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CNN Live Today

Possible Plans for World Trade Center Site Unveiled

Aired July 16, 2002 - 11:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Moving on to a scene of -- really healing, rebuilding, and reverence in New York. The public there getting its first look at plans for redeveloping the World Trade Center site. The goal is to honor the nearly 3,000 people who died while also reclaiming prime office and retail space. There are some business concerns there as well.

Our Jason Carroll is standing by live. He is in New York, he has got the details for us. Good morning, Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And good morning to you, Leon. This is a big day for New York City. In fact, a big day for the nation. As you said, this was our first opportunity to get our first look at the conceptual drawings and models for how the city plans to rebuild at the site of the World Trade Center. It's a 16-acre site in downtown Manhattan. The recovery process has been completed, and now there has been all this sort of speculation floating around the city in terms of how the city plans to rebuild at the site. Well, now we have our answer.

There are six proposals on the table. Let's go over all of them. The first one is called Memorial Plaza. The tallest building in that plan, 79 stories. There is also 18 acres of park-like space that's included there as well. There will be a memorial there -- in fact, there will be a memorial in all of these different versions -- two square footprints in the Memorial Plaza plan that mark the site of the twin towers.

The version number two that we have, they are calling it Memorial Square. In that version, the tallest building is 80 stories. There is going to be about 24 acres of open space in that one, a few smaller buildings as well. Again, there will definitely be some sort of a memorial site in that plan as well.

Version number three is called Memorial Triangle. You are going to be hearing the word "memorial" a lot in all these. Tallest building in that one is actually the tallest out of all of the buildings that are being proposed here, 85 stories. Just to give you some perspective here, the twin towers were 110 stories each. Also in Memorial Triangle, there will be about 13 acres of park-like space, or open space. Again, there will be some sort of memorial on that site as well.

Next one, version four, they are calling it Memorial Garden. And on that one, the tallest building, 80 stories, 6.8 acres of open space. There will be four smaller buildings surrounding the large building in Memorial Garden as well.

Version number five, they're calling it Memorial Park. In that one, we have got two buildings, 72 stories each, and then three smaller buildings, 45 stories. Fourteen acres of open space, and what they are going to do is -- or, they are planning to have some sort of a column in that version, marking the spot of the twin towers.

Finally, we have version number six. That is called Memorial Promenade. Two building there, 63 stories each. Four smaller buildings at about 32 stories each on that one. Twenty-seven acres of open space on that one. And, again, some sort of a column marking the spot where the twin towers once stood.

The common denominator in all of the six versions that we've seen here, there will be some sort of permanent memorial, there will be open space there as well. They will also have 11 million square feet of retail or office space, and about 600,000 square feet of retail space.

The timeline in all this, Leon, by September they expect to have the six versions narrowed down to three, and then by December, the three narrowed down to one. And the final version could, in some way, be some sort of a combination of all six. What they are going to be relying on is a lot of public input in all this. They are going to be having town hall meetings so that the public can have a chance to voice their concerns or voice their opinions about the plans that the city has come up with.

They are also going to be putting some of these models on display as well.

Lots of controversy about this, the victims' families want to see lots of open space, lots of dedication for the memorial. The city is also concerned about having enough space for businesses. Again, the final decision is going to be made by a group called the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. That's a group that was appointed by the governor as well as the mayor. The corporation basically saying they want to come up with some sort of a plan that can please as many people as possible, but also show the world that New York City is back on track -- Leon.

HARRIS: All right. Jason Carroll reporting live for us from New York there with Mayor Bloomberg is calling a first step in this process, a process that no doubt is not going to leave everybody happy. Let's talk with a New Yorker about that. This is one of our favorite New Yorkers, Jeff Greenfield, CNN's very own, standing by here, and he's been watching this -- and Jeff, I understand you have been following this process this morning. What do you make of this plan here, and the way it is being developed here?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN ANALYST: It is kind of a classic dilemma with an area like Lower Manhattan, overlaid with the enormous emotional burden of what happened. I mean, you're talking about 16 acres of some of the most valuable and dense property anywhere in the world, in an area where, really almost 50 years ago, was born the notion of kind of urban environmentalism, if you will. That is notion that the space had to be for human beings.

Almost 50 years ago, the guy who ran all of New York's building, Robert Moses. He was the czar of the highways. He was the parks commissioner. He built the whole ribbon of bridges and tunnels and highways. Elevated expressway through Lower Manhattan, through the heart of Greenwich Village, would have probably killed the whole character of lower New York, and the opposition to that began -- the movement toward trying to make cities more human sized.

So you have that tradition overlaid against what happened on September 11. At one point, you had the families saying, We don't want any development, we just want it as a memorial, and everybody realized at some point, that was impossible. The land was too important. You have contractual reasons why you have to put back office space and retail space.

You have people saying, OK, as part of the memorial, can we figure out some way to reconnect those little streets that used to be there before they even built the World Trade Center, and then you have people saying the way to revitalize Lower Manhattan is not just to make it office space, but to try to figure out some way to use it in a 24-hour basis. When you put all of those different competing elements in this 16-acre area, you can begin to see why, even forgetting the traditional combativeness of New Yorkers, we are a long, long way from figuring out what is going to happen down there.

HARRIS: Yes, boy, you put all that together on the same page, as we watch here these digital renditions that were made of the different versions of the plan here, you put all of that on one page, you got to think that it may take longer to come up with a plan than it took to actually clear the site.

GREENFIELD: Oh, I think that's entirely possible. I think, however, that -- that because of the economic situation that New York finds itself in, the city took not just a horrible human hit, and an emotional hit on September 11, it took an enormous financial hit. We even forget, unless you actually live in New York, that around the World Trade Center are literally hundreds of small businesses that have never recovered.

The Chinatown area of Manhattan, a very important tourist attraction, very important economic center for one community in New York, which is right near the World Trade Center has never recovered from September 11. And -- if I have just one more quick point, the whole idea for some people of trying to master plan a development in an area like New York strikes some people as maybe impossible, maybe the best thing you can do in a place like this city is to somehow let it organically develop. In this case, that's impossible. There has to be some kind of central direction for what happens here.

But you're quite right, Leon. The idea that you can sort of -- the idea of the old days that you draw up a plan and somehow magically make it reality within a matter of, you know, a year or two in a place like New York, that's just not very realistic. HARRIS: Let me ask you about the other thoughts. As we just saw moments ago, the picture of what the site looks like right now as the work there continues. What do you make, then, of those -- and this, of course, coming strongly from the family members of those -- survivors of those who did die there, that this is really hallowed ground. I have heard people equate this with Gettysburg, you know, and with Pearl Harbor. What do you make of that, and spiritually, what does that say about New York?

GREENFIELD: Well, that's part of what I was trying to get at. You have an area that, in some sense, has to be developed. I mean, it is 16 acres in the middle of Lower Manhattan in what is still the world financial center, and yet you have this whole other unprecedented emotional, understandable feeling.

I think most people would say, Look, it is hallowed ground. There has to be some memorial there. The footprint of the World Trade Center buildings may never be built upon. We don't know that for sure. But that in some sense, to just let the whole area lie fallow is self-defeating.

I don't want to use that retched cliche, then the terrorists will have won, because that is way overused, but in some sense, if New York doesn't -- do what a place like New York is supposed to do, rebuild, make it a center of commerce and memorialization, and a museum, and maybe even some cultural space, then you are not really being true to New York, and understandable as the family sentiments are, I just don't think it makes sense in a place like New York, which is, after all, not a rural battlefield like Gettysburg. It is not an isolated area like Pearl Harbor.

It is a vibrant, 24-hour world capital, and it has to be treated as such even though you have to bring into that decision-making process the feelings and the sentiments, not just to the families, but of everybody who understands the enormous emotional hit that the city and the country took last September.

HARRIS: Let me ask you one other -- just interesting nugget I happened to run across. Is it true that Mayor Bloomberg, himself an engineer, is actually going to weigh in and come up with his own plan as well?

GREENFIELD: I don't know. He was trained as an engineer. I mean, we don't have mayors with a tradition of being reticent about anything, whether Bloomberg, Giuliani, Koch, Fiorello LaGuardia. It is kind of part of what you are as a mayor of New York is you have a certain personal stake. But I think the dynamic of this -- there are so many different interests at stake, families, economics, the architects, the planners, the regular old citizens, that I don't think any one person is going to put his or her imprint on this plan. What you said earlier, I think, is true.

This sorting out all the competing and legitimate -- that's the other thing -- legitimate competing demands, is going to take quite a while.

HARRIS: Yes. We'll watch as it unfolds. Jeff Greenfield in New York, thank you very much.

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