On
the day that six proposals for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site
were unveiled, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said
yesterday that the public could consider a seventh possibility, a new design
without some of the requirements for office and retail space that shaped the
initial proposals.
The
chairman, John C. Whitehead, characterized the six designs as simply a starting
point, a means for Americans to demonstrate their resilience and determination
after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
If
the current proposals do not create "the kind of beautiful center that we
want this to be, then we will change our plans," Mr. Whitehead said at one
of a series of briefings at Federal Hall, the landmark on the Wall Street site
where George Washington was first inaugurated as president.
His
suggestion that the six plans were not at all the only approaches that could be
considered seemed to be prompted by the disappointment of many people who had
reviewed them. Those critics said the plans seemed driven more by the desires
of developers and businessmen than by concerns about what was best for
Mr.
Whitehead asked for "the ongoing input, feedback and recommendations of
citizens here and throughout the country" about the plans.
All
of them call for a memorial, for office and retail space, and for a new
transportation complex to be built on the site, but they varied widely in their
details. The proposals for memorials varied in size from 5 to 10 acres, some
including the footprints of the twin towers and others favoring an elegant
promenade leading away from the building site.
Each
plan contained several office towers, responding to the requirement by the
development corporation and the Port Authority of New York and
Although
Mr. Whitehead said he believed the six plans adequately achieved those goals,
he added, in response to a question after the presentation, that the plans
could be significantly altered if the public strongly favored that.
The
suggestion met with hopeful surprise among some of the civic leaders,
architects and family members of trade center victims who attended the
presentation.
"I
thought it was very heartening," said Fredric Bell, the executive director
of the
Many
of those people who had already reacted negatively to the plans said they
packed too much office space on too small a site. Several of the civic groups
monitoring the process had also objected that the brief time in which the plans
were produced did not allow consideration of their affect on the area's economy
and traffic patterns, among other factors.
Margaret
Helfand, an urban planner who is co-chairwoman of the
executive committee of New York New Visions, a civic group that has offered
ideas and designs for the redevelopment of downtown, said the designs did not
meet the spirit of the design principles outlined by the development
corporation in April.
"That
called for a vibrant, mixed-use community," Ms. Helfand
said. "What we got was what was there before, packaged differently."
Several
people involved in the planning process said that they had not heard until
about a month ago that the designs would have to replace all 11 million square
feet of office space in the trade center and that the available retail space
would be increased to 600,000 square feet from about 450,000. In addition, the
planners were directed to include space for a hotel to replace the one that
formerly stood on the site with the twin towers.
"These
plans are all driven by hard economics," said Beverly Willis, an architect
and the co-founder of Rebuild Downtown Our Town, a civic group. "There's
no heart in them and no recognition of what we all had been led to believe
would occur, that we would wind up with something wonderful on this site."
Kent
Barwick, the president of the Municipal Art Society,
a planning organization that organized a series of public forums to discuss the
future of the site, said the office and retail constraints "diminished the
prospects" for the designs.
"There
hasn't been time for the analytical work that generally precedes that kind of
site planning," Mr. Barwick said. "The next
phase needs to be to go back and do the analytical work necessary and determine
what this part of town can and should support in terms of office space and
retail space."
Steven
K. Peterson, whose firm, Peterson Littenberg
Architects, worked on the designs, said the planners always considered them to
be a first step.
"We
knew we couldn't solve every problem at once," he said, "but we first
had to prove that there are many ways to do what had to be done under the
current restrictions. It's easy to then reduce the program if the economic or
political considerations call for it."
Officials
from the Port Authority and the development corporation also said that from the
first, they had intended to consider everything that might be done on the site,
then to scale back those plans.
"This
was the opening offer," one government official said, speaking on the
condition of anonymity, "but this was not the time to amend those
restrictions."
City
and state officials were also unanimous in characterizing the plans presented
yesterday as "a starting point."
Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg said that what the planners have done so far was simply
"to take a concept and give you some variations on it to get you to think,
to realize that we shouldn't be tied into any one thing."
Gov.
George E. Pataki, who appointed Mr. Whitehead as chairman of the development
corporation to lead the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, said he expected New
Yorkers, who "are not inherently shy," to offer their most creative
ideas.
Federal
Hall was a building under heavy security, a reflection of the continuing
concern about possible terrorist acts directed at anything associated with the
Now
that the initial designs have been presented for public comment, discussions
about amending the restrictions that limited them can be considered, Mr.
Whitehead said.
"We
have looked carefully to see whether it is possible to preserve those
private-sector rights that those two groups had and still rebuild this as a
beautiful place and a place of which we are proud," Mr. Whitehead said,
referring to the lease agreements that Larry A. Silverstein, the developer who
holds the commercial rights to the trade center site, and Westfield America,
which holds the retail right, have with the Port Authority.
"So
far, we believe that it is possible to do that," he said. "If we
conclude differently, that it is not possible to rebuild and still meet those
requirements and have the kind of beautiful center that we want this to be,
then we will change our plans."
Nikki
Stern, who attended the presentation yesterday and whose husband, James E. Potorti, was killed in the Sept. 11 attack, said Mr.
Whitehead's comment "surprised me and gratified me."
"There
are a lot of fine things in the plans," Ms. Stern said. "But they
were created using givens that may have to be changed. This process is all
about the art of compromise, and we want to make sure that all the parties are
practicing compromise, including the developers."