WTC Memorial Debate

There was an interesting op-ed piece in today's New York Times entitled 'Take Back The Towers'. The piece, written by Dennis Smith, a former NYC Firefighter, offers quite a 'modest proposal':

We've reached a stage where the state and local government, so often the causes of delay, are the only players with the ability to move things forward. It is time for them to invoke their trump card: the takings clause of the United States Constitution. [...]

There is only one way to move forward: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council should send a home-rule message to Albany and demand the confiscation of the World Trade Center site under the eminent domain clause. At a time when counties and municipalities across America are seizing houses and small businesses to build shopping malls just to increase their tax bases, there are plenty of justifiable reasons included lost tax revenues to demand the return of ground zero.

Is taking the site legally practicable? "As long as the land were used for public purposes such as monuments, museums, or other public buildings, it can certainly be condemned under the U.S. Constitution," says Vicki Been, a professor of real-estate law at New York University Law School. "Even if some (or most) of the land were transferred to private parties to build commercial or residential space, the Supreme Court has held that such economic development is a public purpose."

This would certainly be an interesting and I believe, justifiable, use of the eminent domain clause-- if and only if Bloomberg used it to build a respectful memorial.

What's more important, however, is this aspect of Smith's piece:

For example, the memorial must display the names of those who died at ground zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa., as well as those killed in the 1993 attack on the twin towers. But to the consternation of many (perhaps most) of the 9/11 families, the designers seem determined to place the names haphazardly, and without reference to time or place of death.

The debate over the names points to a larger problem: many in the artistic community seem unable to accept the influence that the families of the victims have among the public. Until the designers understand the role of the families and that they are building over a tomb bodies of hundreds of the 2,749 who died there were never recovered the project will languish. As for the museum, the most obvious setback was the disastrous decision to have it house the controversial International Freedom Center, which was eventually reversed by Gov. George Pataki. But since then, another series of seemingly intractable issues has arisen: the footprint space and exhibition areas have been reduced, there are problems with handicapped access, there have been warnings that crowd movement could be dangerous in an emergency and, most important, Alice Greenwald, the director, has yet to say what specifically the museum will contain.

The alternative waiting for the current players to get their act together makes no sense. Even if the project were to regain momentum, the plan is to build 10 million square feet of commercial space that is not only unneeded but will also mostly fail to rent. The Freedom Tower will be an eyesore as well as a terrorist target, and few will want to work there.

Smith is absolutely right - Ground Zero is the grave site for hundreds and treating it otherwise is shameful and unforgivable. This aspect of the debate over what to do with the WTC site has been constantly overlooked.

Would you want the grave site of your loved ones to be used for commercial space and economic development?