The 9/11 Tribute Center is moving to a new location at 88 Greenwich Street in order to expand its mission, exhibits and programs.
BY JOSEPH M. CALISI
It was created to fill a temporary void Downtown, but ten years later, it’s finding new purpose — and a new venue.
The 9/11 Tribute Center, established a decade ago by victims’ families as America awaited a formal memorial to the 2001 terrorist attacks, recently announced plans to move to a new location at 88 Greenwich St. in order to expand its mission, exhibits and programs.
The center has welcomed 4 million visitors in the ten years since it opened at its current location at 120 Liberty St., according to co-founder Lee Ielpi, president of the September 11th Families’ Association.
The new 9/11 Tribute Center is expected serve up to 1 million visitors every year.
The expanded venue is intended to facilitate a larger mission for the center in the future — going beyond simply mourning the victims of the 9/11 attacks, to highlighting the inspiring national response to the catastrophe, and encouraging a new generation to join in the spirit of community service.
“As we focus on tomorrow, we have to let young people know that through an understanding of 9/11 they can learn the importance of service and contributing to their communities,” said Ielpi, a former firefighter who lost his firefighter son in the World Trade Center collapse. “They can remember and honor those who were lost on 9/11 by participating in acts of service. The expanded exhibits and programs will allow people from around the world to understand and then commit to acts of service to make a difference in their communities.”
Since it opened in 2006, the center has offered visitors to the World Trade Center area a place to connect with people from the 9/11 community — survivors, family members of lost loved ones, first responders, and people who live and work in Lower Manhattan.
The goal now is to perform this mission and deliver their message to a greater number of visitors so they can learn more about the events of 9/11, the identity of 2,973 people killed in the attacks, the unprecedented rescue and recovery operations and the tremendous spirit of support and generosity that arose after the attacks. The expanded venue will allow for a bigger personal gallery and walking-tour experience for students and tour groups.
Jennifer Adams, the CEO of the center, said the goal is to open the new space in the spring of 2017, but that depends on the foundation raising $7.5 million for construction and another $4 million for exhibition development.
Adams explained that the planned exhibitions would be organized around three themes: the events of 9/11 and the immediate aftermath, the recovery and rebuilding of Downtown, and the outpouring of humanitarian activism in response laying the foundations a legacy of community service.
The latter themes would serve to broaden the center’s focus, according to Adams, to relate the recovery and activism that followed 9/11 to the healing that follows other disasters — for example, an exchange program with Japanese who suffered the twin catastrophes of the 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown.
