Monday, Dec 1
New Yorkers are still sorting through their reactions to the eight designs chosen as finalists
in the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's competition to design the 9/11 memorial at Ground
Zero. At 2:30PM this Friday, the Gotham Gazette will be holding a live online chat to discuss the
memorial designs and process. We will have two guests: Rick Bell, the head of the American
Institute of Architects' New York Chapter and Fred Bernstein, an architecture writer whose memorial design was picked as a finalist in the competition, but was later disqualified.
The PATH train station that was destroyed on 9/11 has reopened, after a renovation that took 16 months and cost $323 million. The station restores PATH service downtown for the first time since 9/11, and the clear walls of the underground station give New Yorkers their closest view yet of Ground Zero. It will eventually be replaced by a larger transit center being designed by Spanish Architect Santiago Calatrava. The permanent station is slated to cost $2 billion and should open in 2006.
A federal compensation program for family members of 9/11 victims looks to be coming to an end, after an anonymous republican senator used an obscure congressional rule to put a hold on legislation that would extend it. New York Senator Charles Schumer has publicly asked that the unnamed opponent to the bill allow it to go through. Only about 60% of those eligible have filed for compensation through the program, which is set to expire on December 22.
The city removed 40 names from the official tally of World Trade Center victims this week, bringing the number to 2,752. In updating the list, investigators found people alive who were believed to be dead and uncovered cases of fraud.