Absolutely Zero: New York divided over memorial

It has been four years since the World Trade Centre was destroyed. But work has yet to begin on the Freedom Tower and its architect has been all but edged out of the project. By David Usborne

They call it "the pit" - hardly a heroic moniker for the hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan where so many died on11 September 2001. But that is what it has become. A huge and square sinkhole of barren grey cement and concrete with a few patches of green where a few hardy saplings have taken root.

They call it "the pit" - hardly a heroic moniker for the hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan where so many died on11 September 2001. But that is what it has become. A huge and square sinkhole of barren grey cement and concrete with a few patches of green where a few hardy saplings have taken root.

Tourists still come here, even though high fences mean they can see little. They arrive to pay their respects and to see what is going on. It is nearly four years since the two airliners brought havoc and more than two years since the city selected a blueprint by Germany's Daniel Libeskind to repopulate the 16-acre site with shiny new edifices, including a signature building, the Freedom Tower, that was to rise to 1,776ft, to echo the year of America's independence.

Yet, the visitors will be disappointed and probably a little baffled. A part of the pit has been invaded by the already completed new Path train station linking Lower Manhattan to New Jersey. And just to the north is a new, 52-storey glass box to replace 7 World Trade Centre, which also crumpled and fell in 2001. It will be completed early next year.

Otherwise all is still.

Zero is exactly what is going on at Ground Zero, a state of affairs that has become a political crisis in the city and the state. Everyone knows this is no ordinary public-works project. While it is riddled with complicated engineering challenges, the emotional dimensions are equally fraught. And what emerges from the site will be more than just a collection of new buildings but a statement to the world of New York's resilience and its ability to stand up to terrorism.

Things began to go awry a few weeks ago. First came word that Goldman Sachs, the brokerage house, was giving up on plans to build a new $2bn headquarters adjacent to Ground Zero and had begun looking at options elsewhere. Then the thunderbolt landed - a leaked memo from the Police Department revealing it could not certify that the Freedom Tower itself would be safe from another attack.

The advisory triggered a string of events. Governor George Pataki, who, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, laid a cornerstone for the Freedom Tower last July, was forced to concede that the entire structure would have to go back to the drawing board.

That meant that the goal of completing the building by 2009 would be delayed by at least a year. Some said the hiccup could be even more serious and that it may be 2011 before the ribbon is cut - a full 10 years after the Twin Towers fell.

It didn't take long for the finger-pointing to begin. The police memo said the tower would stand only 25 feet from the nearest street and would, therefore, be vulnerable to an attack by a truck bomb. It should be moved, they said, and reinforced. But why were they coming forward only now, when the developer who will rebuild Ground Zero, Larry Silverstein, already had the permits to start?

Part of the problem is the sheer number of players at Ground Zero. One agency, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, is meant to be guiding the entire project. But jostling in the wings are the Empire State Development Corporation, the NYPD, the Metropolitan Transport Authority, the Port Authority, which owns the land, the developer Mr Silverstein, Mr Pataki and Mr Bloomberg, as well as other New York politicians. Every actor has different political and financial interests.

"I don't want to say the police have been irresponsible, but where were they until this month?" chafed John Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. But, according to police officials, the department had been privately warning everyone involved of the safety concerns for months, even since last August. The memo, addressed to Mr Silverstein, was leaked in late April, it seems, only out of frustration because no one seemed to be paying attention.

The arrows have mostly flown in Mr Pataki's direction, for whom the rebuilding of Ground Zero was meant to be his political magnum opus. A Republican, he has yet to decide whether to run for a third term in 2006 but there are consistent, if slightly unconvincing, murmurings about him running for President in 2008. If he can't get something as crucial as the redevelopment of Ground Zero right, what can he do? He has responded to the crisis vigorously, appointing his second-in-command in the state capital of Albany, John Cahill, to knock heads.

He also gave his security adviser, a former New York FBI chief, Jim Kallstrom, the job of ensuring the buildings as finally drawn are as safe from attack as possible. "Failure to rebuild is not an option," the Governor bravely said. "We will not tolerate unnecessary delays."

There has also been criticism of Mayor Bloomberg, whose own re-election is already upon him with New Yorkers voting in the mayoral contest in November.

He has been accused of paying too little attention to Ground Zero, putting his energies instead into winning the battle to place a giant new football stadium further to the north over rail yards on Manhattan's West Side, a project that is critical to New York winning the Olympic bid.

Even the architectural lines of command have long been blurred. The Freedom Tower, a twisting obelisk of steel and glass comprising about 2.6 million sq ft of office space and capped by a multi-storey skeleton structure fitted with wind turbines and a soaring spire to evoke the Statue of Liberty's torch, was first drawn by Libeskind.

His design was then significantly modified by Mr Silverstein's architect, David Childs, of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. It is Mr Childs who has been told now to modify it a third time. (He has been given until the end of this month to come forward with a safer model.) Mr Libeskind is almost out of the picture.

Slightly less chaotic, but only just, is the progress towards constructing the memorial to the 2,800 people killed at the site on 9/11 that will occupy the core of Ground Zero, with the new office buildings and Freedom Tower ranged to the north and east of it. Consisting of two square voids where the Twin Towers once stood, water will fall into pools skirting the voids and ramps will lead to underground visitor areas.

Ground for the memorial is due to be broken early next year and it should be opened on 11 September 2009. Meanwhile, plans for a cultural centre next to the memorial, built by the Norwegian architectural firm, Snohetta, were unveiled last month.

If Mr Childs can come up with an alternative design to satisfy police by June, the political panic may fade a little. "The delay is being so overplayed, it's ridiculous," protested Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation. "If it's going to be delayed by a year, well, what can you do? It's going to be there for 100 years."

He has a point. The imperative to demonstrate that New York is not going to be cowed by terrorists creates a pressure to replace the void in Manhattan's skyline as quickly as possible.

But everyone wants to get this right; if it takes a while then so be it. But the hoo-ha of the past month has triggered a rash of soul-seeking about the entire enterprise. How many of us really liked the Libeskind vision and the Freedom Tower in the first place? (We have to assume that Childs is working on a version that will look roughly the same, even if it is in a new spot and a bit stronger, perhaps with less glass on lower levels.)

Are we right to cram the site with office and retail buildings, instead of, say, housing? First to the microphone was the property mogul Donald Trump, lambasting the tower as a "monstrous skeleton" and the overall blueprint for Ground Zero an offensive mess.

"It looks like a junk yard, a series of broken-down angles that don't match each other. And we have to live with this for hundreds of years?" he said. "It is the worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen in my life."

Never mind that Mr Trump has never been described by anyone as a champion of imaginative or exciting architecture.

While he was at it, Mr Trump unveiled a competing design of his own - basically a revamping of the original Twin Towers - Twin Towers II - though one storey taller than the originals, at 111 floors. Giving new life to the old designs, he said, would be the best way to repudiate the terrorists. (Though it is hard to imagine Osama bin Laden quaking over any of the designs.) Mr Libeskind's office tartly replied that Mr Trump had given his reborn Twin Towers an additional floor only to make room to place his name in bold letters.

But there are more basic questions to be asked. When the rebuilding is done, who will use all of these buildings? Is Ground Zero a place where corporations will want to be? Will even the public spaces work as envisaged?

For sure, there will be queues to visit the memorial, but less sure are the plans for a cultural centre on the site and a theatre space to be designed by Frank Gehry. No one doubts rebuilding there must be. But will what emerges turn out to be an exceptionally costly white elephant? Above all, is it necessary to cram the site with so much new office and retail space? The vacancy rate for commercial space in Downtown is at about 17 per cent. The glut will only worsen if Mr Bloomberg gets his way with the stadium project which also incorporates new office towers.

Strikingly, nobody has expressed interest in relocating to the Freedom Tower when finished. And Mr Silverstein has not been able to find a single tenant for 7 World Trade Centre.

On top of that there is the chill that has been cast over the area by the reluctance of Goldman Sachs to stick around. If the bank doesn't want to be there, then who will? "There is a sense, 'What does Goldman know that we don't know?'" remarked Mary Anne Tighe of CB Richard Ellis, the commercial estate agents.

Tellingly, when Mr Pataki recently pleaded with the Port Authority to move 2,000 of its employees into 7 World Trade Centre when it opens next spring, the agency demurred. Its response was not surprising - 75 of the agency's employees were killed on 9/11 and no one wants to go back. Cathy Pavelec, who retired from the agency in January, said "Somebody tried to kill me. Somebody tried to kill the people who sat next to me. Would you want to go back?"

Some are making the argument that now is the time to re-think the project. For while companies are reluctant to return to Lower Manhattan, residents are not. The area around Wall Street is having an apartment boom. "What lower Manhattan needs more than anything," says Paul Goldberger, dean of the Parsons School of Design, "is housing".

But it is almost certainly too late for such a wholesale change of direction. When the current bout of butterflies subsides, New York will doubtless proceed with plans not so far removed from those first tabled by Mr Libeskind.