Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s appointment last week of two top officials to a development corporation that had been considered all but dead appears to set the stage for yet another power struggle at ground zero.

In a way it also seems to be a rebuke for the city’s recent solo announcement that the Joyce Theater would be the sole occupant of a performing arts center planned for the former World Trade Center site. Many of those involved in planning Lower Manhattan now wonder whether the center, to be designed by Frank Gehry, will become the focus of a long tug of war.

The revival of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is perhaps the clearest sign that the Spitzer administration is determined to take back the reins, or at least strengthen its grip, on the center. Having chosen a master plan and a memorial design and allocated federal money for cultural programs, the development corporation said last summer that its work was done. The agency had already been defanged by George E. Pataki, then the governor; he had bowed to criticism from relatives of 9/11 victims and eliminated the Drawing Center and an International Freedom Center from the site. Yet last Monday Governor Spitzer announced that he had appointed Avi Schick as chairman of the development corporation and David Emil as president. Mr. Schick is also president of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state’s economic development agency, and served as a deputy attorney general under Governor Spitzer, who was then attorney general. Mr. Emil owned Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, and is a former president of the Battery Park City Authority.

i have completely forgot about that hole in the ground. what a titanic clusterfuck.
- dave 4-29-2007 3:00 am [add a comment]

I want it to stay a hole but unfortunately they're working on it every day.
- tom moody 4-29-2007 3:11 am [add a comment]

guess i havent been down there in about a year. just about time for a sojourn to century 21. are they still planning on building that 20 story cement-based monument to fear?
- dave 4-29-2007 3:25 am [add a comment]

I can't tell what they're doing but they're digging and blasting and pouring concrete all over the site. I assume it's foundation work but nothing is taking visible shape. They have closed off a portion of West street to search for more human remains, an angry car service driver told me, though why there and not other parts of the site I do not know.
- tom moody 4-29-2007 4:24 am [add a comment]