5,000 Gather to
Debate 'Ground Zero' Redevelopment
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Six
plans on how to rebuild Ground Zero have been submitted
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With
Additional Reporting By Neveen A. Salem, IOL Washington D.C.
Correspondent
NEW
YORK, July 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Debates surrounding
what to build in place of the fallen Twin Towers in New York continued
as more than 5,000 people packed into a New York convention center
Saturday to try to thrash out a public consensus in the highly
emotional debate surrounding a memorial to the victims of the
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Billed
as the "largest town hall meeting of its kind," the day-long
event was expected to focus on six formal proposals for redeveloping
the World Trade Center site, which were unveiled Tuesday and have been
widely criticized by the press, architects, urban designers and
victims' families.
The
participants in "Listening to the City" were selected to
reflect the ethnic and social diversity of New York and the
surrounding region, bringing together whites, blacks and Hispanics,
firemen and corporate CEOs.
More
than 500 professional "meeting facilitators," from as far
afield as Afghanistan, South Africa and Colombia, were brought in to
mediate the debate, while the presence of 25 grief counselors
underlined the sensitivity of the subject under discussion.
"This
is your chance to fight back against the very democratic principles
attacked by the terrorists on September 11," said Robert Yaro,
chairman of the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York, which
organized the event.
"Our
pledge is to listen and be as responsive as we can be," Yaro said
in his opening address at the Jacob Javits Center.
New
York municipal and state officials are anxious to avoid any deep
public rift over the redevelopment issues, especially state Governor
George Pataki, who is in an election year.
The
main challenge facing any redevelopment proposal is balancing the
sensibilities of the victims' families and the need for a permanent
memorial with the need to rebuild and revitalize New York City's
financial district.
The
six "concept plans" unveiled Tuesday were roundly criticized
for lacking imagination and pandering to the Port Authority of New
York, which owns the 16-acre (65,000-square-meter) site on which the
World Trade Center previously stood and wants a similar amount of
office space included in any redevelopment.
Some
plans included a complex that had one single taller building
surrounded by as many as 5 smaller ones, while others had shorter
versions of the Twin Towers as the focal points of the new complexes.
The
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), which drew up the
plans with the Port Authority, has stressed the designs are merely a
launching pad for debate and not a final blueprint.
"Democracy
is a messy business, and people always have different views,"
said LMDC President Lou Tomson, who attended Saturday's meeting.
"This
is a tremendous opportunity for us to listen to a large number of
people. We can't promise that everyone's view will be accommodated,
but we can promise it will be heard," Tomson told Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
Participants
covered a broad spectrum of vested interests, including individuals
clutching their own designs for a September 11 memorial to lobby
groups representing everyone from victims' families to the Chinatown
business community of downtown Manhattan.
"I'm
here because I don't trust the whole decision-making process in this
city," said New York medical worker Beth Williams. "Forums
like this are essential if we want to stop this whole project [from]
being railroaded by corporate interests."
Others
had more specific agendas, such as Amiad Finkelthal of "Team Twin
Towers" - a group pushing for the original World Trade Center to
be rebuilt as it was before the attacks.
"Anything
less than rebuilding them to their original height is handing the
terrorists what they want on a silver platter," Finkelthal said.
"We
don't think Osama bin Laden should be dictating New York's urban
planning policy."
Farida,
an American Muslim woman who was attending the town hall meeting told
IslamOnline that she feels that American Muslims highly support plans
to rebuild Ground Zero and to show that the “terrorists did not win
when they claimed the lives of so many innocent people, Muslims
included…and destroyed a great symbol of America.”
Farida
stated that Ground Zero needed to “be rebuilt to or above its former
majesty” in order to “properly honor those who lost their
lives.”
“Ground
Zero is hallowed now and needs to be rebuilt in order to symbolize
that America and her people, of whom many are proud American Muslims,
were not beaten,” Farida asserted.
She
did go on to say that it was imperative for American Muslims to be
active members of the redevelopment effort in order to dispel “once
and for all any ideas that one cannot be a proud Muslim and American
at the same time.” 
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