New Design Ideas Sought to Rebuild Trade Center Site

Facing almost universal criticism that its initial plans to rebuild the World Trade Center site were mundane, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. returned to the drawing board Wednesday and launched a worldwide competition for new design proposals.

“This effort to reach out to the finest architects and planners around the globe significantly expands the search for the best design talent,” said John C. Whitehead, the development corporation’s chairman.

“We have an opportunity here to do something great, and we can’t do anything less than great. That is why we need some new ideas here,” added Roland W. Betts, chairman of the organization’s site planning task force.

“We are looking for excitement, creativity, energy,” he said.

The decision to reopen the design process means that new plans for the trade center will not be completed until the spring of 2003 at the earliest.

When six plans were proposed in July, the timetable called for narrowing the designs to three by September and selecting a single proposal by the end of the year.

But New Yorkers, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, criticized the first round of efforts. The sentiment was clearly negative when 5,000 people reviewed the plans in July at one of the largest public hearings in the city’s history.

The decision to bring fresh ideas to the process was hailed Wednesday by Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, a private organization of design, construction and real estate professionals.

“No one has a monopoly on good design,” he said.

Robert A. M. Stern, a well-known New York architect and dean of Yale University’s School of Architecture, agreed.

“It means the public process does work, that the politicians have heard from the public and the public has said that most of the six existing proposals fell far short of leading the way for the development of the greatest site in the greatest city in the world,” Stern said.

“Part of the problem may have been a failure of imagination, but then another part may have been that the designers were given unrealistic goals or inappropriate goals,” Stern continued. “Lots of balls are now in the air, and it is refreshing.”

The development corporation drew up the original six proposals in concert with Beyer Blinder Belle, a New York architectural and planning firm that has worked on such major public projects as the restorations of Grand Central Terminal, Ellis Island and Governors Island.

Under the new process, up to five teams will be selected on Sept. 30 to prepare additional concepts for the site.

By the end of November, the teams will be required to submit final drawings, models and other materials. The schedule calls for a public review by the end of the year.

To ensure the widest possible participation in the competition, the development corporation said it would place ads in newspapers worldwide.

If the first round of proposals is any indication, the amount of interest could be immense. On the day the original designs were unveiled, the development corporation’s Web site received more than 50 million hits.

The corporation said Wednesday that the new plans will include elements that the public supported, such as a tall symbol or structure that would be recognized throughout the world; a memorial on the footprints of the twin towers; a mixture of commercial and retail space in other sections of the site; and a promenade to Battery Park, where ferries travel to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Also, a “grand and visible station” would be part of a transit center with subway service and trains to New Jersey, it said.

The organization also said it is possible that residential housing, a museum or a performing arts center will be part of the plan, which will include parks and plazas.

Whitehead said the goal is to create “a truly beautiful and vibrant new Lower Manhattan while appropriately honoring the victims of Sept. 11.”

“My hope is the next stage will not be a beauty contest or a rearranging of the deck chairs on a sinking ship,” Stern said, “but a real shirt-sleeves-up investigation of what this site and this city deserves and can be again.”