Plans Moving Ahead for Redeveloping Trade Center Site

The developer who holds the lease to the World Trade Center property is completing the first comprehensive master plan for the 16-acre site that sources say would consist of a number of office buildings clustered around a single soaring tower, a memorial park and two cultural venues.

Designed by David Childs of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, one of New York City’s most established firms, the plan will be presented by developer Larry Silverstein to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.--the state agency charged with overseeing reconstruction of the site--possibly in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, the team has approached the New York City Opera and the Guggenheim Museum about occupying new arts venues that would be created as part of the development.

The proposal promises to fuel an already contentious debate about what should be built at the site. At issue is the fast pace at which the development plans have proceeded, which has offended some victims’ families, who consider the site a mass grave. Of equal importance is how to balance the economic interests of the real estate community with the desire to create a public memorial.

Site Was ‘a Very Forbidding Place’

Childs’ plan seeks to address at least some of those concerns by combining a large-scale commercial office development with a variety of public components.

“The World Trade Center was a very forbidding place. It was isolated from the city,” Childs said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to reknit the project into the city, to reactivate the great public spaces of the street. It should feel open to everyone, from the homeless to the wealthy CEO of a giant company. And I think that is a tremendously important quality to whatever happens here.” He declined to go into detail about the design.

In any case, the plan still faces significant hurdles. Silverstein has yet to receive insurance money for the destruction of the twin towers Sept. 11, which could range from $3.6 billion to $7.2 billion. And he is certain to encounter stiff resistance from groups representing the victims’ families, who feel the first task should be to determine how best to memorialize those who died in the terrorist attacks.

“This is still a burial site,” said Monika Iken, founder of September’s Mission, a group that represents families of the victims. “We really have to think about the qualities the site will possess, and how it can also comfort those of us who are in pain. And rebuilding is not sending the right message right now.”

Iken, whose husband died in the attacks, cited a farewell speech by Rudolph W. Giuliani in which the former mayor stated that the site should not be regarded as a place for economic development, but as the home for a “soaring, monumental beautiful memorial.”

But Childs argues that the project presents a “great opportunity” for the city.

“A lot of people have wanted all of the acreage to be a memorial,” he said. “They do it with the conviction that comes with having such an emotional relationship to it. I know, in history, I have admired the cultures who have gone on to rebuild. Look at Berlin after [World War II] or the Blitz in London. If all of those areas had been set aside for memorials, it would have harmed the fabric of those cities.”

Design Includes Range of Architectural Voices

The design by Childs, whose 55-story AOL Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle is under construction, also tackles broader urban planning issues in downtown New York. During the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the construction of the World Trade Center and its massive elevated plaza obliterated much of the area’s street grid. For example, Greenwich and Washington streets, once major pedestrian thoroughfares, now dead-end onto the site. Childs’ master plan seeks to reestablish that street grid, reconnecting the downtown core to Battery Park City to the west.

As for the architecture of the buildings, Childs envisions a development with components broad and varied enough to accommodate a range of architectural voices. “I think that at this scale, a project that uses multiple designers will be a richer place than if it was all being done by one hand.”

Silverstein has been actively seeking potential occupants for the plan’s cultural components. The 70-year-old developer, a self-professed music lover, approached the New York City Opera about moving downtown soon after the opera announced its plans to leave Lincoln Center, where it has been since 1966.

While acknowledging that he has discussed the move with Silverstein, Paul Kellogg, the opera’s artistic director, said he has made no definite plans to move downtown. “First we have to make sure our audience would follow us,” Kellogg said. “But I think some kind of cultural center there would be a wonderful thing for New York.”

Silverstein has also met twice with Guggenheim Museum director Thom Krens, whose plan to build a $678-million museum complex, designed by Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, on a pier at the edge of the East River at Wall Street, is in limbo.

Guggenheim officials have refused to comment about the talks with Silverstein, but Krens has asked Gehry whether he would consider designing such a venue.

“Whatever rises here,” Childs said, “it will one day come to express how people will understand our culture 100 years from now.”