Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 22:20:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC: Exclusions and More Cherie Fernandez* got her application to be part of the August 13th building codes hearing at Bowling Green in on time,listing qualifications (member of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat,familiar with numerous current building technologies,etc) and was rejected. *Rayden Tron Mitra Samadani reports that the August 29th meeting on the future of the site(focussing on the memorial) is actually only for Lower Manhattan residents and business owners, those who lost family in the attacks,and disaster recovery volunteers.I don't know if this means they'll kick Joe Wright out,he told me he had registered.IF YOU QUALIFY AS SUCH PLEASE TRY TO ATTEND...not sure if the petition/literature group should set up shop outside the meeting and maybe get coverage from NY1.(The address to sign up,once again: ny1events@radicalhospitality.org...it's at the Embassy Suites in Battery Park City). Gary Taustine tried to orchestrate complaints about his official stifling by the LTTC staff,and was ejected for his trouble. They don't want to hear us...let that be THEIR problem, not ours,as we continue to fight. Fifteen respondents indicated they supported the full page ad or would help pay for it,most the suggested hundred,some offered sums from $25 to $200. The WTC-for-airports land-swap deal is now encountering some second thoughts.Bloomberg wants to give the PA the airport real estate but not cede any rights to decide what the PA does with the airports, as well as getting a big retroactive payment of rent he wants the leases renegotiated to make the PA suddenly have owed. Gary Taustine has had to decline a radio interview with a station in Arizona.They want to talk to a pro-rebuilder...I am available for the time slot in question,if he can't get them to take me I hope they will get hold of someone. (later that day,next Wednesday,I expect to put the pro-Towers case to Dennis Mehiel,the Democratic organization's candidate for Lieutenant Governor...I'll be attending a pre-primary event he will be at). Tom Auchterlonie has suggested we try to get the NY Post to write news stories about the pro-rebuilding movement,maybe have an event that brings pro-rebuilding leaders together to express their views. (What's the trick to getting a news conference attended?...do we have any artists on the list who could draw up some of our proposed ideas for tower-dominated redevelopments?...would those whose concepts are on the web object to their ideas being among those shown?). There's a news story tonight that the PATH+subway station complex in the WTC areas is budgeted at $4,500,000,000 (including aid from Washington).That's not too far short of what new Towers would cost, and I'll bet WAY short of what the suggested extension of the Metro- North lines from GCT south to Downtown would cost.(Re-engineer Grand Central to no longer be a southward terminal,set up to switch trains onto at least six tracks--north and south for Harlem,Hudson, and New Haven lines--and create stations for,at a minimum,direct LIRR transfer in the Thirties,14th Street,Canal Street,Fulton Street. And the planners toss the concept around as if it were easy). Joe Wright sent me a link to an article in Crain's New York Business by large real estate operator Douglas Durst,who seems to come down on the side of the Civic Alliance vultures when he calls the post- disaster situation "a challenging opportunity to correct the urban planning mistakes of the original WTC".While his article is mainly a plea to get the Port Authority out of the business of competing with his own business interests,this desire to make the site into something those who worked,lived,and died there would no longer recognize is unbecoming.To repudiate the buildings that were destroyed,I believe, is also to repudiate those who died in them,for all the pious memorializations.We honor the dead by opening the way for others to follow where they were,not by accepting the killers' desire to take that choice away. Online-LTTC participants have once again come up with poll results more encouraging than those at the Javits event (and thus likely to be treated as less relevant by anti-rebuilding spin doctors), with only 17% saying it was "very important" and 15% that it was "important" to restore the pre-WTC street grid in whole or in part.At Javits those numbers were 35% and 21%.Both times the "somehwat important" number was 18%,but the "unimportan" number is now up to 40%! Since Tomson pointed to restoring the street grid as something his people understood was important to people and they were therefore planning for,when asked for examples of their heeding public opinion in the Gotham Gazette Java Chat,one wonders what he'll say now that people are saying what he doesn't want to hear.(Maybe next we can get him to understand the public at large [per Quinnipiac poll] is not particularly concerned with leaving the footprints as empty as commanded by Osama). Don't forget Doctoroff will be in that chat on the 15th! Dan Higgans started a topic on the forces arrayed against pro-rebuilders (but has so far not been ejected like Gary Taustine).He made an error in saying the 31% taller,30% same,21% shorter figures I mentioned on the list purely as hypotheticals for how they might be "spun",were in fact preliminary results.The only prelim results I saw were the 39% taller,20% same numbers Gary was posting before the final numbers pushed "taller" up to 40%. Alex Butziger sent me a draft of his site plan comments, I hope everyone on the list is going to send theirs in to the addresses given on the resource page at http://www.put.com/wtc/ if they haven't already.I will work up mine as soon as I am no longer trying to keep an eye on Online-LTTC all the time,and as with my comments on the previous phases will circulate the text to the list when complete. What do people think of having past list emails on the web? See you on the 111th floor on 9-11-11! -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.