Labor Day.

"It's wonderful,'' said Alice Hoglan of Los Gatos, mother of Mark Bingham, the former Cal rugby player who gave his life after helping to organize the Flight 93 revolt.

"The actions of the few heroes on board made a difference on 9/11. It's because of them we didn't have to see the nation's Capitol in flames,'' she said in a phone interview after the House transportation subcommittee hearing.

"It means a great deal for us. They stopped what could have been even more of a tragedy,'' added Jack Grandcolas of San Rafael, whose wife, Lauren Grandcolas, died on Flight 93, a Boeing 757 that was bound from Newark to San Francisco when it was taken over by hijackers over eastern Ohio.

They turned it around, apparently headed for Washington. Passengers used their cell phones to contact friends and relatives who told them that three other planes had already been hijacked and that two had crashed into New York's World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon.

The passengers then huddled, voted and decided to fight back.

"If the Capitol had been hit, think of the message that would have sent the world,'' said Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, Md., whose father, Donald Peterson, and stepmother, Jean Peterson, died aboard Flight 93. They were on their way to a family reunion at Yosemite National Park.

"Al Qaeda had been handed its first defeat by a small group of unarmed individuals -- all regular people the morning they boarded the plane and all remarkable heroes,'' said Peterson, president of Families of Flight 93, in his committee testimony.

It isn't clear yet what form the Capitol memorial would take. It could be a simple plaque, although Brent Glass, director of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, told the committee the wording has to be drafted carefully, because history may never know the intentions of the people aboard Flight 93 who disrupted the hijacking or the real target of the hijackers.

But Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., whose district in southwestern Pennsylvania includes the Shanksville site that attracts some 150,000 visitors annually, suggested a plaque or perhaps a fresco. Coincidentally, as the hearing took place, Congress commemorated the 200th birthday of Constanino Brumidi, the naturalized American whose frescoes adorn many of the Capitol's walls and ceilings, including in the rotunda.

The legislation would create a panel of congressional leaders, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to consider designs.

Shuster conceded that Congress will never be certain if it was targeted on the morning of Sept. 11. "Perhaps we will never know for sure, but that should not prevent us from planning a memorial to show our respect in the Capitol for all to see,'' he said.

Advocates said they don't think the Capitol memorial will clash with plans for a permanent memorial in Shanksville. The National Park Service is considering five final designs and plans to announce a choice soon.

The lack of a permanent memorial hasn't stopped visitors from trooping to the site off the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Visitors have created their own makeshift memorials, and some people have had memorial plaques shipped in.

Hoglan has visited a few times but said pain over her son's loss hasn't abated. "They say there's closure, but there's no real closure,'' she said.

"I live and breathe it every day,'' she said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../27/MNG3VDU1PR1.DTL

 
  2005 Schedule Walking Tour Itinerary Endorsements, Comments and Tributes Buy This Tour
NYCVP Home Page Check Hotel Specials Here!!!>>>
  
NYCVP Historical Walking Tour guide Tony Di Sante enthralls tour participants with facts, history and humor as he leads them from 17th Century to modern day Lower Manhattan. (Photo courtesy of The London Times)

"My wife and I were on the June 18 tour with Tony in Lower Manhattan. If there was a survey, we'd say 5's across the board. Absolutely terrific. A great mixture of humor, history, and trivia. It's clear from Tony's presentation that September 11 is not over yet. The effects on the people and businesses are still happening every day. Tony kept a great pace, answered questions with humor, and provided other suggestions on "must see" things in New York (as well as what to avoid!). Thanks for a great three hours. A great buy for the cost." ... Jerry R, Pottstown PA
 
New York City Vacation Packages (NYCVP)
is now conducting a special professionally-guided
Historical Walking Tour of Lower Manhattan including a walk on the floor of the World Trade Center and a visit to the "Ground Zero" memorial site from the official viewing area.2005 Schedule:
 July and August every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 9am
September thru December every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 9am
Monday tours on Labor Day (Sept. 5) and Columbus Day (Oct. 10)


NYCVP's "Original Historical Walking Tour of Lower Manhattan including Ground Zero" is renowned. It is the only tour that skillfully and tastefully incorporates a walk on the floor of “Ground Zero” along with the rich history of the area and the promise of the future ... this NYCVP tour has been featured on CNN, Fox News, and TV Tokyo, and reported by the Washington Post, New York Times, London Times, World Affairs Weekly, USA Today and the New York Post.

Please join us to see and learn about the incredible hidden American historical jewels located in downtown New York City. Reservations are required. The Tour is $19 each adult ($12 each child 2-12 years).
The past does make a difference! Visit the single most historic area in the United States and watch our future unfold. Learn more about the exciting history of NYC and America -- you will care more about this very special and precious place in American History. Visit the former site of the WORLD TRADE CENTER TWIN TOWERS where you will be afforded an excellent, permitted view of the 16 acre scene of great heroism and tragedy (during inclement weather, the itinerary may change to afford you an unobstructed indoor view). You'll also see such historical icons as the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Woolworth Building ... and you'll walk through a veritable Skyscraper Museum!
 
 
 http://www.nycvp.com/ground_zero1.html

Although this editorial from the NY Post is mainly directed at the proposed cultural institutions at the WTC site, it should be noted that any significant delays in the fund raising drive will alter the LMDC's projected timeline for completion of the memorial. Also, it should be noted that outgoing Anita Contini was directly in charge of the administration of the memorial selection process.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/50586.htm

THEY'RE STARTING TO GET IT

July 23, 2005 -- Just days after officials at the Drawing Center said they'd sooner scrap plans for a facility at Ground Zero than agree to Gov. Pataki's censorship comes word that two notable figures have quit their involvement with the site.

One is Anita Contini, vice president and director for memorial, cultural and civic programs at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC).

Contini oversaw the selection of the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center for Ground Zero — choices that ignited a fiery protest over all-too-rational fears these museums would display vulgar, anti-American work.

Contini says she submitted her resignation a couple of months ago and that it had nothing to do with current protests.

Perhaps.

More significant was the other departure: Eric Foner, a left-wing prof at Columbia who was serving as an adviser to the IFC. Foner is the "scholar," you'll recall, who equated the 9/11 attacks with President Bush's rhetoric about a U.S. response.

Good riddance to both of them.

Meanwhile, some 9/11 families are ratcheting up their campaign to keep the museums off the site — and meeting with some early success. In one effort, towns all over the country are signing up to officially reject the plan for the facilities.

Plus, LMDC Chairman John Whitehead has griped increasingly about waning donations, thanks to all the fuss.

Clearly, Gov. Pataki — and Mayor Bloomberg, who controls half the LMDC's board — are getting the message: The Drawing Center and the IFC pose some serious problems for Ground Zero.

But what they still don't get is this: The idea can't work, no matter what they do.

Last month, Pataki demanded the facilities provide "assurances" that they'd ban offensive content. The Drawing Center, showing integrity, balked — demanding the gov relent. The Freedom Center, waiving its own free-speech rights, said it would gladly be censored.

That might explain Foner's departure, though — who knows? — maybe the IFC secretly plans to hire him back once Pataki is gone, which likely will be soon.

The fact is, it's becoming undeniably clear — apparently, to an increasing number of people — that there's no way to ensure these museums will operate, in perpetuity, with the kind of restraint and respect for 9/11 the site demands.

To repeat: They must go. Period.

A Tale of Two Symbols: Ground Zero and the Battle for America's Soul
by Gena Gorlin

A peculiar and noteworthy feature of mankind can be observed in the importance we lend to certain pieces of matter. Consider the perilous quests on which men have launched, both mythical and historical, in pursuit of certain objects--like a wooden cup (the "Holy Grail") and a sheep's skin ("Golden Fleece") and tree branches (consecrating our honor through laurel wreathes, our love through red roses) and rectangles of colored cloth (ranging from a victorious blue ribbon to a nation's billowing flag).

This distinctly human function, of imbuing concrete objects with abstract symbolism, goes a long way toward explaining the controversy that recently raged over what will replace the fallen World Trade Center towers in New York.

Rarely does an architectural project, no matter how tall or expensive, capture the breathless attention of millions nationwide. Yet the name of Daniel Libeskind, a professor of architecture at Penn State, and of his critically acclaimed "Freedom Tower" design were prominently featured in the newspaper headlines. And in a May press conference, Donald
Trump--one of the nation's foremost publicity hounds--has elevated the WTC question to the dimension of a sweeping saga by unveiling his own proposal: to build what are essentially replicas of the old twin towers--but one story taller.

Recently an uninspiring compromise design was selected over both Libeskind's and Trump's proposals. But the original controversy is still illustrative of the forces at work in American culture.

Libeskind's design was selected by an international panel of famed architects, government officials and philanthropists who favored his design for its symbolism. In the words of Robert Ivy, editor-in-chief of Architectural Record, Libeskind "authentically captures a shard of history without overwhelming us with the past....(The design) moved everyone who saw it, heard it, understood it" (USA Today). The occupied portion of the Freedom Tower was to comprise sixty stories and 1,100 feet, more than 250 feet shorter than the original Twin Towers. The next 400 feet comprised a lattice tower, and on top of that a 276-foot spire jutted into space. The height to the top of the spire was 1,776 feet--intended as a symbolic tribute to America's independence.

The preoccupation with symbolism, more than economic efficiency or practical structural concerns, dominated Libeskind's design. As he himself proclaimed, "Most architects are concerned with buildings--actually, I'm concerned with people....There's a big difference. Most architects are concerned with technology. I'm much more interested in the story a city tells, a story a building tells...."

To tell his story with adequate poignancy, Libeskind infused his design with symbolic elements. Apart from the height's obvious significance, the tower was graced with a Wedge of Light, a "public space" specially calculated so that no shadow would be cast on the morning of September 11. Moreover, the Freedom Tower was shaped like an arm stretched upward, which was supposed to suggest to us the nearby Statue of Liberty's upstretched arm. In accordance with Libeskind's intentions, every foot and every concrete block of the building wreaked symbolism--though less than half of it constituted an actual building.

But a majority of the "people" Libeskind was targeting do not seem to have bought into the story his design was supposed to tell. While it may have won the hearts of many architectural critics, intellectuals, and politicians, including Governor Pataki, Trump's proposal unleashed a vehement protest against the "Freedom Tower" among the American public--particularly New Yorkers. After his initial criticism of Libeskind's design in the New York Post, where he expressed the view that "the World Trade Center should be rebuilt on the site, only stronger and a little bit taller," Trump was deluged with letters of support. And in every major poll--including a poll by CNN as well as the official Lower Manhattan Development Corporation poll--Trump's proposal won over Mr. Libeskind's design.

Why such overwhelming preference for an imitation of the fallen towers over a new, unique structure? The subsequent Letters to the Editor of major New York newspapers, which cried out almost unanimously in favor of renewed WTC towers, revealed that symbolism does, in fact, have a lot to do with it. It certainly has little to do with Trump's reputation; consider, for instance, this letter to the Post: "Donald Trump is a caricature of himself, and his arrogance is obnoxious....But I want him in charge of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Period. End of story....I'm on Trump's team, because someone who really loves New York has an innate knowledge of what is best for New York" (Terrence Lavin, May 20).

So it is not the character or reputation of Trump, but rather some quality of the design that irresistibly drew a New York lover to its defense. According to Mr. Lavin, a true New Yorker senses "innately" that the WTC design is superior to what the Freedom Tower offers. But then, didn't Mr. Ivy, the architectural critic, say with equal fervor that Libeskind's design "moved everyone who saw it, heard it, understood it"? Unless Mr. Ivy does not really love New York at heart, and he certainly claims to, there is a clash of "innate" understandings here.

Consider this letter, which addressed a bit more explicitly the source of the Trump design's luster. "Better to restore the site where some 50,000 people joyously worked, where thousands from around the world did business, and where all celebrated life. Build two new twin towers, as tall or taller than the originals, on the footprints from which they were taken" (Joe Wright, NY Sun). This Manhattan-dweller felt that restoring the actual substance of the WTC site--with all its height and its interior business and work space--would be the only appropriate symbol of America's resilience and pride.

On the other hand, the Libeskind design, in Trump's description, was a "skeleton"; a "building that's not really a building" (NY Post, May 12). This meshes with Libeskind's own description of the design as an abstract "story" rather than a technologically sound building (which might explain why the Freedom Tower's launch date was subject to so many delays before the design was finally sacked altogether). Libeskind's professional philosophy, in effect, is symbolism-over-substance.

But then why did New Yorkers preferring the symbolism of Trump's revamped WTC towers, which were little more than copies of the frankly not-so-creative original design, to Libeskind's symbolically sophisticated shell of concrete?

Precisely because it was a shell.

Libeskind proposed that we build a carcass; an empty pretense that is all words and abstractions, but no substance. But America has not traditionally been a nation of empty abstractions. As Calvin Coolidge famously quipped, the business of America is not talk but business. That means that Americans value productive action and concrete achievement, from the pursuit of great monetary wealth to the most ambitious advances in medical and automotive technology. The terrorists were not stupid in choosing the World Trade Centers to attack; symbolically, they represented the heart of the American spirit. It is true that we value creativity and intellect: after all, the creation of iPods and heart monitors and spaceships and, indeed, corporate skyscrapers requires plenty of creativity, and of intellect to boot. But the Freedom Tower abandons the fundamental conviction that the terrorists attacked--that our ideas are practical, and that they bring us, not pious communion with an other-worldy Allah, but paradise on earth.

The fact that so many down-to-earth Americans yearned for a return of the WTC towers means we have not yet been defeated--at least not in spirit. But unfortunately that spirit of earthly pride is not "innate." It needs to be articulated by those who understand its abstract, intellectual root. Unfortunately, Trump lacked the capacity to articulate it. And President Bush, in articulating our intellectual cause in the "War on Terror," has not done much better. It is an intellectual defense of the American spirit that America needs.

Until then, intellectuals like Libeskind, will go unopposed on the battleground of ideas. And instead of a return to the spirit of the Twin Towers, we will be misled by the expedient compromises of politicians like Pataki. Unless the Libeskinds and Bush's are opposed by a new breed of intellectuals, we may be left with but an empty shell of the America we loved.

Gena Gorlin is a sophomore enrolled at Tufts University and the New England Conservatory.
 
http://www.the-undercurrent.com/index.php?p=/000042.html

Critics Call for Boycott of Memorial Fund-Raising

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: July 26, 2005
In the ever fiercer fight over a year-old plan to build a home for the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center alongside the World Trade Center memorial, some relatives of 9/11 victims called yesterday for a fund-raising boycott.

"We urge you to not donate to the World Trade Center memorial until the I.F.C. and the Drawing Center are eliminated from the memorial plans," said "An Open Letter to the American People." The letter appeared on a Web site, Take Back the Memorial, until questions arose over how many of the 14 relatives' groups that were signed to the letter had approved the use of their names.

Despite that withdrawal, critics of the cultural plan - including two members of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is charged with soliciting contributions - said the freedom center had to be removed before they would support the use of public money for the overall project. Opponents have objected in advance to what they say will be an anti-American bias to the center's offerings, a charge that the center has just as strongly rejected.

"We owe it to the American people or anyone else who wants to donate to tell them what they're paying for and not mislead them," said Debra Burlingame, a foundation board member and one of the letter's authors. She said financing for the memorial would be intermingled with that for the building at Fulton and Greenwich Streets that is intended to house the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center.

The assertion was disputed by Lynn Rasic, the vice president for public affairs at the foundation. "The first fund-raising efforts are devoted to the memorial and the museum dedicated to Sept. 11," she said.

"It's unfortunate and wrong to block efforts to make sure that our nation and the world remember those we lost during the attacks," Ms. Rasic said.

Asked whether it was a conflict of interest for board members to urge prospective donors to withhold support, Ms. Rasic said any potential conflicts would be reviewed by the governance committee.

Monica Iken, a board member and the founder of September's Mission, which supports the development of a memorial, said she had not approved the use of her group's name on the letter. "I never signed off on anything like that," she said yesterday.

"I have an obligation to fund-raise for the memorial," she added.

But Ms. Burlingame said her objections were in line with her fiduciary responsibilities as a board member. "You can't go out to the public and say, 'We're raising $500 million,' and not tell them they're building on the same site a building so large it will dwarf the memorial," she said.

Lee Ielpi, another member of the foundation board, is also vice president of the September 11th Families Association, which was listed as supporting the open letter.

"I'm fully comfortable asking Americans who shared our sorrow and came to help us in the worst of times to help us honor our dead and the sacrifice they made," he said. "I am not comfortable asking them to play a role in a political, economic or ideological passion play whose ending has yet to be written. I believe the freedom center is a bad idea."

Robert D. Shurbet, the founder of Take Back the Memorial (takebackthememorial.org), said that the open letter was a draft that had been "posted prematurely" and that the link to it was removed "pending final approval" by the relatives' groups.

As to the larger issue of the cultural organizations, Stefan Pryor, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said officials were having "continuing conversations with the two institutions regarding their response" to concerns raised by Gov. George E. Pataki. On June 24, the governor asked for an "absolute guarantee" that programs on the site not denigrate America or offend victims' families.

Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, resigned from the freedom center's committee of scholars and advisers this month, after a letter from the center to Mr. Pryor that tried to address those concerns. News of his resignation was reported on Saturday in The New York Post.

Alternative locations for the Drawing Center on and off the trade center site are already being explored.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/26/nyregion/26rebuild.html?

Editorial: A fitting tribute to Flight 93 passengers
07/26/2005
 
It is all together fitting for the passengers of United Flight 93 to be honored in Washington, D.C., with a memorial citing their heroism and sacrifice during the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. They were the first Americans who had the opportunity to fight back after learning the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had come under attack that fateful morning.


And fight back they did.
 
In so doing, they prevented a fourth hijacked American airliner from being used as a missile to blow up the U.S. Capitol or maybe even the White House.

Led by Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Thomas E. Burnett Jr. and Jeremy Glick, the passengers of Flight 93 quickly realized that the terrorists who hijacked their flight had a similar plan for their plane. They knew that more innocent people would be killed if they didn’t act.

After talking to and praying with a Verizon operator named Lisa Jefferson, Beamer, a 6-foot-1-inch, 200-pound athlete, said the now famous words that sum up this country in times of mortal danger:

"Let’s roll."

He didn’t say "Let’s wait" or "Let’s sue" or "Let’s see what happens."

Beamer said, "Are you ready guys? Let’s roll."

Fighting the terrorists didn’t save the lives of any of the passengers or crew on Flight 93. In the struggle for control of the aircraft it crashed on an abandoned strip mine in Shanksville, Pa. But undoubtedly, a second attack on Washington, D.C., was averted. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of lives were saved that day, thanks to the refusal of those passengers to quietly accept the deaths planned for them by Osama bin Laden.

Pennsylvania Reps. Bill Shuster and John Murtha, a Republican and Democrat, have proposed the memorial for somewhere in the Capitol.

It doesn’t have to be big and gaudy. It might, we are told, be nothing more than a plaque. But it is fitting that members of Congress would want to honor the men and women who might very well have saved their lives and others working near the Capitol that day.

The memorial would be in addition to the larger national memorial planned for the site where Flight 93 went down.

That place is hallowed ground. It is a place where brave men died fighting back against the enemies of civilization.

It is fiercely important to not forget that fight is ongoing. The recent bombings in London, Egypt and the continued assaults against the Iraqi people show we are up against a determined and diabolical enemy.

Brave men and women will continue to die fighting those who have joined the death cult that al-Qaida and other Islamic jihadists are trying to spread. Because they cannot beat our warriors, they attack the rest of us -- civilian men, women and children hoping to break our morale and dampen our spirit to fight.

The passengers of Flight 93 were not the first victims of 9/11 but they were the first to take the fight to the enemy.

In our view, they cannot be remembered or honored enough.

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Zero at Ground Zero
Steven Malanga EMAIL

When his plan for a publicly subsidized stadium on Manhattan’s Far West Side failed, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg bitterly complained that the city had let down the rest of America because now the country probably wouldn’t get to host the 2012 Olympics. But the mayor and his ally in the stadium fight, Governor Pataki, don’t understand that it is they who have let down the nation by letting their focus on the stadium help undermine the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site—symbolically a far more important mission to most Americans.

The two pols are failing on both sites because they seem to have lost faith in the private sector and to believe that only government can produce new development in New York. While they obsessed over their effort to jump-start Far West Side redevelopment with a publicly financed stadium, investment bank Goldman Sachs, which wanted to house 12,000 Wall Street jobs in a projected new tower across the street from the WTC site, became so alienated by government’s failure to address its concerns that it decided to leave downtown. Instead of pressing for a robust rebuilding on the World Trade Center site that puts its faith in a private-sector revival of the city, the city and state have concentrated on pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into cultural amenities, parks, and playgrounds. Meanwhile, several billion crucial federal transportation dollars are in danger of slipping away because of the stalled rebuilding.

This failure is quite a turnabout from the last time New York pols hatched a plan to revive lower Manhattan, and it says much about how attitudes among city and state officials have changed for the worse. Back in the mid-1990s, downtown was suffering from a long decline, as major investment houses had either moved jobs out of the city or relocated their headquarters to midtown’s newer buildings. By 1995, the commercial vacancy rate in lower Manhattan, the nation’s third-largest business district behind midtown Manhattan and downtown Chicago, was a staggering 30 percent, compared with just 12 percent in midtown. Few experts thought downtown had much of a future.

But then-mayor Giuliani believed that his agenda of restraining taxes and fighting crime would spark an economic revival and that lower Manhattan could be part of it. Giuliani pushed through the state legislature a revival plan that involved minimal government expenditures, giving tax abatements to landlords who updated older buildings with new wiring and other technologies to create a downtown district attractive to the high-tech firms that New York was starting to incubate. The revival plan also provided incentives for owners to convert the oldest buildings—which might have no future as office towers—to housing. The goal was to transform downtown into a 24-hour community on the assumption that jobs would follow residents downtown.

The plan succeeded magnificently. High-tech firms flew to the area, forming a technology district centered on 55 Broad Street, the former home of scandal-ridden investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, which had collapsed in the late 1980s but whose old headquarters now symbolized downtown’s new direction. Other firms looking for reasonably priced space abandoned midtown and headed to lower Manhattan instead of to New Jersey or beyond, attracted by what suddenly seemed like a hip new office region. Guardian Life and accounting firm Grant Thornton were among the big movers. Meanwhile, major downtown employers like Goldman Sachs solidified their operations in lower Manhattan with new leases. By 2000, not only were thousands of new residents living in some 50 former office buildings, but the area’s commercial vacancy rate had shrunk to 5 percent. Restaurants, hotels, and other services proliferated.

Behind this revival was a broader local economic boom, driven by a robust private sector. Between 1994 and 2000, New York businesses created 440,000 new jobs, even though there were no significant taxpayer-financed megaprojects under way. New York didn’t need them. Disproving Mayor Bloomberg’s assertion that the stadium defeat sent the message that you can’t get anything done in New York, during the late 1990s construction boomed throughout the city, as private investors poured tens of billions into building skyscrapers in midtown; renovating outdated buildings into new office space in places like Chelsea and Williamsburg, Brooklyn; constructing hotels in districts like downtown Brooklyn that hadn’t seen such development in generations; building shopping centers on abandoned manufacturing facilities throughout the boroughs; and rolling out new residential construction in abundance. As proof positive that you could, indeed, get things done in New York, employment in the city’s construction industry expanded by 44 percent—or 37,000 new jobs—during the 1990s boom.

It was this robust expansion that originally inspired the thought of rezoning Manhattan’s Far West Side to absorb the city’s further development—before stadium advocates hijacked the plan. The plan envisioned government investment in infrastructure, especially to improve access to the area by extending the Number 7 subway, but no extensive taxpayer-financed building projects. As an expanding economy created demand for new space, private developers would build the new residential and commercial towers that the plan permitted. Even after 9/11, the idea of freeing up the Far West Side for potential new development made sense as a safety valve, in case the revival of lower Manhattan became sidetracked. This was seen as a very real possibility even then: megaprojects undertaken by the three entities controlling the World Trade Center site—the city, the state, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—had repeatedly failed.

It didn’t take long after the terrorist bombing on September 11, 2001, for government and elite opinion to forget the lessons of the 1990s revival. That became clear soon after 9/11, when two New Yorks emerged. One was the tough and defiant New York epitomized by the brave rescuers and dogged workers who rolled up their sleeves to clear the WTC site in remarkably short order and get the city back to work again. Echoing their spirit and resilience were calls from ordinary citizens to rebuild immediately—if not the towers themselves, then something even grander that reflected New York’s position as the country’s economic capital, the center of what the terrorists hated most about America’s ebullient democratic capitalist system. (See the Autumn 2001 issue of City Journal.)

But another New York also emerged—a city of victims wallowing in grief over the attacks and urging that we should turn lower Manhattan into a gigantic permanent memorial or cultural wonderland, an idea supported even by Mayor Giuliani in one of his few wrongheaded moments. Anti-development groups seized on this emerging culture of grief to press a case against a dynamic rebuilding program, suggesting that it was not only undesirable but probably not feasible, since the attack had permanently crippled the city’s economy. Brushing aside the vibrant, private-sector revival that had just taken place downtown, they advocated a raft of government-managed and -financed non-building alternatives for the World Trade Center and downtown in general.

Officials might have short-circuited these defeatist approaches by commissioning a vigorous rebuilding plan at once. The governor’s handpicked committee to oversee the revival, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, started auspiciously enough when it planned for a vital commercial reconstruction, envisioning a series of office towers as the heart of the project. Although the initial effort was clumsy and unattractive, it put the emphasis in the right place.

But nothing illustrates how the LMDC has fumbled the rebuilding effort more than what happened next. With its early plans subject to intense criticism as uninspiring, the LMDC made common cause with the antibusiness slow-growth types and allowed them to redirect the discussion about how the rebuilding should proceed. The rebuilding committee even agreed to participate in a series of planning events organized by an ad hoc group of environmental organizations like the National Resources Defense Council, left-leaning foundations like the Ford Foundation, and think tanks aligned with unions dominated by public-sector interests. The group, not surprisingly, put forth rebuilding plans that favored reducing commercial space on the WTC site, in favor of parkland and government-subsidized housing. It commissioned trendy economic-development guru Richard Florida—whose theories, disproved by all the available evidence, hold that the number of bohemians, gays, and creative types a city draws are a predictor of its economic vitality—to fashion a New Age–tinged redevelopment agenda for lower Manhattan based on cultural amenities.

Eventually, the LMDC went back to square one, soliciting designs from around the world based on site specifications that grafted some of the slow-growth ideas onto the big commercial development that most New Yorkers favored. Even a good architect would have had trouble harmonizing these disparate goals, but the plan formulated by winning architect Daniel Libeskind—an America-bashing postmodernist—has repeatedly had to be redesigned because it wasn’t workable. Crammed into the site are several large towers—including the so-called Freedom Tower, which would top out at 1,776 feet and has been reshaped several times because of the Police Department’s security concerns—a memorial 30 feet below ground, a three-acre plaza, a performing-arts space of 500,000 square feet, and a 300,000-square-foot Museum of Tolerance being programmed by leftish professors and human rights advocates who see America in general—and the global capitalists killed when the towers fell—as morally no better than the 9/11 terrorists.

While the city and state have endlessly tinkered with the site plan, officials have been unresponsive to concerns from one of downtown’s major employers, Goldman Sachs, which worried about the future of the so-called Freedom Tower and about security plans for the area, including the security implications of an underground tunnel that would have emptied right at the new tower that the bank planned to build downtown. Faced with city and state officials who seemed more interested in the Far West Side than in addressing those concerns, Goldman decided to leave lower Manhattan—a tremendous blow to the area’s redevelopment.

The mayor and governor have responded to criticism of their downtown efforts not with substance but with political maneuvers. They announced a new package of goodies to spread around lower Manhattan in order to win the vote of State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for the Far West Side stadium—an effort that failed to win Silver’s support anyway. While the WTC site sits empty, the mayor and governor earmarked $90 million for parks and playgrounds around downtown, $45 million for grants to local cultural facilities, another $45 million for unspecified “community enhancements,” and $50 million for subsidized housing. Whereas the 1995 downtown revival plan had relied modestly on tax credits and a marketing effort to lure companies downtown, the city and state have now transformed the rebuilding of the WTC site into just another game in the New York state-capitalist racket, in which economic-development tax dollars are spread around to advocacy groups, politically connected nonprofits, and privileged developers to win political favor.

It’s a mark of their misplaced priorities that while the mayor and governor fiddle with hundreds of millions of dollars in trivial amenities, billions in essential federal transportation aid are at risk of going up in smoke. The primary role of government in economic development is to build the infrastructure that can accommodate new growth—like the proposed subway extension to the Far West Side—and inadequate public transportation has long been one of lower Manhattan’s biggest drawbacks. But the slow pace of planning at Ground Zero has jeopardized $2 billion designated to help connect the area to Kennedy Airport, a plan that businesses have hailed as a major boost to the area’s attractiveness.

The mayor and governor forget that New York is not the product of a centrally planned vision and that its economy is not the creation of government but of the private sector. They apparently don’t understand that government did not even create the famous cultural institutions that draw visitors to New York; they are instead largely the product of the enormous private-sector wealth Gotham has generated over the ages. They don’t seem to understand that New York has grown neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, in unpredictable eruptions, giving Gotham the genuine feel of a spontaneously evolving capitalist, democratic city—not the creation of a single autocrat’s or central planner’s mind.

New York needs a vibrant economy, not to finance public megaprojects but to provide opportunity for its citizens—something that is not happening now, as New York, with an anemic job-creation rate (see “Gotham Stalls Out,” page 50), falls into an all-too-familiar pattern of lagging national growth. The way out of that underperformance is not, as the businessman mayor strangely believes, to tax people ever more heavily to finance huge public projects of dubious economic value but rather to create conditions that allow the private sector to invest and thrive. The mayor should be heartened that even as his stadium plan went down in defeat, developers were closing deals on Far West Side properties to take advantage of the zoning changes that would let them build new office and residential projects there. Those projects will create far more jobs than a vast, blank-walled, government-subsidized stadium, more likely to impede commercial and residential development than to spur it.

For the revival of lower Manhattan and the Far West Side to take place, New York must unleash its private economy. The city needs to create 40,000 new office jobs just to fill up the space proposed for the new World Trade Center site, and the Far West Side rezoning could yield space to house some 100,000 more jobs. New York is eminently capable of generating the new employment to fill those buildings—as it did during the 1990s expansion. You would not know it, however, from the economic-development strategy of New York’s own public officials, shaped around public, not private, investment.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_ground_zero.html