Future of the WTC (long)

This week, Silverstein goes to trial against most of the insurance companies on his SwissRe policy over whether the WTC collapse was one event or two. Will he get $3.6 or $7.2 billion. He has already settled with two companies whose policies were more explicit on the matter. But this is the suit that determines if he has sufficient money to rebuild WTC1 and WTC2. Much will depend on how his Travelers Insurance policy is worded.

Who really is the power broker here? The one man with most influence in every critical decision making body is the Governor of NY. But decisions could be very political. It makes no sense to rebuild two towers at those height. Especially after engineers analysis before Congress and broadcast on Frontline (PBS) makes it obvious that both towers were a fire disaster waiting to happen.

Both towers were not brought down by the airplanes nor the burning fuel. Although that was the reason for fire, another serious fire would have brought down those towers. The heat necessary to create the collapse is believed to have been mostly from furnishing already on the floors. If the jets did not bring those towers down, then it was just time before another serious fire did.

WTC7 previously was believed to be the fire major building ever brought down by fire. Now we know WTC1 and WTC2 were the first.

Should WTC1 and WTC2 be rebuilt? About 70% of New Yorkers say yes. Ironic since when they were built, they were considered ugly scars on the NYC skyline. NY residents slowly grew to love what were really two towers out of place in the NYC skyline. Another architecturally ugly building was WTC7 - Silverstein's first building.

Silverstein has already started rebuilding WTC7. But debate rages on what should be in WTC1 and WTC2

Lower Manhatten is said to be desperately short of office space. But if two new towers are built to 100+ stories, then less office space would be created as compared to two 50 or 70 story towers. Emotions appear to be stronger than facts.

Already clear are ideas to unite two subway lines, the Path line to NJ, and maybe more into a massive transportation center in Lower Manhatten. That may be constructed (within 2 years) before the towers are built since those transport lines already are desperately required. Over in NJ are plans for a free standing TV tower that will be the tallest structure in the region - maybe the world - in Jersey City. Apparently demands of DTV make the Empire State Building too low. No one is betting on new WTC towers.

But this still does not answer the question of what will replace WTC1 and WTC2. People whose job it is to think logically are slowly working up a campaign to show the public how foolish it would be to construct two new 100+ story towers - as was explained here about two weeks after 11 Sept. And so decisions will be slow in coming so that emotions give way to logical thought.

BTW, there is precedence for how the insurance of WTC might be settled. Conincidentally, on 11 September, a CA court said that four fires set by the same arsonist within hours in four county courthouses were four separate instances requiring four separate insurance settlements even though insurance companies also called them one event.

Yea, emotions are the main reason to rebuild WTC1&2. I think they should, I also think that these insurances companies should cough up the $7.2bil to get the damn things rebuilt. Tatsuya Ishida put it best on describing the super bowl, but it applys here as well. (This is how every American should be thinking about this :) )

It was like a big F.U. aimed at anti-American sentiments, a message to all the haters and perpetrators. You don't like our way of life? You think we're shallow and materialistic and prone to excess? Watch this. Yes. 'Twas a big overproduced glitzy star-spangled middle finger in the face of terror.

I hope we rebuild WTC1&2 to these proportions--huge, mostrously huge. And besides, NYC needs the office space. :D

And yet do we really want HUGE impersonal towers again? As the New York Times recently mentioned, September 11 has done something completely unprecedented in the history of urban planning; allow a do-over. People came to love the Twin Towers, but for quite some time after their construction saw them as a bulky blight upon an otherwise elegant skyline. Honestly, in terms of aesthetics they didn't measure up to the Chrysler Building or the Woolworth Building.....or even the Empire State. What I think we need is something less blocky and gradiose, though, yes, chock full of valuable office space and fully equipped with a memorial to those whose lives were lost.

Harder than it seems at first glance, really.

Originally posted by verbatim
I hope we rebuild WTC1&2 to these proportions--huge, mostrously huge. And besides, NYC needs the office space.

If NYC need more office space, then one would advocate 50 story towers. 110 story towers means less office space - probably even less the second time because of what we learned. There cannot be two monsterous, ugly 110+ story towers AND have more office space. The two are mutually exclusive.

Why is a decision based upon emotion justified?

I don't understand. Don't more floors mean more office space?

I think what tw is saying is that to build the towers again, one would have to build them very differently to guarantee that they would not fall if hit again. The original design maximized rentable office space at the expense of the type of stability that would leave them standing if hit by a plane.

Ohh I see.

Still, I think I would refuse any job that required me to work on the 100th floor.

Another design element of the extra tall buildings is the number of extra elevator shafts in stages for the extraordinary number of floors. That reduced floor efficiencies.

tw is saying that if you want more useable square feet for the maximum buildable area allowed, taller does not net you the maximum amount of actual useable office space.

How's this for radical?

Build nothing.

New York needs more office space? Nonsense. The country needs more decentralization. Let 'em move those offices to Camden, or Detroit, or some spot with a name no one would recognize. In fact, a lot of NY offices should be moved out.

You really want to make the country safer from terrorism? That's one way to do it, one which will work a lot better than virtual strip searches on every streetcorner.

Originally posted by juju2112
I don't understand. Don't more floors mean more office space?

I had explained this previously, about the last week in September. (Don't know if the post is still available.) Some months before that, Donald Trump was investigating adding 60 more stories on the Sears Tower in Chicago to be taller than the two "world's tallest" towers recently completed in Kuala Lampur, Indonesia. By adding 60 stories, he would have reduced office space in the Sears Tower. Once a building starts to exceed 50 or 70 stories, then total square footage decreases with each new story.

Having understood this generations ago, then why would anyone want a 100+ story building? These were the type of questions effectively asked by the movie Towering Inferno.

Then the reason why they build them taller than 50 stories is because the offices in such towers are worth more, for the glamour factor. (They wouldn't build something without a market for tenants, right?)

I'll wager that factor is entirely gone now.

If this open space were left undeveloped, wouldn't the terrorists
have made a permanent impact on New York City? It would change
the character of the core, and might even make it disfunctional.

Originally posted by Nic Name
If this open space were left undeveloped, wouldn't the terrorists have made a permanent impact on New York City? It would change the character of the core, and might even make it disfunctional.

Build Yankee Stadium in there. Make it really disfunctional. Give terrorists something to really hate - George Steinbrenner.

From the depths of another thread, I give to you...



I cooked this up as my own plan for the rebuild. 4 broad (in the surface area sense) towers, say 50 stories high apiece, one in each corner. In the center, a park as memorial to September 11. On each street is a path leading in to the park, which is also accessible from the towers. Towers are accessible from street and the subway stop that is still underneath the site.

Office space and memorial in one. Questions? Comments? Attacks on my mental stability?

~mike

Actually Mike, it's a sharp idea. Practical, respectful, and economical.

A look at Mike's screen...

"C:\ run commentanalyze.exe

Enter Comment(s): "sharp idea" "Practical" "respectful" "economical"

...
...
...

Analasys complete. High concentrations of praise present. Trace elements of sarcasm possible, but unlikely. Recommended course of action: express gratitude."

Mike: "Praise? Gratitude? Wait, I know this. Thank...you...syc?"

~mike

Goddamnit Mike...I pay you a sincere compliment, and you think I'm bluffing. :(

Heh. :)

Compliments are harder for me to find than leprechauns. And I'm Irish. That probably doesn't mean anything, but I'm posting this far too early in the morning, with a C++ final looming on the horizon. That might not mean anything either.

Wait, I got it. I haven't had coffee yet.

~mike

I thought this might be a good place to reference a weblog dedicated to the WTC Rebuilding. It has some interesting Frank Lloyd Wright tower proposals, too.

Yankees want a new stadium in Manhatten. A hole big enough for baseball with room for seating 50,000 already exists in lower Manhatten. Whey didn't anyone see this obvious solution?

Actually, I had worked up a little tongue in cheek conspiracy theory along those lines. The bottom line, however, is that the Bronx needs Yankee Stadium much more than Manhattan.

Originally posted by Griff
The bottom line, however, is that the Bronx needs Yankee Stadium much more than Manhattan.

Probably true. I guess it would not be appropriate to put the Bronx Bombers in that hole.