They will seek to agree on a single plan.

The group brings together officials of the two agencies that share responsibility for the rebuilding: the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., and the owner of the site, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
They are looking at two schemes settled upon by the LMDC: the Vinoly-Schwartz design that includes two laticework towers, and Daniel Libeskind’s plan that exposes the slurry walls of the Trade Center’s foundation.

The LMDC’s design committee came to its decision on Jan. 29 following cost and feasibility analyses of the competing plans and consideration of thousands of comments from the public.

“Basically, everyone was in sync, which was amazing,” said Madelyn Wils, CB1 chairwoman and a member of the LMDC committee.

While the LMDC has gone to great lengths to display an open design process, the Port Authority has been on a parallel track, devising its own plan away from the public eye.

The deciding “steering committee” includes three LMDC representatives (Lou Tomson, outgoing president, John Whitehead, chairman, and Roland Betts, a board member), the Port Authority’s executive director, Joseph Seymour, and two of its board members as well as Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and a Pataki administration official, Diana Taylor. How the minds will meet remained a question last month, but later in February the two agencies are to choose one architectural team and one master plan for the site: a street system (including the plan for West Street), and the siting of a memorial, a transportation hub and public spaces. The location and maximum size of the buildings also will be decided, but not their final design. Last month the public continued to flock to the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden to study the original nine proposed plans, and crowds overflowed Pace University’s Schimmel Center auditorium for an LMDC-sponsored public hearing. Civic groups held workshops, attended by hundreds, and issued position papers.

In a six-page resolution, Community Board 1 spoke for those who live and work closest to the site. Hammered out after 18 hours of public meetings and drafting sessions, the board’s resolution supported three of the nine plans. One of its choices, like the LMDC’s, was Daniel Liebeskind, whose plan the board lauded for its continuation of Fulton and Greenwich streets and the exposed Twin Tower foundation. However, the board said the exposed pit should be smaller so that it does not create a barrier to the west of the site.

The board’s other choices included Foster and Partner’s plan, with its “kissing” twin towers, which it cited for the creation of “usable” space at ground level. The board also liked THINK’S “Sky Park” with its wide expanse of public space and provision for phasing the development so that community amenities, such as a park and cultural center, can be built before the office towers.

While CB1 and civic planning groups such as New York New Visions, the Civic Alliance, the Municipal Arts Society and Rebuild Downtown Our Town issued detailed appraisals of the plans, those who spoke at the LMDC hearing largely ignored the plans and addressed other issues, from handicap accessibility and opposition to burying West Street to safer building construction and affordable housing.

New York City Audubon Society representative E.J. McAdams, for example, called attention to the deaths of birds that had flown into the World Trade Center, and pleaded for new buildings that would be safe for migratory flocks.

“Make Lower Manhattan a showcase for bird-friendly design,” he said.

To which the next speaker, Bob Friedrich, retorted: “Are we building for birds or are we building for people?”

Uppermost in the minds of many are not buildings or site plans, but the memorial. This month the selection of a jury begins for an international design competition for the memorial. And in September, the second anniversary of the devastation that set this unprecedented planning project in motion, the jury will name a winner.