The Freedom Tower

The mounting anxiety over who will rent office space once the Freedom Tower is completed was relieved today when federal government tenant signed up to occupy almost 25 percent of the office space in the downtown building.

The first tenant to sign a letter of intent to move into the 1,776 foot Freedom Tower was the U.S. General Services Administration. The GSA manages government office space. The giant agency signed a letter of intent with the owners to occupy nearly 600,000 square feet of office space in the building. The agency that will move in will be the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a former tenant of the World Trade Center before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Tower will be owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and that agency has said it will occupy up to one million square feet of space in the 2.1 million square foot building. Four other towers are slated to go up on the site that will be jointly managed by the PA and developer Larry Silverstein.

In an unrelated development, a court order was sought and granted to halt the sale of commemorative Sept. 11 coins. New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer says the coins printed with the World Trade Center towers on one side and the Freedom Tower on the other may be bogus coins. The coins are being touted as minted from silver recovered at ground zero. Spitzer won a court order to halt sales because he says the coins may be a “a shameless attempt to profit from a national tragedy. This product has been promoted with claims that are false, misleading or unsubstantiated.” The one dollar coins are valued at $39 each but are being sold for $19.95

The media farce over the deadly sins of the alleged Miami seven terrorists whose crimes we are now told were “more aspirational than operational, according to the FBI have drawn parallels that range from the “Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” to a recent trend among contemporary Irish-American writers.

Hell, aspiriational must be one of those Justice Department words because it isn’t an English word, never mind a criminal act unless, they’re trying to find a clever way of spelling the entrapment or morons down south.

“The new face of the terrorist enemy in America, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conceded that the men had no weapons or explosives and represented “no immediate threat,” Writes Robert parry in commentary for the Baltimore Chronicle “But Gonzales warned that these kinds of homegrown terrorists “may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda.” [NYT, June 24, 2006] For longtime observers of political terrorism in South Florida, the aggressive reaction to what may have been the Miami group’s loose talk about violence, possibly spurred by an FBI informant posing as an al-Qaeda operative. We reported the arrests of the Miami seven on this blog, a report that stemmed from a news conference in which the lead prosecutor touted the action as a major action to thwart a threat to our Homeland Security, the latest oxymoron in the American lexicon.

A visit to any local barbershop in the Miami neighborhood where the Miami seven were known widely as local losers, might have spared the FBI and the nation this latest assault on our intelligence. Agents who swooped down and arrested the Miami seven, must now figure out if the men were actually capable of mounting attacks. Several sources described them as homegrown wannabes with no known connection to foreign terrorists. No explosives or guns were found, sources told the Miami Hearld. What was Gonzales and his gang thinking, or more precisely, not thinking.

Professor Ed Hagan, a literary scholar at Western Connecticut State University in the English Department, offered some insight to a growing credibility problem the Bush administration and their gangs have had with not been able to shoot straight when it comes to the facts since the start of the Iraq war. What is happening in Washington and American on this front reminds Dr. Hagan of a recent trend he had noticed in the novels of many contemporary Irish-American novelists. The way the world is tending, Hagan said, America and the world can no longer absorb the details of so many real tragedies, so the farce is the only way left for us to understand what is happening to us.

Well Gonzales and his boys certainly seem ready willing and able to provide us with all the fodder any budding novelist will need, if Jon Stewart and his gang on Comedy Central doesn’t beat them to the punch line.

There is a new design on the horizon.

The redesign was unveiled in ceremonies at 7 World Trade Center that incorporates features that address security concerns for the Freedom Tower.

Freedom Tower architect David Childs said the changes will make seeing the tower from greater distances easier. The new design will feature a beacon of light that changes colors, revolves and hurls beams of light into the sky, Childs said. “It’s a light building. It’s not a heavy, defensive building,” said Childs. “It’s full of porosity and transmission of light. You feel the thickness of it, and yet you feel the lightness of it.” He said there will be thousands of glass prisms added to the design to allow more light to enter the base of the tower. The tower has been redesigned several times for a wide variety of reasons. The current design change includes features that will use specific safety materials.

When the Twin Towers were hit by planes and collapsed, the ensuing catastrophe covered everything and everyone for blocks with a thick layer of white, powdery dust particles. The fallout affected an undetermined number of residents, emergency workers, police and fire department personnel.

Various state, local and federal health and government officials have been concerned about the ill effects of the fallout since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the largest police union in the nation, has decided to monitor and record the health of cops who were called to the scene of the WTC collapse. “We understand that science takes time, but these officers don’t have time,” PBA spokesman Al O’Leary told an Associated Press reporter. “Some have already died, and those who are alive today need to know what kinds of symptoms they should be watching for.” When a retired, 34-year-old police detective died last January, an autopsy on the body of James Zadroga concluded that the officer’s death was related to the 9/11 incident, the AP said. Now, some doctors say Zadroga’s death may just be the first of many cases that might be linked to 9/11.

“The collapse of New York City’s two World Trade Center (WTC) towers on Sept. 11, 2001, sent more than 1 million tons of dust that enveloped lower Manhattan,” according to Chemical and Engineering News. “The fires that lingered at ground zero until December created a plume of smoke initially detectable from space. Aerosols that could be seen and smelled were inescapable during and long after the attack on the World Trade Center. But aerosols are also transient. A handful of scientific groups quickly mobilized, usually donating time and money to collect ambient air data and dust samples near ground zero, little would now be known about the WTC aerosols.

“Many of the scientists who tested and analyzed the WTC air gathered for a symposium at the recent American Chemical Society national meeting in New York City to discuss their results. They described the composition of the fallout dust, estimated where it came from, and proposed how its properties led to the “World Trade Center cough,” according to Chemical and Engineering News “They described the plume of smoke, what it was made of, and how weather patterns in New York at the time affected its movement. They debated how much of the pollution of lower Manhattan could be ascribed to the plume and how much was native.

“The data they accumulated are hard to interpret. There were a lot of variations in results,” said Roger N. Clark of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “Different groups were using different instruments. “With different instrumentation, people see different stuff,” Clark remarked. “Any one individual data set gives a picture, but it’s not the whole picture.”

The states of New York and New Jersey took off the gloves today and sued seven insurance companies who are withholding claims owed for the World Trade Center disaster.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey joined site developer Larry Silverstein in a lawsuit that named the insurers in a complaint filed in New York Supreme Court. The action caps a long-standing dispute between the insurance companies and the states over changes related to redevelopment of the property. Silverstein won a $4.6 billion liability claim for the destruction of the Twin Towers.

In the most recent complaint, the two states and Silverstein charge the insurers with refusing to pay up their share of insurance claims because of new development plans agreed upon last April.

“The insurance carriers’ refusal to provide those assurances is not delaying progress at the World Trade Center site, but the insurance proceeds are required to build Freedom Tower, a Port Authority spokesman told Commercial Property News. “In a statement, Silverstein said that the States of New York and New Jersey, the City of New York and the Port Authority … will not allow “foot-dragging” insurance companies to impede the revitalization of Downtown Manhattan, and expects a quick resolution forcing the insurers to pay the sums Silverstein claims they owe.”

In a show of solidarity, construction workers at the site staged a rally in lower Manhattan across the street of the WTC footprint to support a resumption of reconstruction at the site.

“The question everywhere I go is, ‘What’s going on with Ground Zero?’ It’s gotten to the point where it’s embarrassing that there isn’t any progress,” said carpenter Tom O’Connor told New York 1 News. “Build this now. That’s all I’ve got to say: build it now,” said iron worker Billy Foster.

There was no ceremony, no fanfare, no pizzazz!

The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower was moved from ground zero where the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell two years after it was laid on July 4. The stone was quietly moved on Friday. Instead of signaling the beginning of work that work that would erect a memorial to the tragic events of 9/11, 2001, that ceremony two years ago marked the beginning of what seemed like endless bickering, haggling and negotiations over what would and should be put on the site.

The decision to move the cornerstone followed a series of designs and redesigns that made the current location of the cornerstone obsolete, according the Newsday. “The 20-ton stone, laid near the temporary train station that now dominates the ground zero pit, was hauled away to Hauppauge, N.Y. Friday morning,” the newspaper reported.

“The 5 1/2-foot-tall block of granite, quarried from the Adirondack Mountains and inscribed with words calling it a “tribute to the enduring spirit of freedom,” will stay at Innovative Stone for up two years before returning to the World Trade Center site. Innovative Stone, which cut and inscribed the cornerstone, plans to keep it in a plexiglass case and make it available for viewing by appointment.”

A sense of what the future promises when the new WTC Freedom Tower is built comes shining through in comments that come from Charles Wolfe, the husband of a woman who died on 9/11.

Wolfe was an opponent of a plan to move the names of the victims from an underground location to a street-level location on walls surrounding two waterfalls that lead down to the empty footprints of the Twin Towers. In a redesign, the developer moved the names to the street-level location.

Wolfe said he reconsidered because earlier he did not realize the sound of the waterfalls flowing beneath the names will drown out the noise of the city. Wolfe said he changed his mind after he imagined what it will be like to see his wife’s name with the other names while hearing the roar of falling water. It will be powerful, he told a reporter for the Reuters News Service. “I’m getting choked up thinking about it.”

Officials hope to begin memorial construction in July and finish by September 11, 2009, the eighth anniversary of the attack, according to Downtown Express. “Anthony Gardner, whose brother was killed in the attack and is the leader of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, said changes in the design “improved a troubled design. “We think it’s a step in the right direction,” he said. “We’re maybe halfway there.”

Gardner told the Express he “wants to have more of the bedrock area accessible to the public and to let family members decide which tower site to have their loved one’s names listed and to allow the names to be grouped together by firm, firehouse, precinct and flight.

Visitors to the plaza will be able to walk directly to the names and waterfalls without passing through security. The security check will be in the visitors center, which will lead to the underground sections. Those wishing to see the underground memorial area at bedrock will have to pay a museum admission fee if there is one.

The fate of the memorial and WTC museum may soon be decided in court.

The governors of New Jersey and New York today threatened to haul insurers into court if they did not pay claims needed to rebuild the 16-acre World Trade Center site.

Insurance payments are due from Lloyd’s of London, St. Paul Travelers, Chubb Corp., The Hartford Financial Group and the Zurich American Insurance Company. These companies may only have days to pay up or show up in court, according to spokesmen for the two state governors. The governors have demanded the payments be made to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the next few days or they will ask a judge to order them to pay up.

The money is needed to finance rebuilding the site. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week said the insurers have indicated to him they might withhold payments because developers and the Port of Authority revised an earlier deal than one currently being considered.

New York Gov. George Pataki isn’t buying it, saying the threat stems from legal maneuvering to avoid making the payments at all, not on any real dispute over redeveloping the WTC property.

In an unrelated matter, authorities in two states moved to thwart separate terrorist plots to attack a skyscraper in Chicago and FBI headquarters in Miami. Seven men were arrested and charged with conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chiago and the federal building in Miami.

At a news conference, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the plots stemmed from home-grown terrorist cells but the plots were thwarted while in the planning stages, not plans the posed any imminent danger.

In Florida, a grand jury returned indictments against men who were allegedly loyal to Osama bin Laden. The men were allegedly planning to build an Islamic army and wage war against the United States. While the group thought they had successfully made contact with an al Qaeda operative, the man was actually an FBI informant.

Recommendations in the Sciame report saw the trees in a forest of complaints, revisions and options.

Sciame’s report outlined ways to reduce the hefty $1 billion price tag of the memorial and museum by at least 50%.

“We considered a wide range of options and analyzed each element of the designs individually, and then created several options that combined multiple design refinements,” Sciame said.

“Some options we analyzed were not considered consistent with the Reflecting Absence vision selected by the Memorial Jury, such as bringing the reflecting pools up to plaza level (making them shallow versions of the original.) These kinds of revisions were deemed too severe a departure from inspiring elements of the original design.”

“We also considered eliminating the waterfalls, however many of those consulted felt that the waterfalls were an important aspect of the Reflecting Absence design. In addition, the sound of the falling water was viewed as a necessary feature adding to the contemplative nature of the memorial, removing visitors from the sounds of the city as they viewed the voids that are the empty footprints of the Twin Towers. Removing the waterfalls and retaining the galleries did not yield sufficient operational or capital cost savings, given these concerns, to merit adoption.

“Options to reduce landscaping on the Memorial Plaza were also deemed inconsistent with the vision selected by the Memorial Jury, which noted in its statement the importance of the grove of trees surrounding the footprints as ‘traditional affirmations of life and rebirth.’“

A report commissioned altering current plans for the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum by New York Gov. George Pataki and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg hit the streets yesterday.

Completed by builder Frank Sciame, head of the Sciame Construction Company and Sciame Development, the report spells out ways to reign in costs to build the project in line with the $500 million budget.

“Frank Sciame has conducted a thoughtful and thorough process that brings the Reflecting Absence vision in line with the $500 million budget and will ensure that the memorial to our nearly 3,000 lost heroes remains on schedule,” the governor said. The mayor concurred.

While the costs estimates in Sciame’s report halved the nearly $1 billion price tag for the project, another significant factor in Sciame’s version of the project soothed rancor among family members of victims over a central issue — placement of all 2,979 names to be displayed around two pools. In earlier designs, the names were below grade and this upset a number of family groups.

Sciame’s cost saving suggestions will also quiet critics who say original plans were way out of line. Capital and operating cost savings include approximately $285.1 million in construction and infrastructure savings. The plan eliminates the entry pavilion, portions of the below-grade galleries, the cost of relocating the river water line; modifying a bedrock museum;  refining the approach to preserving a wall, a significant reduction in administration costs.

The WTC Memorial and Museum is slated to open on September 11, 2009.