Of all the blunders at the World Trade Center site, the dumbest might be City Hall’s decision, with the Port Authority’s blessing, to kick-start work on a performing-arts center.
The last thing Ground Zero needs is underground construction on an unnecessary project that can only toss new monkey wrenches into the interlocked works all around it.
Plus, Crain’s reported that, despite the city’s stubborn determination to start the job using $50 million of Lower Manhattan Development Corp. funds, no one can say for sure if it will ever be finished.
In a rational world, Gov. Paterson — who, in theory, has more say over all of the WTC site than anyone — would stop this folly before it wreaks havoc on far worthier projects at the site. But New York’s governor is too out of it to know where Ground Zero is, much less to manage it.
The performing-arts center would provide a new home for the Joyce Theater dance company — which has no need to be at the WTC site. Nor does the site need an arts facility. A mayoral spokesman terms it an “important component” — but its inclusion reflects only the politically poisoned chaos that has substituted for rational Ground Zero planning.
Yes, two truly key site components are well under way after years of wheel-spinning: the 9/11 Memorial and 1 World Trade Center. Progress is undeniable, however overdue. The memorial will almost be finished on the 10th anniversary of the attack; the office tower, now impressively rising, is to open in 2013.
But Larry Silverstein’s office towers are in limbo. And completion of the winged “Transportation Hub” has likely been set back to 2015. Demolition of 130 Liberty St. (the old Deutsche Bank building), which is integrally linked to the projects underground, has no end in sight.
Against that backdrop — especially compared to the epic PA-Silverstein struggle over financing his towers — the arts center might seem a mere sideshow. If only.
A big reason for all the delays is that the projects are too many and too close to one another — a legacy of the Daniel Libeskind master plan chosen by then-Gov. George Pataki.
Libeskind’s name rarely comes up these days, because the harshest aspects of his vision — knife-edge towers, exposed slurry walls, an 80-foot deep pit — got dropped long ago. But his most damaging stroke still stands: namely, devoting nearly half the 16-acre site to the memorial.
That made everything far harder. There’s no easy way to cram four huge towers, shopping malls, a PATH terminal larger than Grand Central, new streets, a “wedge of light” (whatever it is) plus a performing arts center into a 9-acre L bristling with train lines and fraught with structural challenges.
Each project steps on its neighbors. The MTA’s subway “box” brushes against ganglions of the PATH terminal, which intrudes beneath the memorial. The memorial’s size forced Silverstein’s buildings into a narrow corridor where their foundations interlock with the terminal’s — confounding engineers for both the developer and the PA.
Adding to the gridlock, most projects depend on first completing an underground vehicle-security center, which can’t be built until 130 Liberty St. is down — you get the idea.
The arts center just adds another “chicken or egg?” quandary. Above-ground work can’t start until the temporary PATH station is removed — which can’t happen until the permanent station is done. At the same time, some LMDC officials are trying to move the PAC offsite altogether. Yet City Hall and the PA want to plow ahead nonetheless.
No private developer would pursue such a reckless course of action. Of course, there’s no way to know whether the arts center will interfere with adjacent projects, which include 1 and 2 WTC, a subway pedestrian tunnel and a generation plant.
City officials argue that below-grade work on the center will involve a mere 20 percent of a 200,000 square-foot, subterranean structure, already under construction, that’s needed to support the PATH terminal and other elements. As a result, they say, work on the arts facility won’t interfere with anything else. The PA, too, insists the PAC foundation “will not delay any of the existing projects.”
Sure it won’t. After all, everything at Ground Zero has gone so smoothly, without surprises or delay, since 9/11 — our new World Trade Center is the wonder of the age. We look forward to dancers joining the party!