Breaking the Bank

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Mayor Bloomberg’s recent opposition to breaking the bank for the World Trade Center memorial follows years of behind-the-scenes complaints about the project’s cost.

In a confidential and previously unreported meeting with the World Trade Center Memorial Jury on August 7, 2003, Mr. Bloomberg worried about the memorial’s cost and spoke in highly personal terms about his own mortality. He argued that money would be better spent prolonging lives being lived – rather than building a vast monument to lives already lost.

“His basic sentiment was: Do you know how many Third World kids die from treatable diseases every day, and all it would take to save them is a $1 a day?” said one of several sources who described the private meeting in detail.

The sources recalled Mr. Bloomberg speaking candidly about his father’s death, and describing his own wish to be buried in a simple casket following Jewish tradition. Mr. Bloomberg’s representative on the memorial jury, Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris, appeared surprised by the highly personal comments from her privacy-oriented boss.

After viewing various designs the jury was considering, Mr. Bloomberg instructed Ms. Harris, I’m told, to make her 12 fellow jurors focus on the memorial’s price-tag. With the government providing $300 million for the project, Mr. Bloomberg was concerned that additional fundraising would compete with other philanthropic efforts. Mr. Bloomberg has donated more than $100 million to medical research and the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, his alma mater, was named after him last year.

The 2003 meeting was videotaped by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in anticipation of making a documentary about the process of picking a memorial. Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani also held taped meetings with the jury. LMDC officials say the documentary, for which they allocated $300,000, has been scrapped.

I requested the LMDC videotapes two years ago in a Freedom of Information Law request that was supported by the state

Committee on Open Government. The LMDC president at the time, Kevin Rampe, told me the tapes would embarrass the mayor – and the Pataki administration then successfully fought their release in state court. A Supreme Court justice, William Wetzel, disappointingly ruled the tapes of Messrs. Bloomberg, Giuliani, and Pataki were confidential government materials. That ruling means the tapes will probably stay locked up – unless Mr. Pataki or a future governor wind up in a feud with Mr. Bloomberg.

The original cost-estimate for the memorial was $500 million in 2004 when the jury picked “Reflecting Absence,” a design signified by two pools of water surrounded by engravings of victims’ names on the Twin Towers’ footprints. Last week, the construction company handling the project put the cost of the memorial and accompanying museum at more than a billion dollars.

Mr. Bloomberg promptly declared that “$500 million is the amount of money that they’re going to have to figure out how to deal with.” He told reporters last week that “there are conflicting demands in this city” competing for a limited amount of private donations.

The Memorial Foundation, which is raising money to build and operate the project, has suspended fundraising efforts – after a dismal start – until the design is modified to cut the price in half. Whatever the final dollar-figure, the World Trade Center memorial will be the most expensive memorial in world history. The Oklahoma City National Memorial, which honors victims of the 1994 Federal building bombing, cost $29 million.

The mayor’s recent comments won headlines largely because he played such a limited public role in discussions about the World Trade Center site during his first term. Creating controversy then could have hurt his reelection prospects. Mr. Bloomberg is now free of those political concerns, because term limits bar him from seeking a third term and he does not plan to run for any another office.

It’s productive to hear what our city’s leader thinks about this important topic. Too bad he didn’t speak to all of us three years ago while he was speaking behind closed doors.

Mr. Goldin’s column appears regularly.


The New York Sun

© 2024 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use