W.T.C. safety concerns
To The Editor:
While requesting changes for the World Trade Center site, Mayor Bloomberg stated the obvious: If current plans would create problems, then changes are needed. Unfortunately, planners for the W.T.C. site used guidelines that disregarded what happened there in 1993 and 2001.
Responding to questions on Channel 13’s “New York Voices” (Jan. 6), Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly described the extended difficulty in obtaining a copy of plans to evaluate security for even the first tower. He summarized the experience by saying, “We hope the Freedom Tower scenario is not repeated.”
Don’t blame the N.Y.P.D. or the architect, but the scenario continues with more complications. Attention was focused on protecting the tower from vehicles that could deliver explosives. Without an opportunity for making necessary adjustments on exiting plans, options would be limited. The new Freedom Tower would be placed where trains run through its supporting structure. Trains operating on tight turns, even at typical speed for conventional stations, could create havoc. This problem and others need to be eliminated by placing the tower where it would be more secure, convenient to use, and would have a stronger relationship to the memorial.
The architectural press calls Freedom Tower’s base a “20-story bunker.” Instead of a base that would be 15 times higher than the Berlin Wall, devoting streets through the W.T.C. site to pedestrians could expand security for the project as a whole.
PATH’s single stop for the lower portion of Manhattan is its most restricted service for the two states. Mobility is less than that of any subway line. If subway service were so limited, travel in the city would resemble a permanent transit strike. But with even a short extension of PATH to the Fulton-Broadway transit hub, vast numbers of commuters would have greater mobility. And by connecting existing rail lines, a regional transit system could boost service and potential for the city, while providing vital help for emergency evacuations. And tracks could avoid the W.T.C. footprints.
Most of the seven planning teams for the W.T.C. site featured connections between towers. On 9/11, this could have potentially saved hundreds of lives. With such potential, why was the feature disregarded?
Recent reports in this newspaper and elsewhere from climate specialists describe the increasing likelihood of Katrina-like storms soon reaching our area, accompanied by storm surges that inundate the W.T.C. site. With current plans for below ground access, the memorial, museum and PATH system could be filled with water.
Instead of a rush to create lasting headaches, resolving problems prior to construction is in the best interest of all.
Bill Hine
Museum isn’t tower fill
To The Editor:
Re “Scaling back the memorial and improving the plan (Editorial, May 12 – 1 8):
Sorry to throw some cold water on your memorial done right celebration, but if there’s any event in the history of New York City that deserves its own building for a museum, it’s 9/11. Last week’s issue of the Downtown Express covers the efforts to build a Women’s Museum in a very attractive building in Battery Park and Maya Lin’s Chinese-American museum in a century old building “with modern elements” at 150 Lafayette St. (News articles, May 12 – 18, “Women’s Museum optimistic before a skeptical C.B. 1” and “Maya Lin speaks on her Chinatown museum project”). Yet, the museum to 9/11? Let’s put it into the Freedom Tower. It’s got the right name and what the heck, its “hard to rent” anyway.
Since that Battery Park location for the Women’s Museum is proving difficult, how about we find some spot that’s “hard to rent?” There’s a building in the South Bronx around that corner from “Sin City” (“hundreds of beautiful topless women”) that’s been available for a while. How about the last remaining cultural building planned for the 16-acre W.T.C. site? Let’s swap; that goes into the neatly named “Freedom Tower.” The 9/11 Museum gets it own, nice big building called the “9/11 WTC Memorial Museum,” an even more appropriate name.
While I prefer the Freedom Tower to burying the museum underground, the tower, when and if it’s ever built, will be across Fulton St. Its lower floors (and I somehow I doubt the 9/11 museum will get the penthouse, no matter how hard space is to rent) will be fortified concrete or something.
Or, the developers of the site, whoever they are now, could for the first time in the entire process, show some respect for what happened on 9/11 and for what thousands have made and will make the pilgrimage for, and build a decent, appropriate museum that fulfills our moral obligation to faithfully convey the significance, magnitude and impact of 9/11, especially to future generations. Such a museum, handsomely designed, with easy access to the area’s shopping and restaurants, might actually be a valuable addition to Downtown. Maybe even as valuable as the Women’s Museum and the Museum of Chinese American history.
So, dated political incorrectness not withstanding, those who seem to find it, uh, offensive, to acknowledge the attack upon America at the W.T.C. site, can call the museum dedicated to 9/11 the “Rather Inappropriate, Violence is Never Justified, Though We Acknowledge Past Actions of the Dominant Western Cultures Have Resulted in Real Grievances That Should and Must Be Addressed Activity of 9/11/01 Aimed at the Smiley, Happy People Celebrating and Embracing Our Diversity, Racial, Faith and Non-faith Based, Sexual and Gender, Abled and Physically Challenged Museum.”
Michael Burke
Michael Burke is the brother of a firefighter killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
WWW Downtown Express
