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Mayor pushes on two fronts on eve of 9/11 anniversary

BY MICHAEL FRAZIER | michael.frazier@newsday.com

September 11, 2008

On the eve of the seventh anniversary of the 2001 attacks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pressured the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to commit to completing the national Sept. 11 memorial and museum by 2011.

Bloomberg also asked Gov. David A. Paterson to dismantle the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and place the city in charge of the state-run agency's development role to help quicken construction. That would include a city takeover of the problem-plagued demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building, where two firefighters died last year.

"I don't think that necessarily the city can do anything better than LMDC," said Bloomberg, chairman of the foundation building the memorial and museum. "It's just another level of checks and balances and bureaucracy you don't need."

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. declined to comment yesterday.

Bloomberg has never fully supported the corporation created by former Gov. George Pataki and ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg has appointed half of the 16-member board.

Residents and visitors were invited to sign two of four steel beams from the original World Trade Center in lower Manhattan that will be used in the memorial and museum. Bloomberg signed his name and wrote "Never Forget."

He said he and Paterson are discussing the city's takeover of development responsibilities. It was not clear yesterday if Paterson agreed with the mayor about eliminating the LMDC.

"The mayor and I share a sense of disappointment and frustration at the unacceptable pace of the Ground Zero rebuilding, which has never had a realistic timeline or budget - an absolute necessity for undertaking construction of this scale," Paterson said in a statement.

Construction has long been a problem with major projects at Ground Zero. The Port Authority will release a report Sept. 30 on how to trim building costs and speed construction and reveal realistic completion dates.

"The point of the report we are doing is to make decisions on exactly these tough issues and move on to getting every project on the site completed as quickly as possible," according to a Port Authority statement.

In an opinion piece published yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg stressed that the memorial and museum must be completed by 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

"No more excuses, no more delays," Bloomberg wrote. He also outlined ways to expedite construction, including scaling back the PATH station's design. He called its winged dome design complicated to build and said it "threatens to delay the memorial and the entire project."