Quote:
Originally Posted by Dac150
It’s become such a fixture that I’m almost going to miss it when it finally bites the dust.
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Don't give the "save the WTC" crowd any ideas. They might want to keep this up as some sort of connection to that tragic day and the memorial.
Meanwhile, it looks like that PAC move to the T5 site is gone, if for no other reason than they've run out of time to study an alternative...
http://tribecatrib.com/news/2009/oct...-to-begin.html
Without Final Location, Work on WTC Arts Center to Begin
By Matt Dunning
UPDATED Oct. 26
When crews begin installing underground supports for a performing arts center at the World Trade Center site next year, it is very possible that they will do so without anyone knowing for sure whether the building will actually be built there.
The Port Authority’s construction of the subterranean steel and concrete support structure that will hold up the Memorial Park, a transportation hub and a host of pedestrian and vehicular tunnels is progressing steadily through the western half of the 16-acre site.
Coming soon, construction of the steel columns and sheer walls meant to support a performing arts center next to 1,776 foot high Tower One, at the corner of Greenwich and Vesey Streets.
But whether the center gets built there, in a spot dubbed Site 1B, is another matter.
During the summer, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said it would study the feasibility of putting the arts center at 130 Liberty Street, where the remains of the former Deutsche Bank building now stand. The move could deliver the arts center years ahead of its projected opening—in 2017—were it to stay in its originally planned location.
Despite the uncertainty, city officials said they plan to let the Port Authority move ahead as though a final decision on the arts center’s location has already been made.
“If we don’t take advantage of this opportunity now, we believe it will be lost,” Andrew Winters, director of the Mayor's Office of Capital Projects, said during a recent City Council hearing on the arts center. That opportunity, he said, involves shutting down several PATH train tracks at the site, something the Port Authority does not want to repeat.
“Nobody’s going to want to come back and shut the system down again,” Winters said.
During the Oct. 21 hearing, LMDC president David Emil said he hoped to know by the end of the year if it would be possible to relocate the performing arts center to the site of the former Deutsche Bank tower. A big hurdle, he said, could be convincing the Port Authority to forfeit development rights on the site, once planned for the new headquarters of JP Morgan. That would undo a crucial piece of the complex deal it made with the LMDC for the arts center’s current location, and could jeopardize the LMDC’s control of Site 1B. Emil said risking the loss of an already-committed site for the arts center was unacceptable.
“The crucial thing for us through this whole thing is to make sure we end up with a real site,” Emil said. “We want to make sure we never lose control of Site 1B.”
It is thought that the arts center could be built at the 130 Liberty St. site by 2013. At Site 1B, the city would have to wait at least five years to even start construction. The temporary PATH station, which is on part of the site, can’t be removed until the new Santiago Calatrava-designed transportation hub is finished in 2014.
“There’s nothing simple about anything to do with this project,” Dept. of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin said when asked which scenario would best serve the interest of the center’s construction. “We are 100 percent sure we have a viable project on Site 1B. We believe that there would be a number of very complicated financial transactions in doing anything else.”
If and when it is ever built, the Frank Gehry-designed arts center would house a 1,000-seat theater, a smaller auditorium or recital hall, and extensive rehearsal and set storage space and offices, Levin said. It is also planned to be the new home for the Joyce Theater. Amid the confusion over the building’s location, the underground construction work will mark a rare and significant step forward for the center, a project often relegated to the “back burner” in discussions of the World Trade Center redevelopment.
“Today seems to be major step forward in actually, possibly realizing the construction of a performing arts center,” Community Board 1 vice-chairwoman Catherine McVay Hughes said during the hearing. “We’ve been ready to get started on this for eight years.”