Port Authority proposal includes 24/7 atrium, mall at ground zero

NEW YORK (AP) _ Reconstruction at ground zero could include a 24-hour atrium and a covered galleria with 375,000 square feet of retail space, according to illustrations released Friday by the Port Authority.

The shops would be set apart from the World Trade Center Memorial, separated by a street. The "spectacular" atrium would be "similar to the World Financial Center Winter Garden directly across the way," said Charles Gargano, the vice chairman of the Port Authority and Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board member.

 Gargano said the authority, which owns the 16-acre site and the retail rights, wants the proposed stores open by about 2010, according to published reports. The goal, he said, is to have "all of the Church Street side completed, because it's a more integral part of Lower Manhattan."

The city was "very concerned" about the proposal, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said. Among other potential problems, the structure would block views from Lower Manhattan to the World Trade Center memorial, he said.

Along with the 200,000 square feet of shops planned for the PATH transportation hub, the galleria would nearly replace the 600,000 square feet of mall space that were lost in the Sept. 11 terror attack.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/wire/n...ny-region-apnewyork

Ground Zero
retail plan shopped
 
The future of Ground Zero now includes lots of shopping.
Plans call for five levels of stores and a 2-4/7 atrium, modeled on the glassy Winter Garden in the nearby World Financial Center.

The Port Authority, which owns the 16-acre site and the retail rights, advanced its plans yesterday for the Church St. side by releasing illustrations of how the stores might look.

"If we can finish this at approximately the same time as the [PATH] transportation hub, around 2010, it will be a big boost for the whole east side of the site," Port Authority Vice Chairman Charles Gargano said.

The planned stores would be separated from the World Trade Center Memorial by Greenwich St. once it is extended through the site. Two levels of shops would be below ground level.

Like many elected officials and downtowners, the Port Authority sees retail activity as a way to stabilize the area and generate street life before developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease for the site, can do so with new office towers.

At the same time, the agency appears to be pressuring Silverstein to get out of the way if he can't keep pace.

"We need an intelligent, global resolution of all the issues between Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority," agency Chairman Anthony Coscia told the Daily News.

In one striking image released yesterday, the multiple levels of stores serve as platforms for two of Silverstein's office buildings - towers 3 and 4, as they are known, whose start dates he has yet to announce.

Coscia went so far as to add that "a restructured arrangement" between the agency and Silverstein "would include ways to build towers 3 and 4 immediately."

But if Silverstein is being pushed, he didn't let on after a meeting yesterday with Port Authority officials and their retail consultants.

"Larry Silverstein was impressed with what he saw," his spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, said. "He is looking forward to working with the Port Authority and other agencies to bring top-quality retail to the World Trade Center site as soon as possible."

Between the 375,000 square feet of retail on Church St., and another 200,000 the Port Authority will put in the transit hub now being built, the total comes close to the 600,000 square feet of mall space that had been in the twin towers complex, which was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack.

 
 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/367044p-312447c.html

  9/11 World Trade Center Jumper Pairs Inspire Song from

The pairs of jumpers from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 have inspired a new song, "Better Than This," in the new rock opera, "Fly [The End of Wars," from Redlemon, just released on iTunes and CDBaby.com.

Philadelphia, PA. (PRWEB) November 20, 2005 -- The pairs of jumpers from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 have inspired a new song, "Better Than This," in the new rock opera, "Fly [The End of Wars," from Redlemon, just released on iTunes and CDBaby.com. The rock opera is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the main character Redlemon confronts the realities of destruction and discovers the saving power of love. Redlemon's website is redlemonfly.com.

"Art and music can sometimes help us to comprehend the incomprehensible. I saw a picture of two people holding hands, jumping from the twin towers. I felt like they were trying to tell me something. It seemed, to me, that they at least represented the idea that love conquers absolutely everything. In the real world, though, it is really hard to believe that, it takes the proverbial "leap of faith." The irony was gut-wrenching to me, and a song came out of that. I also wanted to write this song so that people remember them and so we can better represent ourselves in the world as purveyors of love, not war," said Redlemon.

"Fly [The End of Wars" is the story of Redlemon waking up to find himself in a world destroyed by war yet finding, at the same time, the love of his life. As the story develops, he protests war ("Always Love"), loses his mother ("No Ordinary Girl" and "Waiting for the Rain"), struggles with addiction ("Truly") and the relevance of love in the face of such disaster.

In the rock opera, Redlemon often points to real-life events and locales such as the death of the homeless boy Chester Lee Miller ("Imagine That," which song was recently the subject of a newspaper article in Chester's hometown), the WTC jumpers ("Better Than This"), his own tough upbringing ("Brave Parade"), and the legendary "(Germantown) Avenue" in Philadelphia and Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania (with the preeminent saxophinist Jay Davidson, who has recorded and toured with Stevie Winwood, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, among many others).

Further information is available at www.redlemonfly.com
 
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/11/prweb312821.htm

Taking command at Ground Zero
 
Adult supervision is at last arriving at Ground Zero. By appointing four top aides to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. board, and apparently prompting Gov. Pataki to name two of his own heavy hitters to the panel, Mayor Bloomberg sparks hope that rebuilding will start to progress, if not speedily, at least coherently.
Just knowing that someone is in charge and willing to accept responsibility provides a measure of optimism that, perhaps, the LMDC will become more of a straw boss for development and less of a straw man shielding politicians from accountability. Adding muscle and brains to the LMDC is especially imperative now that Ground Zero's landlord, the Port Authority, is proposing to dramatically alter how things get done downtown.

PA Chairman Anthony Coscia says it's time to break developer Larry Silverstein's hold on the site by renegotiating the 99-year lease Silverstein signed on the World Trade Center two months before 9/11. By Coscia's reckoning, Silverstein's financial interests have become an impediment to rebuilding within a reasonable time frame. And he is, beyond all doubt, right.

Not so long ago, Mayor Bloomberg shocked the political establishment by telling this Editorial Board, "It would be in the city's interest to get Silverstein out, [but] nobody can figure out how to do it yet." Now, Coscia wants to use the PA's bargaining power to persuade Silverstein to accept a reduced role. Then, Coscia would try to attract another developer by offering to have the agency rent space in a new building. For good measure, the PA has also unveiled its own plan for retail development and is offering to take over construction of the 9/11 memorial.

Limiting Silverstein to erecting the Freedom Tower, for which he has no tenants, and renting 7 World Trade Center, which is up and empty, could allow other developers to get to work sooner than later on two crucial parcels that might otherwise sit fallow for a decade. Opening the land to housing and retail development and, perhaps, to a hotel would be the fastest way to watch buildings go up.

That's what the market wants, not millions upon millions of square feet of new office space that would sit tenantless because there's no call for it. Bloomberg smartly recognizes that the demand for housing downtown would be a catalyst for growth, but Coscia is wedded to trying to maintain lower Manhattan as a predominantly commercial district.

Such a fundamental difference starkly illustrates why Pataki and Bloomberg must now focus intensely - personally and through their representatives on the LMDC - on the next big step for Ground Zero. They, not the Port Authority, must take clear charge of renegotiating with Silverstein and making all the tough calls that will chart downtown's future.
 
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opin...67219p-312592c.html

Memorial For Rabbi Meir Kahane Held in Jerusalem

A memorial ceremony was held for slain Knesset member and radical Jewish rights activist Rabbi Meir Kahane in Jerusalem's Heichal David Hall Sunday night. Taking part in the memorial ceremony were members of the Kahane family, rabbis and students of the late rabbi.

Rabbi Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in the United States, made Aliyah (immigrated to Israel) and served in Israel's Knesset before being banned for advocating the transfer of Israel Arab citizens as a solution to the demographic threat to the Jewish State. Last summer, the Knesset voted on the transfer of Jewish citizens of Gaza and northern Samaria, arguing that such an action was necessary to stave off the same demographic threat.

The rabbi was murdered by an Arab terrorist following a speaking engagement in New York City fifteen years ago. The terrorist went on to participate in the first bombing of the World Trade Center.
 
http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=93331

Whatever happened to ... the Terrorism Memorial Flag?

What began as one woman’s effort to do something after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will soon become a stop in a National Park Service anti-terrorism memorial in Oklahoma City.

Elizabeth Barnes, the wife of a Norfolk-based sailor, was outraged after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Her parish priest convinced her to do more than complain.

So Barnes started a quilt in the form of an American flag, with each victim’s name occupying a separate panel. Others wanted to help, so her husband computerized patterns that were sent to volunteers.

More than 1,300 people around the world would join the Terrorism Memorial Flag project , cross-stitching the names of Americans lost to terrorist attacks.
 
The flag stretches more than 60 feet long and is 35 feet wide. When it was done, Barnes brought it to Old Dominion University’s Webb Center for a Veterans Day memorial in 2002 . The flag later went on the road for exhibitions, but most of the time it rested in a series of large plastic tubs at Barnes’ home.

When her husband was transferred to Italy, Barnes contacted the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City, which had wanted to display the flag. She offered to give the institute custody.

Jennifer Butler, the grants coordinator for the organization, accepted immediately.

“I started out being a stitcher on the flag,” she explained.

She did two panels. One was for a World Trade Center victim. The second came after she took possession of the flag.

In April 2004, Barnes loaded the plastic tubs into her minivan and drove the flag to Oklahoma, meeting stitchers along the way, Butler said.

It was unclear at first where the institute would display the flag, Butler said. She was willing to store it at home and bring it out for showings, but felt it deserved a permanent setting.

Butler was supervising construction as the institute renovated its building, damaged in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. When Butler finally saw the entire flag unfurled, she decided that it would fit perfectly on the arching roof of the institute’s fifth floor.

So contractors built a framework, others fireproofed the fabric, and Butler found museum-quality nonreflective plastic to protect the flag from the elements. Then the staff climbed up onto the scaffolding and reverently hung it.

Butler was on her back, painting tiny pieces of frame that showed through gaps when a building inspector came in to approve the work.

“Is Cassandra Booker on this flag?” he asked.

Butler had digitally photographed every panel for the institute’s Web site, so she knew exactly where the name was located .

“That’s my baby,” he said quietly. “That’s my daughter.”

“I just burst into tears,” Butler recalled. “That’s what this is all about.”

The flag has nearly 4,000 names. Each panel has been photographed and is up on the Web site, searchable by first or last name, occupation, location or event. And each is linked to Internet tributes or information about the victim.

When Butler first heard of the flag, she asked to stitch the name of a friend’s baby killed in the Oklahoma City attack. Barnes told her that panel was already assigned, so Butler did another.

But when the flag arrived, she found that another victim with the same last name had been mistakenly memorialized twice and her friend’s son was omitted.

Butler put the flag on her knee and gently ripped out the error while preserving the work of the original volunteer. She added the correct first name.

“It was really special to me to actually get to stitch his name on the flag,” Butler said. The institute flew Barnes and her mother to Oklahoma City last November to see the flag lining the vaulted ceiling, Butler said.

The National Park Service is about to add the flag to its Oklahoma City National Memorial interpretive tours and will be bringing groups into the institute across the street to see the flag and learn its history.

Butler said she has kept in touch with the stitchers and intends to update the flag any time additional Americans die at the hands of terrorists.

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story...ry=95739&ran=116936

Partying At Ground Zero Sure Does Add An Extra Kick To The Silverstein-Sponsored Chardonnay


We swore we'd never lose our critical integrity; never be bought, only to be sold and bought again; never succumb to the seductions of free lunches and the occasional bit of swag.

It was precious.

And true only before the Architect's Newspaper sponsored our Friday night fun on the 48th (or 49th?) floor of 7 World Trade Center, developer-renamed into the completely acontextual 250 Greenwich. Got there around 7:15, walked past the monolithic (yet faceted!) base that hides the ConEd power station, into the lobby that was lit so that every single person looked like they'd come down with a horrific case of looking like shit, signed off on the list (we lied; we didn't crash), got through the metal detectors, and up to the top.

Where we got out of the elevator and thought to ourselves, you know, UnBeige, looking out the windows from back here, it looks like there's a pretty sweet view. So we went close to the windows. And looked down. And were like Oh. Right. That happened.

So we felt a little weird about it. And so did a lot of other people. But then we forgot, once we started seeing every single person who's ever looked at a mayline and lives in New York. In the order in which we can remember:

Anthony "I Run Cooper" Vidler, Andy "Big Andy" Bernheimer, Ray "I'll Take Manhattan" Gastil, Karrie "Quite Contrary" Jacobs, Philip "Sidekick" Nobel, Joanna "This Building Is Awesome" Rose, Michael "We Can Be Friends Now Even Though You Wrote That Thing" Arad, Larry "Drinks On Me!" Silverstein, Jesse "Competition" Reiser, Jason "Competitions With Reiser" Scroggin, Liz "SOM" Kubany, Nicole "CSJ" Oncina, Matt "LTL" Roman, Mary "ARO" Voorhees, Tom "The Man" DeKay, Andrew "Space Place" Blum, Anne "Constant Gardener" Guiney, Debbie "Articulate" Ganz, Kristen "ArchNewsNow" Richards, Tucker "Studio Red" Viemeister, Chee "Everywhere" Pearlman, Allan "So That's Who That Is" Temko, Bill "This Is My Party" Menking, Diana "Bill, This Is My Party Too" Darling, Cathy "This Is So Also My Party" Ho, Ari "Pundit" Kelman, Julie "ID" Lasky, Julie "Elle Decor" Iovine, Sara "Awesome" Hart, Sara "Bitchin'" Moss.

We know we're totally forgetting people, but we're remembering others that we forgot before, so we're assuming karma intact.

http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/parties...hardonnay_28468.asp

Twin Towers, USA

Time’s running out to get a piece of World Trade Center wreckage for your local memorial.

If you’re still hoping to get your very own piece of the World Trade Center, you’re probably out of luck. That’s the word from the mayor’s office, which has only four or five steel chunks left to dole out to those wishing to use genuine wreckage in their 9/11 memorials.

Shortly after recovery efforts began at ground zero, the city started donating metal pieces, usually an I-beam section, to pretty much anyone who signed an affidavit agreeing not to profit from the piece of history and not to sue. (Recipients also have to acknowledge that the steel could include chemical contaminants.)

So far, more than 150 towns, fire departments, churches, and museums have received steel. Many pieces remain within the metropolitan area, where memorials have been cropping up at an increasing pace over the last year. But the list also includes three presidential museums; Ireland, Israel, and Portugal; Dodge City, Kansas; the Historical Center for Southeast New Mexico; a Texas firearms-training company; and a California light-rail advocacy group called Transportation Involves Everyone.

“Why wouldn’t we?” says Randy Roach, mayor of Lake Charles, Louisiana, when asked why his city wanted a piece from the World Trade Center. “I guess what I’m saying is, 9/11 didn’t just happen in New York, it happened to America.”

“We got a very nice one, one of the biggest pieces,” says an official at the Portuguese consulate here. “It went back to Portugal, and it’s in a public garden in a city named Alverca.”

One California real-estate company rejected its steel because it wasn’t large enough for a memorial sculpture in front of a planned development. “We wanted, like, a fifteen-foot piece, and it was a four-foot piece,” says Edie Frazier, an administrative assistant at Silagi Development and Management Inc. in Thousand Oaks.

In Nevada County in California, a piece of the Trade Center has been rotated though local schools and drew huge crowds at the county fair. “We had a sign on it that said PLEASE TOUCH,” says Diana Ely, assistant to the schools’ superintendent.

It turns out there’s no way to know how many groups actually received the steel, or what’s been done with it, because the city never followed up. (When asked about the poor record-keeping, Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, pointed the finger at the Giuliani administration.) But calls to a few recipients revealed they had almost all incorporated it into some kind of public memorial or exhibit. One exception is Walt Bigelow, a senior accountant in the finance office at Denver International Airport, who, with his boss’s permission, requested a piece of steel and was given not one, but two girder sections, which he drove back to Denver in his two-seater Mercedes in 2002.

In the end, however, the airport’s managers decided against displaying such a vivid reminder of an airline-industry tragedy in the terminal, so Bigelow donated the larger piece to a local firefighters’ museum. The smaller piece, weighing around 25 pounds, is on display on top of some filing cabinets in the finance office. One square was cut out and given to a colleague’s husband, a retiring firefighter, but otherwise it’s intact.

“I was at the Smithsonian in Washington, and they got a moon rock there that people can touch,” says Bigelow. “You feel you’re real close to the moon when you touch it, and if you touch a piece of what was the World Trade Center, it comes pretty close to you.”

http://www.nymetro.com/nymetro/news/people...ntelligencer/15157/

Snøhetta in competition for Ground Zero
The Norwegian firm of architects Snøhetta is one of six international firms of architects in the running for designing the World Trade Center Museum, which is to be built on Ground Zero in Manhattan.

10/5/2004 :: A memorial site is to be built on the crater left by the attack of 11 September, and about 60 architects have shown their interest in designing the two cultural institutions that are planned for the site, a museum and a theatre.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will be announcing its choice of architect in October, and has invited Snøhetta to an interview. The buildings are scheduled to be completed by 2006.

http://www.norway.org/News/200405snohetta.htm

  Norwegian company to build WTC Museum
Vision alone was good enough for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation when it decided the company that will build the new museum on Ground Zero. The Norwegian architechture firm Snøhetta got the job without presenting so much as a drawing.

10/13/2004 :: The Norwegian firm beat 60 other architecture offices for the important and prestigious job of creating a memorial museum at the highly symbolic site. It is estimated that the construction will cost around $200 million.

"Big boost"
The museum will be built in what is known as the footsteps of the former World Trade Center.

The land whwere the Twin Towers stood until September 11, 2001 has been declared a protected area, and the museum will be one of only two buildings placed on the Memorial site itself. The other building, a theater, will be designed by the architechts of Gehry Partners.

"This is unbelieveable," exclaimed Snohetta CEO Ole Gustavsen when the Norwegian newspaper VG called him with the good news on October 12.

"This is incredible news and a big boost for our company," he continued.

Snohetta became an internationally renowned name when the Norwegian-based company were chosen to build the new library in Alexandria. The company will also be responsible for constructing the new opera building in Oslo.

No drawings
The task of building the World Trade Center Museum, one of the most prestigious architechtural contests in the world this year, only adds to the company's reputation.

"We'll head for New York tomorrow," CEO Gustavsen told VG. "We'll place eight to ten people on this job immediately."

Around 50 people, some of them American, work for the Norwegian company.

The architects have not issued a single drawing for the competition. The plans and visions they presented to the Lower Manhattan Development Group during an interview in New York was enough to get them the sought-after job.

A few details seem clear, however: The building will most likely have eight or nine floors, and its total size will lie around 25,000 square meters.

Pleased politicians
In a statement, New York Mayor called the selection of Snøhetta "another important milestone in the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan."

Governor George Pataki was no less positive:

"This cultural complex will be sure to draw millions of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world," he said.

"Building a cultural center in the heart of Lower Manhattan is a key part of rebuilding downtown and a fitting tribute to all the heroes we lost. These dynamic architects will design fitting homes for the world class cultural institutions which will be located at the World Trade Center site."
    
A memorial park will surround the "footprints" of the former WTC buildings. A museum and a theater will be the only buildings on the historic and symbolic ground.

Snohetta built the new library in Alexandria, Egypt.
Photo:

The new opera building in Oslo will also be built by Snohetta.

  http://www.norway.org/News/200405_snohetta_wtc.htm