The Freedom Tower

As the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, The Freedom Tower remains at center stage of the World Trade Center redevelopment. Construction of the tower got underway in the spring after numerous delays and was marred by furious infighting, court battles and threats by insurance companies who are still withholding funds developers need to finish redevelpment. Nevertheless design revisions were submitted and resubmitted with developers, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey finally settling upon the work of architect David Childs.
Designs for towers two, three and four are expected to be presented in early September, all new targets for the many critics and families of WTC victims.
A performing arts center is also in the early stages of planning but that project has been put on the back burner until after the WTC Memorial Foundation finishes raising funds. The Lower Manhattan Development Center estimated an arts center might cost $200 million. Expect these new projects to undergo the same rigors, starts and stops that the Freedom Tower was subjected to and lots of wrangling over finances, designs and tributes.
Its just the way business is done downtown these days.

This is a rant for sure, but an interesting rant from The Daily Growler, a weblog worth reading about the Freedom Tower and the downtown development surrounding it. Read it with caution if snappy language offends you.
This is bold face commentary at its best. Enjoy it because it is rare these days.

“These clowns are fighting over this hole in the ground because of the future monies to be made off developing down there, from the hole on up. First of all, these gaudy, wasteful bastards intend on, against all advice by the way, building the world’s tallest building down there.
First they got this Berliner architect–his buildings look like some of the homes in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Katrina hit them and piled them up like so much trash–his buildings I call “constructed dilapidations.”
He gave up on it.
Then some guy came up with this Freedom Tower scheme–this mighty cylindrical silver hypodermic-needle-looking heap leaping into the sky–you know, the architectural drawings all have this spaceshot needle with a halo around its pinhead and a showering of lights, like a thousand points of lights, smashing all around the ground with worshipping beams bouncing off the ground and then shooting up the sides of this heavenly hypodermic needle.
It’s like these greedy bastards are shooting the finger back at those hoards of terrorists that are suddenly coming against us from all sides–like kind of a big “bring ‘em on” shout out. Max tacky, of course.
Wouldn’t a peaceful park full of grateful large trees and fountains and maybe fresh air booths and sculpture gardens be better than so expensive and wasteful a building–a place full of peace, the peace that passeth all understanding–a cooling, invigorating oasis of peace down amongst those angrily competing corporate headquarters and sleaze-bag banks and the wild-eyed stock exchange (the cathedral of the religion of shareholding and its heaven of constant profits) to those innocent ones and the guilty ones who were killed that day now 5 years ago. Five years and they are still arguing over the billions of dollars needed to fulfill all these architectual-capitalist development schemes these clowns need to prove who really owns NYC, because a part of this development down there is going to include hotels, high-rise luxury apartments overlooking that hole in the ground, new banks, etc.–hey, son of a bitch, they were going to emplode the WTC anyway, don’t you think–don’t we need new skyscrapers every 25 years the same as we need new baseball stadiums every 25 years.
And that’s all Ray Nagin was saying.
New Orleans can’t depend on its own nation and that nation’s people for not one damn thing except the fact they are going to take advantage of you while you’re weak and especially while you’re weak and black…or weak and poor.
On and on it goes.
The same old story told the same old way.

The Freedom Tower is a private enterprise construction project but as the center piece of the new World Trade Center, recent donations to several New York charities also building on the site will help quiet the many critics of downtown development.. Four NYC charities got a financial boost with the release of the Oliver Stone film, World Trade Center.
The film took in more than $55 million over the last three weeks and Stone has promised to donate a 10 percent share of the box office or $2.6 million to four organizations. Half of the money goes to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. The remaining $1.3 million will go to the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund and Tuesday’s Children.

Second guessers from the Second City are wagging their fingers at us back east again, this time suggesting that there’s more rhetoric surrounding construction of the 1,776 foot Freedom Tower than there is actual building going on here. In New York.
The last big ruckus between the two cities was about the origin of deep dish pizza. Oh and there was some barking for years about where the tallest building stood. Well, we haven’t had a dog in that fight now for some time, so “where’s the (new) beef?”
“What is a Freedom Tower made of,” asks Lynn Becker, writing for a Chicago-based website. “Pure spin,” she says. “Perhaps never before has a project been so encased in rhetoric, and never has that rhetoric turned out to be so feebly incapable of obscuring the bankruptcy of the ideas beneath,” says Becker, writing for Repeat, a website that posts “Observations and Images on Architecture, Culture and More, in Chicago and the World.” Well, coming from a place with that much bluster, maybe Becker knows a thing or two about the subject except she’s got the numbers wrong.
“In an act of truly stupendous chutzpah, architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill chose AIA New York’s Design Awards, whose stated purpose is to “increase awareness of outstanding architecture”, as the forum in which to present what he claims are the final drawings for the 1,368-foot-tall skyscraper to be built on the site of the World Trade Center. It’s come down to blowing smoke and using mirrors - in this case, a facade of glass prisms,” Becker says.
Of course its spin Becker.
The Freedom Tower isn’t being built on Michigan Avenue. It’s going up inside the most famous gateway there is. The gateway to America is not on Lower Wacker Drive or along the Miracle Mile of your fabulous Michigan Avenue. Our gate has to have spin, panache, if you please, because its the first thing those thongs who are still “Coming to America” see when they arrive in “New York, New York, the city so nice, they named it twice.” This is where chutzpah was turned into an art form, Madison Avenue, the birthplace of spin.
Fagitabouit!
Why it has almost become anti-American to do anything in this country of ours without spin. Grow up already. Take your spin like a real American, right between the eyes “It’s the real thing.”

If you want to see what New York’s Freedom Tower will look like against the skyline, Ogle Earth has a KMZ file with the 3D building in it. You can also display all the proposed new buildings and the old World Trade Center. This comes from a site called Inside Google at the Google.blognewschannel.com
The buildings were made in SketchUp. Go to www.ogleearth.com and check it out. Let us know what you think.

In the grand tradition of fabulous tabloid newspaper headlines, The New York Daily News did it’s very best to carry on this time-honored craft last week.
“Ragin’ Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans defended accusations that he’s taking too long to clean up the Big Easy a year after Hurricane Katrina - by taking a cheap shot at New York’s recovery from 9/11,” the News wrote.
“You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair,” Nagin was quoted as saying.
The News shot back with this headline:
“Diss ain’t fair, Nagin.”
***
In an unrelated development downtown, the U.S. Customs and Border Control has signed a letter on intent to lease more space with the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey. The agency was a tenant at 6 World Trade Center before the Sept. 11 attacks. The state’s General Services Office is expected to sign for another 400,000 to one million square feet. This news comes from The Real Deal, a New York real estate newsletter.

Even his own folks are really wishing that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin would shut his Beignets hole.
“He is like an addict that cannot stop. He continually makes unwise and inappropriate statements,” it was reported on Bayoubuzz.com, a Louisiana based website. “It has become tiring and flat out embarrassing.
“Nagin’s most recent foray into the land of misstatements occurred on a CBS-TV interview for the program “60 Minutes.” Reporter Byron Pitts asked Nagin about the lack of progress since the hurricane in New Orleans, pointing out the flooded cars and debris in roadways. Nagin retorted, “You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed, and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair.”
Of course, Nagan was talking about Ground Zero, a wise crack that confirms what many people in the country thought about the beleaguered mayor when he declared New Orleans to be the chocolate city during his reelection campaign. Up here in New York, we guessed it was his folksy way of suggesting that New Orleans was steeped in African-American culture. Duh! We know. What we didn’t know then is no secret now; Nagin likes to go places even the biggest fools don’t. Apparently, Nagin has never heard the phrase, ‘don’t go there.’ He’s too busy embarrassing those hard working folks in that town who deserve better than they got in the last election – even if they reelected him to another term.
In an unrelated story, Freedom Tower developer Larry Silverstein is reportedly nearing some sort of plateau with renting more space in the building next month. The New York Post says Silverstein will also be unveiling designs for towers 2,3 and 4 early in September too.

The son of a celebrated U.S. Senator, himself a former congressman from California, is still hawking the Freedom Tower Silver dollar.
Barry Goldwater Jr., son of the Arizona political senator is the spokesman for the National Collector’s Mint, the New York company forced to refund more than $2 million dollars to customers last year who bought its Sept. 11-related ‘’Freedom Tower Silver Dollar.'’
It wasn’t worth a dollar and the company got sued by the State of New York.
The company is now selling a new coin, the Fifth Anniversary World Trade Center Commemorative with a pop-up image of the World Trade Center. The coin sells for 29.95 but has been criticized for barely having trace amounts of the gold and silver ads suggest the coin contains. In fact, some analysts say the coin is worth less than a penny.
In a story which ran in the Arizona Republic today, Goldwater defended the company, saying the coin it sells complies with the law.
“I watch them pretty closely, and they’ve made restitutions or are making restitutions,” the 68-year-old former California congressman said. He said the company gives portions of its proceeds to Sept. 11 charities. “I followed (the 2005 case), and the people involved are very good people, and they’re solid citizens who are out there working hard to make a living and provide a product and a service.”
The newspaper said the medallion is advertised as having 15 milligrams of 24-karat gold and being 0.999 pure silver. “Based on Wednesday’s closing market price, the amount of gold in them is worth 33 cents and the silver is worth one-sixth of a cent.”

The World Trade Center Memorial Museum has put up a display of 9/11 photos around the perimeter fence of Ground Zero downtown.
The exhibit of 52 photographs is called “Here: Remembering 9/11, and will be open to the public tomorrow. The large photos were taken by ordinary people on 9/11, 2001, before, during and after of terrorist attacks sent the Twin Towers crashing down into what first responders in New York now call “the job site.” In a related exhibit, the World Trade Center: Rescue, Recovery, Response, is a traveling exhibit heading for a European tour.
This exhibit tells the history of the World Trade Center too, the September 11 attacks, the rescue efforts, the evidence recovery operation at the Fresh Kills landfill, and the public response to these events but in a different way. This exhibit use real objects.
The exhibition includes many objects, images, videos, and interactive stations documenting this tragic chapter in New York and America’s history, from the State Museum’s comprehensive collection.
Rescue uses a timeline to trace the first 24 hours of September 11, 2001. Objects in the gallery include the heavily damaged Engine 6 pumper, recovered New York Police Department and Fire Department objects, architectural remains, several battered flags, and a large steel column from floors 7-9 of the South Tower.

When you look past the obvious symbolism the Freedom Tower represents, the high rise will still not be just another pretty face to decorate the New York City skyline.
Authorities say it will be a 1,776 foot bunker, impregnable by conventional means. No one is saying terrorists are practitioners of convention. They would not have succeeded in toppling the Twin Towers in a country where the now useless phrase “think outside of the box” was invented.
Nevertheless, Freedom Tower is a massive experiment in homeland security never dreamed of by the inept U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Now, we don’t know or might never know exactly what that agency is really up to because America has long had a shadow government that does what it pleases where and when it pleases. I’m the first to admit my ignorance when it comes to knowing or even pretending to know what my government is up to beyond lying about its activity. Lying is actually central to the secret of any success the DHS has had without my knowledge.
What I do know is that the Freedom Tower is being built using all of the proactive measures and technology at our disposal and much of it will naturally be built with the secrecy only a nation that built the Atomic Bomb and used it before our enemy could protect itself against our technology.
So, yes we got hit and it stung but a friend of mine once told me that a fighter who gets in the ring not expecting to be hit at least once, sometimes hard, is in store for the beat down of his life – if he survives. The trick is to know how to get back up fast and counter punch.
The Freedom Tower isn’t a counter punch. It is more than a replacement.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is the chief architect of New York City’s “homeland” security and Kelly says the tower meets top security standards. The first eight stories are encased in titanium or stainless steel. Archiitects moved the building almost 100 feet from West Street to protect the structure from a bum rush bomb blast tactics favored by terrorists.