Trade Center Memorial Jury to Be Hidden From Scrutiny
2003-06-30 12:31
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Maya Lin, who designed memorials to Vietnam veterans in Washington and the U.S. civil
rights movement
in Alabama, made a confession this month to a crowded public meeting in lower Manhattan.
``I, for one, am extremely scared,'' said Lin. She's on a jury that will select a design for the World Trade
Center memorial
to honor the 3,016 people who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The 13 jurors will screen what could theoretically be as many as 13,683 proposed designs, due today, in what could
be ``not only the largest competition ever, but by quadruple-fold,'' Lin said in an interview.
The jurors are running a gauntlet fraught with grief, symbolism and conflicting interests. They will be secluded
from public scrutiny and pressure at a secret location and under tight security, organizers said.
City officials and business leaders are counting on the memorial to be a financial engine that drives and
shapes lower Manhattan's redevelopment while helping to restore New York City's economy.
It's expected to draw as many as 10 million visitors the first year and 5 million annually after that, almost
twice the number that visited the Statue of Liberty last year, said Greg Trevor, a spokesman for the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey, the site's owner. Groups representing the 343 firefighters who were killed, the survivors
of civilian victims, local residents and business interests are vying to influence the design.
`Crucial Element'
Under Berlin architect Daniel Libeskind's master plan, the 4.7-acre memorial site will be the centerpiece
of the 16-acre Ground Zero redevelopment, which also will include the world's tallest building, four office towers
with retail space, a transportation center, cultural facilities and a museum. ``I see it as a crucial element
to the rebuilding of this part of the city,'' David Komansky, former chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch
& Co., said in an interview. ``If Wall Street as we knew it is the financial-services business, it doesn't
exist anymore.''
New York City, where unemployment was 8.1 percent in May, lost 93,900 private sector jobs in the quarter after
the attacks
that won't be recovered until the end of 2006, the city estimates. The attacks coincided with a weakening economy,
a sharp fall in
the stock market and tumbling profits on Wall Street, which fell from $21 billion in 2000 to $8.5 billion in 2001,
the city said. That in turn cut Wall Street's tax payments to the city to $1.8 billion from $2.6 billion, or 30
percent. In all, the city saw $3 billion in tax revenue disappear in the year after Sept. 11 because of the catastrophe,
the city comptroller's office said.
`Place in History'
On Friday, the City Council approved a budget that cuts services and raises taxes to close a $6.4 billion
revenue shortfall.
The Partnership for New York City, a group of chief executives representing business interests, estimates
the attacks cost the city $16 billion in economic activity. Most crucially to the thousands of survivors,
the memorial must bring solace to those who will never be able to recover or identify the bodies of those they
lost. And it must serve future generations as an emotional touchstone and historical landmark to the worst terrorist
attack in U.S. history. ``It's a dangerous thing to predict less than two years from an event its place in history,''
said Ric Burns, a documentary filmmaker whose 10-part series on New York City was broadcast last year on public
television.
`No Danger of Forgetting'
``We're in no danger of forgetting. We're in danger of not remembering correctly.'' He said he is making a
documentary on the
history of the World Trade Center that will be broadcast in September. The design competition drew 13,683 applications
from 94
countries, including 11,370 from the U.S., the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency overseeing the rebuilding,
said May
30. Today is the deadline for applicants to submit drawings of their designs.
The previous record number of applicants in a memorial design competition was 4,800 in Oklahoma City, where
168 people died in
the 1995 bombing of the federal building. In past competitions, a third to a half of applicants eventually submitted
proposals. After the entries are registered, catalogued and checked for contaminants such as anthrax, the jurors
will retreat in August to a secret location, said Nancy Poderycki, spokeswoman for the development agency. Officials
declined to describe even the interior of the facility where jurors will meet. ``Even we don't know where it is,''
said James Young, a historian who is one of the jurors.
`Extraordinary' Security
It is ``an extraordinary level of security for an art jury,'' said Raymond Gastil, executive director of
New York's Van Alen
Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes public design and architecture. ``But of course everything about
this situation
is extraordinary. You have to have some level of insulation to prevent the process from being corrupted.'' Over
the next few weeks, jurors will consider the thousands of proposals ``one by one, we'll see each one,'' Lin said
in the interview. Five finalists will be chosen by September, and a winner will be selected by October or November,
agency officials said.
Construction is expected to begin around January 2005. There is no budget or cost estimate yet for the memorial,
said Anita
Contini, the official in charge of the memorial selection process for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. A foundation
that will
raise funds for the memorial hasn't yet been set up or its board chosen.
For `Each One of Us'
Redeveloping the entire Trade Center site under Libeskind's plan will cost $10 billion public and private
funds, the agency estimated in May. The Oklahoma City National Memorial cost $24 million, according to its director,
Kari Watkins. About $14 million was raised privately, with the federal and state governments each providing $5
million. As a 21-year-old Yale University undergraduate in 1981, Lin won the competition to design the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial. She told the public meeting this month that jurors would ``try to find something that can really
talk to each one of us as individuals so that a person's pain can be relieved on an individual private
basis, and yet can bring us together as a community.''
That won't be easy. The largest design competition in history is already among the most contentious.
Some survivors want the memorial site -- where the twin towers stood and where most remains of victims were found
-- open to bedrock 70 feet below the street. Many local residents and businesses are lobbying for a street-level
site.
Equal Treatment
Firefighters have campaigned for a special place on the memorial that lists name, rank, unit and badge number
for each of the 403 uniformed service workers killed that day - 343 firefighters, 23 city police officers and 37
Port Authority police officers. Many family members believe the memorial should treat all victims equally. At
the first of two public hearings, in May, some firefighters booed Frederic Bell, executive director of the New
York Institute of Architects New York chapter, who spoke in favor of equal treatment.
``The closer to the event, the more friction there will be, even if they get it right,'' Burns said of the
jury.
`No Hierarchies'
The guidelines finally approved call for the memorial to recognize each victim with ``no hierarchies'' distinguishing
one group from another. ``Names of victims need not be listed alphabetically or for that matter even listed at
all,'' Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., said May 30. The 3,016 victims to be honored
include 2,792 who died at Ground Zero, 218 killed at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylania, and six who
perished in the 1993 trade center bombing.
The guidelines call for the setting to be 30 feet below street level, exposing the retaining wall that is
the only surviving part of the original World Trade Center. Those guidelines will be open to interpretation.
``The memorial must unite the nation in perpetuity, beyond that we leave it to the memorial designers and jury
to interpret,'' Rampe said. When the competition began in April, artists were encouraged to break the rules by
Contini, the development agency official. ``We've given them the opportunity to be flexible,'' she said
in an interview.''
Debate Over Jury
The makeup of the jury itself has been contentious, largely because it has just one member of a victim's family,
Paula Grant
Berry of Brooklyn, widow of David Berry, a banking analyst of the brokerage and investment bank Keefe Bruyette
& Woods Inc.
``I understand you have to bring a certain amount of expertise to the table,'' said Jack Lynch, a leader of
the Coalition of 9/11 Families. ``But nobody can bring the emotions except the families.''
Ten of the 13 jurors, including Lin and Young, have ties to New York's art and culture community: the sculptor
Martin Puryear;
Vartan Gregorian, a historian and president of the Carnegie Corp.; Enrique Norten, an architect who is designing
the Brooklyn Public
Library's new visual arts facility; Susan Freedman, president of New York's Public Art Fund; Lowery Stokes Sims,
executive director
of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Harvard landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburg; Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris,
who was city
arts director under former Mayor Edward Koch; and Nancy Rosen, who assists public agencies and nonprofit organizations
plan art
programs.
Rockefeller's Role
Also on the jury are Michael McKeon, a managing director of Mercury Public Affairs and a former communications
director of
Governor George Pataki, and Julie Menin, president and founder of the nonprofit Wall Street Rising, whose mission
is to help rebuild
lower Manhattan. David Rockefeller, former chairman and chief executive of the Chase Manhattan Bank, who was instrumental
in
building the trade center, is an honorary member of the jury. About a third of the 15 panelists who chose the
design for the Oklahoma City bombing memorial -- 168 empty chairs, lighted at night, on the site where the Alfred
P. Murrah federal building stood -- were victims and survivors, Lynch said. The Vietnam Memorial jury included
no Vietnam veterans. Redevelopment of lower Manhattan provides an opportunity to broaden its economic base,
and that of the city, executives said.
`A Tremendous Impact'
``Whatever we rebuild has to be rebuilt so that it doesn't rely on the financial services industry but rather
puts us in the position to attract other economic entities to lower Manhattan,'' said Komansky, 64, who retired
in April from Merrill, the world's biggest securities firm by capital.
New York City shed 32,800 securities industry jobs between August 2001, the month before the Sept. 11 attacks,
and May 2003,
the city comptroller's office said. Full-time positions fell to 161,600 from 194,400. Many, if not most, of those
jobs were in lower Manhattan, where Wall Street is located. City statistics don't break that district out.
Financial services companies, such as New York Life Insurance Co., have dispersed facilities and jobs to locations
outside the
city to cut costs as well as reduce the risk of attack. About 14 percent of the city's jobs are related directly
or indirectly to the securities industry, the comptroller's office said.
The 10 million visitors expected the first year is the same number who visit Greece each year, said Nicholas
Economides, professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business. ``That will have a tremendous
impact on our local economy and businesses that cater to tourists, like hotels and restaurants.''