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Last August, after Port Authority officials demanded he show them a financial plan, Mr. Silverstein and consultants from the financial services firm Morgan Stanley made a presentation to the Port Authority's commissioners that was met with deep skepticism from several board members, according to officials at the authority. The commissioners questioned the rents that Mr. Silverstein projected for his new buildings. They also believed that he was overly optimistic in predicting that he would be able to fill the buildings with tenants in a relatively short time, something that would be critical to his ability to pay the agency its rent and secure further financing.
Deal Is Struck on Property Needed for Trade Center (June 5, 2005)
That lingering concern colored the Port Authority's latest exploration of how to reduce Mr. Silverstein's role at ground zero. As the security concerns over the Freedom Tower began percolating this spring, top Port Authority officials, including the executive director, Kenneth J. Ringler, the chairman, Anthony Coscia, and Vice Chairman Charles A. Gargano, discussed an informal proposal to divvy up the site, according to officials at the agency.
The idea, the officials said, would be to have Mr. Silverstein build the Freedom Tower and a second office tower across Greenwich Street. Then, in exchange for a reduction in the developer's lease payments, the Port Authority would get control of the site of two future towers on Church Street, south of the planned PATH train station at Fulton Street, which the agency is building at a cost of more than $2 billion.
That would give the Port Authority more of a free hand in developing the retail component over a large swath of the site. It would also, the officials contend, allow them to build a pair of low buildings to house some of the retail space, bring back street life and ultimately serve as the place holders for office buildings that could be erected when there is more demand for commercial space in Lower Manhattan.
i wanna be your dog
yesterday wcbs switched from oldies format with human djs to imitation ipod shuffle robot cd playing everything jack format
north carolina moonshine a survey of moonshine culture 1900 -1930
Junior Johnson Legend of moonshine running and stock car racing
drunk negative
walter anderson museum of art
japanese pencil carving
via zoller
rat rod pick of the week
IN its not-so-brief and thoroughly unhappy life, ground zero has been a site for many things: tragedy and grief, political campaigns and protests, battling architects and warring cultural institutions, TV commercials and souvenir hustlers. Perhaps it was inevitable we'd end up at pure unadulterated farce.
That's where we are as of this Memorial Day weekend. A 1,776-foot Freedom Tower with no tenants - and no prospect of tenants - has been abruptly sent back to the drawing board after the Marx Brothers-like officials presiding over the chaos acknowledged troubling security concerns about truck bombs. But truck bombs may be the least of the demons scaring away prospective occupants. The simple question that no one could answer the day after 9/11 remains unanswered today: What sane person would want to work in a skyscraper destined to be the most tempting target for aerial assault in the Western world? As if to accentuate this obvious, if frequently suppressed, psychological bottom line, news of the Freedom Tower's latest delay was followed like clockwork by a Cessna's easy penetration of supposedly secure air space near the White House, prompting panicky evacuation scenes out of the 50's horror classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
why we should build apartments at ground zero
The FreedomTower, with or without its fancy spire, is an unnecessary building. The planned skyscraper, which will contain 2.6 million square feet of commercial office space, doesn’t have a single tenant – an unsurprising fact, since the demand for commercial office space in lower Manhattan is so small that it can barely be said to exist. The tower, it seems, is being built not to ennoble, enliven, or enrich the city but to satisfy the narrow, self-interested agendas of Silverstein, who leased the TwinTowers in 2001, and the Port Authority, which build the WorldTradeCenter and still controls the land. Silverstein, for his part, is largely building with insurance money instead of borrowing, as developers usually do, and he figures that he will be well positioned in the unlikely event that the lower Manhattan office market rebounds. Meanwhile, the Port Authority receives ten million dollars a month in rent that Silverstein still pays, under the terms of his lease.
The glamorous era of New York preservation - the outcry over the demolition of the old Pennsylvania Station, Jackie Onassis picketing to save Grand Central Terminal - is long over.
But judging from Tuesday's weak-kneed decision by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to approve a scaled-back expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art, certain New Yorkers have failed to catch on. To them, apparently, the overreaching goal is saving what's old - as if the loss of an undistinguished brownstone parallels the razing of a beloved landmark.
Essentially, for the sake of preserving a humdrum brownstone facade on Madison Avenue, the commission embraced a substitute design for the museum that transforms a generously proportioned public entrance into a more confining experience. The architect, Renzo Piano, drafted the alternative - which would save that brownstone, while demolishing another - when the museum realized that the addition was in danger of being voted down by the commission.
Aside from weakening a promising design, the commission's stubbornness proves that it is unable to distinguish between preserving the city's architectural legacy and embalming it. This is particularly galling given that the commission steadfastly refuses to meet on Edward Durell Stone's endangered 60's "lollipop" building at 2 Columbus Circle - a building that is far more essential to the city's historical fabric.
im in total agreement with ouroussoff on the whitney expansion and stones 2 columbus circle
Taken together, the two cases imply a complete disconnect with the changing realities of preservation in New York City. It is as if the commission believes that New York is still living under the threat of tabula rasa Modernism.
We no longer live in the 1960's. There is no Robert Moses, with the power to bulldoze entire neighborhoods in the name of urban progress. Jane Jacobs, the activist who took him on, now lives in Toronto. The old tradition-vs.-Modernism battles are irrelevant. On the contrary, many Modernist buildings are now landmarks worthy of preservation.
the chrysler building at 75
Last week, 30 volunteers spent a day spiffing up a drive-in movie theater in Tulsa, Okla.
The Admiral Twin Drive-in, which opened in 1951 as the Modernaire, was the backdrop for a scene in Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 film, "The Outsiders."
Volunteers painted the drive-in's rusted microphone stands, bathrooms, and concession stand. This week, workers will landscape the 38-acre site and update the marquee, ticket booth, and concession stand.
"Nine excellent 5" x 3 1/3" snapshot photos of a good sized tank being installed. It looks like a water tank. The photos are dated Oct. 1959. The first two pictures look like they have a blueish tint but they don't.The crane truck moving the tank has a Charleston WVA address on the door. The smaller flatbed trailer truck says Fred C. Burns Marlinton WVA."
herman miller babble
stream afropop
lords of dogtown prereview :
it fuckin' rocks!
In the Guggenheim, your eye is usually drawn away from the art to its soaring center space. Buren reverses this in a very John Cage way. Having the walls empty creates a void that the eye and mind fill. Unexpected things come into high focus: cracking walls, paint swellings and serrations, dust bunnies, and missing and broken panes of glass. The Guggenheim comes alive in new ways, entropy emerges as an aesthetic quality, and the whole museum turns into a living Thomas Struth photograph. You can make out where parts of "The Aztec Empire" exhibition recently were, or where Matthew Barney climbed the parapet. Not only is this fairly thrilling and wistful, it makes you recognize how every detail is crucial in the delivery mechanisms of art that we call museums.