The first public hearing on six proposed redevelopment plans for the World Trade Center site will be held July 20 in New York City, but University of Colorado at Boulder architecture instructor Scott Sworts predicts that community groups and city officials involved with the redevelopment won't give approval of the plans now on the table.
The proposals unveiled by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. on July 16 call for replacing all of the 11 million square feet of lost office space along with a 600,000-square-foot shopping mall and an 800-room hotel.
"This plan did not go over well with many New Yorkers," Sworts said. "They felt that it was driven too much by hard economics and lacked any heart."
Sworts is working with a grassroots group of lower Manhattan residents, business owners and architects known as Rebuild Downtown Our Town, or R.Dot. The group is proposing its own plans for the site that reflect more of a mixed-use development, including residential housing, that would be used 24 hours a day. R.Dot also is calling for an international competition to develop plans for the site.
Sworts said the group's research shows there is a high office vacancy rate in lower downtown Manhattan. That combined with a strong desire by people working for R.Dot to make the site "a vibrant area of 24-7 activity" will prompt the group to make known its own plans for the site at the July 20 public meeting.
"Their vision of the site would include a memorial, mixed-use residential development, cultural amenities, as well as office space and retail development," Sworts said.
The Sept. 11 attacks "affected everyone in the country, and it profoundly affected those who live near the site," he said. The wish of the people working for R.Dot is to "make it a community, not an office development."
Sworts was in New York City for the unveiling of the six LMDC proposals on July 16. All of the plans include a memorial to the Sept. 11 tragedy.
Sworts is teaching a class of a dozen CU-Boulder architecture students this summer devoted to designing a fence that would enclose the World Trade Center site during three to 10 years of construction. They also are working on creating a place where people can grieve and connect with each other during the rebuilding process, he said.
The class's design plans and drawings will be delivered to R.Dot by early September, he said.
Sworts also coordinated three classes of CU-Boulder students in the College of Architecture and Planning last spring that came up with their own designs for redeveloping the World Trade Center site. One student, Forrest Garrison, called the project "the highlight of my time at CU."
The spring classes' design plans also were delivered to R.Dot, and some of their design elements appeared in the LMDC proposals, he said, though there is no way of pinpointing exactly where they originated.
LMDC plans to hold a series of public hearings on its proposals and plans to narrow the six proposals down to three by the Sept. 11 anniversary. Eventually LMDC will select the plan it will build. R.Dot hopes to influence the final plan with its own design preferences.