Santiago Calatrava’s Glorious BoondoggleHe was commissioned to design an architectural extravagance at ground zero. He succeeded, an accomplishment that threatens to destroy his reputation.
Could You Pipe Down a Little, Ground Zero?The Millennium Hilton is suing the Port Authority for $8 million for being too noisy for too long during its reconstruction of the World Trade Center.
McCain and Obama Visit Ground ZeroThe presidential candidates were ‘cordial but somber’ during their joint visit to the World Trade Center site.
ByJessica Pressler
intel
Port Authority Honcho Gunning for World Trade Center Bully Job?In the PA director’s report on delays and cost explosions at Ground Zero, he suggested that David Paterson appoint a “traffic cop” to manage all the different projects. We suspect he has someone particular in mind.
Daniel Libeskind Still Accepts Consensus As an IdeologyDaniel Libeskind is still optimistic about ground zero. Or, you know, not entirely bitter. “That site will come back to life in a way that is not banal,” he explained during a House & Garden panel discussion at Hunter College last week. It will have “as much public space as I could have possibly put in it,” he added. The topic of the H&G panel was “The Future Face of New York” and focused mostly on sustainable building and expansion. “It doesn’t happen by miracle, it happens by enlightened social policy,” Libeskind explained. It seems like he learned at least one thing about his ground-zero experience: “Democracy is about garnering consensus,” he mused. That’s helpful — but is it a real solution to the fact that there will be a million more people in New York in 2030? We’re not sure. Then again, we read H&G for the pictures of rich people’s window treatments. —Darrell Hartman
Related: The Liberation of Daniel Libeskind [NYM]
the morning line
Two More Hurt at Deutsche Bank
• Things keep getting worse at the Deutsche Bank building: Yesterday a worker for the sinister John Galt Corporation “lost control” of a forklift on the 23rd floor, from which it tumbled 200 feet to the ground, crashing through the roof of a shed and sending two more firefighters to the hospital. [
the morning line
Ground Zero Claims Two More
• Two firefighters died Saturday in a blaze in the abandoned Deutsche Bank building adjacent to ground zero. The pair “walked into a horror show,” as Spitzer put it, when they met a maze of protective polyurethane sheets that may have made the fire harder to fight. [amNY]
developing
Take a Look at the Freedom Tower Lobby
Some day — one hopes sooner rather than later — the Freedom Tower will be an actual building, not just an idea to argue about, and that building will have a lobby. Daily Intel got the first look at renderings of the planned lobby, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. A 60-foot-high expanse of prismatic glass looks out on the memorial pool. “The lobby sheds light into the memorial pool,” explained SOM’s TJ Gottesdiener. “And the front door is celebrated.” Where the old Twin Towers sealed themselves from the street, the new lobby echoes the old bustle of downtown — true to the notion that Daniel Libeskind laid out before he lost control of the building’s design. “The greatest thing about Danny’s master plan is that it lets streets flow,” Gottesdiener said. Got that? Even more impressive than the renderings, SOM just said something nice about Libeskind. —Alec Appelbaum
the morning line
No Congestion Pricing, But…
• So Mayor Mike struck out on his congestion-pricing deal as Albany ended the legislative session. But while that plan got all the attention, Bloomberg got a slew of other projects passed: a child-care tax credit, a corporate tax slash, and more state funds for public housing. Huh. [NYP]
• Dozens of pissed-off New Yorkers are being bussed to D.C. for a congressional hearing about the Feds’ performance monitoring air quality at ground zero. Jerry Nadler will be the congressman first to grill ex–EPA head Christine Todd Whitman. [amNY]
• What Sunday’s pride parade may have lacked in middle-aged, middle-class gays, it more than made up for in a newly prominent demographic: religious groups. Jews, Roman Catholics, Buddhists, and others came dangerously close, in the words of a reveler, to “hijacking the parade.” [WCBS]
• The weekend brought a mass gang arrest in Bushwick — 32 kids, the youngest 13 years old, collared on their way to attend a murdered friend’s wake. The gang is supposedly an offshoot of the Bloods, colorfully dubbed the Pretty Boy Family. [NYT]
• And now that Fred Thompson seems to be a viable presidential candidate, let’s get all our political advice from Law & Order cast members. Sam Waterston — a.k.a. A.D.A. Jack McCoy — is also the face of the libertarian-flavored online movement Unity08, and he’s ready to vote Bloomberg. [NYDN]
the morning line
A Bad Day for Daniel Goldstein*
• The key lawsuit seeking to block Atlantic Yards has been dismissed on a technicality. A group of tenants facing eminent-domain relocation failed to convince a judge they weren’t offered comparable housing. [NYP]
• Mark Green, the new president and one of the marquee voices of Air America, interviewed Michael Bloomberg for the network’s big relaunch next week; the ex-rivals were reportedly quite chummy, trading bad puns and agreeing on most of Bloomberg’s mayoral policies. [NYT]
• This is exactly what the torturously slow dismantling of the Deutsche Bank building was supposed to prevent: A fifteen-foot-long pipe fell 35 stories from the half-stripped skyscraper, plunging into a neighboring firehouse and sending two firefighters to the hospital. [NYDN]
• Bail for the domestic-enslaving Long Island couple was set at $2.5 million for the wife and $1 million for the husband; meanwhile, a raid on the mansion is said to have uncovered the instruments of torture, which include knives and a rolling pin. [Newsday]
• And, a bomb scare shook up an elementary school in the Putnam County town of Kent after a suspicious and fragrant package was delivered to the building. But not to fear: After a Hazmat team and bomb squad got involved, an X-ray revealed it was twelve pounds of marijuana. [WNBC]
* Or maybe not a bad day at all. As explained here, we totally misread this news.
developing
What Daniel Libeskind Does When Not Rebuilding Ground Zero
The sneering was involuntary when we read that Daniel Libeskind, whose idealistic World Trade Center scheme became the cudgel that George Pataki used to freeze ground zero, would keynote a weeklong conference of brand managers at Chelsea Piers. But then the effervescent architect started guiding a half-full ballroom through his recent work, and we realized this guy’s had a lot of output while we’ve bickered over a memorial. Libeskind’s new projects under construction include a jagged apartment tower facing downtown Cincinnati and a wing of the Royal Ontario Museum that suggests a giddy urban campsite. Libeskind, as ever, refused to carp. On the World Trade Center, he told us: “You see the slurry wall being repaired you see something optimistic there.” Well, at least he does. Alec Appelbaum
the morning line
Expensive Habits
• The Times comes out with some shocking numbers about “frequent fliers” — the addicts that keep entering and quitting rehab. The state spends $50 million a year treating just 500 of these patients, some of whom spend 100 nights a year in detox. [NYT]
• There’s a changing of the guard at ground zero: Governor Spitzer has named two new leaders of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. One is, somewhat fittingly, David Emil, the former owner of Windows on the World. [amNY]
• Yes, we’re all kinda thinking it, and someone had to be the first, but … Dear Daily News, it might be just a tad — maybe a day or so — early for a cackling op-ed titled “Do you still love those precious guns now, Virginia?” [NYDN]
• The three-day nor’easter is going down in weather history. Eight inches of rain fell here in NYC — four times the record for the date; some New Jerseyites had to be evacuated by boat after the Raritan River flooded. [NYP]
• And, that silly old couple that traveled to Arizona by yellow cab with their cats, and whose cutesy made-for-TV story we stoically resisted so far, arrived in Sedona. And now they’re out of our jurisdiction, so that’s that. [Gateway to Sedona]
