After the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced last week that it was disbanding, Downtown Express reporters asked people around Lower Manhattan to grade the agency on its record.
Many people stopped were only vaguely aware of the corporation. Some blamed the L.M.D.C. because the World Trade Center site still looks like a hole in the ground. Most grades were in the B and C range.
Doug Niblock, 45, a steamfitter who works Downtown and lives on Long Island, had the lowest grade, D. “We need these people to stop dragging their feet and start construction sites,” he said. “I don’t see it as working. I don’t see it really getting jobs and helping the economy.”
But Andrew Steele, a teacher at P.S. 234 in Tribeca, perhaps predictably gave the highest grade, A-. “Eventually, everything will work its way out, and they will find a way to keep the general people happy,” said Steele, who is working for the Downtown Day Camp this summer. He said he is happy to see the L.M.D.C.-funded work underway in the Hudson River Park.
Kevin Ludwig, 25, a fundraiser for South African Education Fund who was on lunch break across from the W.T.C. site said:
“I’m vaguely familiar with the L.M.D.C. I don’t see anything rebuilt. It [the L.M..D.C. disbanding] sounds so fishy. Why go out of business when you haven’t done any business?”
M. Lee, a Battery Park City resident who was hanging out with her friend in Chinatown’s Columbus Park, was not aware the L.M.D.C. paid for recent park renovations. “I love what they did with the park, it used to be such a dump,” she said giving the corporation a B+.
Her friend, Andrew Malanga, a Pace student and Brooklyn resident, also gave the L.M.D.C. a B+. He seemed to be of two minds about the progress. “It looks like there’s a lot going on down there but it seems so slow – it’s just a big hole,” he said. “They seem to be going back and forth with the design and the plans….Are they just dragging their feet or do they just not know what to do? I don’t think people realize how long it takes and how intricate and complicated the process is” to rebuild the W.T.C. “It will be exciting to see the buildings actually going up.”
—Josh Rogers, Anindita Dasgupta, Janet Kwon and Davit Spett
WWW Downtown Express
