West Street Tunnel

[Kris]

December 2, 2004

BLOCKS

Long Tunnel, Short Tunnel, No Tunnel? State on Spot

By DAVID W. DUNLAP


Artist's rendering of the Liberty Street portal that would lead into the proposed West Street tunnel at the south end of the underpass.

TO understand why the fate of the West Street-Route 9A tunnel in Lower Manhattan remains unsettled 20 months after Gov. George E. Pataki publicly embraced it, you should stand on Park Avenue at either 33rd Street or 40th Street.

What you will see are the mouths of the Park Avenue tunnel, which sluices two lanes of traffic to and from the viaduct around Grand Central Terminal. The ramps at both ends create ceaseless, impassable incisions in the streetscape. "A pedestrian was killed crossing here," says a traffic sign at the north end. "Be alert. Cross with care."

Standing at these intersections, it is not hard to figure out why Goldman, Sachs & Company would not want anything resembling such a portal - actually, a portal three times wider - outside the main entrance of the headquarters it is planning at West and Vesey Streets in Battery Park City. Goldman's unhappiness has prompted state officials to rethink the north end of the tunnel plan.

The basic idea is to depress West Street, which is also a leg of Route 9A, and create an underpass for through traffic, with two lanes and a shoulder in either direction. On the deck above the underpass would be a four-lane roadway for local traffic, divided by a landscaped median. This is meant to bridge the 260-foot-wide right of way that divides the World Financial Center at Battery Park City from the rest of downtown.

West Street will become "a distinguished stretch rather than a barren divide," Governor Pataki promised in April 2003. "Adjacent to the World Trade Center site, a new short tunnel from Vesey Street to Liberty Street will divert loud, fast-moving highway traffic underground to protect the dignity of the memorial, while also providing an elegant welcome at the front door of the World Financial Center."

Plenty of people, many of them residents of Battery Park City, disagreed with this assessment. Opponents envision years of disruption on top of what they have already endured. They say that the tunnel ramps would create almost as long an obstruction as the deck would cure. And they question the need to spend $860 million on such a project when there are so many other transportation needs.

THE portals are of particular concern because of the potential noise, fumes and mixing bowl of traffic. With a tunnel mouth at Vesey Street, northbound through traffic on its way to Battery Park City would have to drive through a residential neighborhood, since the first left-hand turnoff would be at Warren Street.

A draft environmental impact statement on the Route 9A reconstruction looked at three possibilities: a $175 million, eight-lane surface roadway; a tunnel from Liberty to Vesey Street; and a slightly longer tunnel with a southern portal at Cedar Street.

Now, in the wake of Goldman's objections and other responses to the draft impact statement, state transportation officials are studying the possibility of moving the north portal two blocks uptown, to Murray Street, or one block uptown, to Barclay Street, with a landscaped roof deck over the portal mouth.

Asked whether the alternatives now being explored would affect the environmental review, Tim Gilchrist, the director of policy and strategy at the New York State Transportation Department, said, "We are continuing to work within the framework of the current environmental impact statement."

Decisions must be made soon, since Goldman Sachs appears all but ready to begin construction of its building, which has been designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners to have an expansive presence along West Street, including the main entrance.

While open to finding "creative solutions" to the problems posed by the tunnel design, the governor remains committed to "ensuring that the sanctity of the memorial is preserved," said a spokeswoman, Lynn Rasic. In other words, he still favors a tunnel.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation also sees the tunnel - officially known as the short bypass - as a way of sparing the memorial from being next to an eight-lane surface highway, said its president, Kevin M. Rampe.

Would a tunnel with a Vesey Street portal be a deal breaker for Goldman? Would a Murray Street portal solve many of the company's problems? Besides saying that the governor "has been extremely responsive to our concerns," a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, Peter Rose, said he had no further comment.

At the northeast corner of West and Vesey Streets, Verizon has a switching center, 140 West Street, with several hundred conduits and cable and fiber optic lines that would have to be relocated for a tunnel, the impact statement said. A spokesman for Verizon, Daniel Diaz Zapata, would not say how the company feels about the tunnel but said it "will work with the construction command center to address all concerns."

At the southwest corner, American Express has its headquarters in 3 World Financial Center. The center is largely owned by Brookfield Properties. At the southeast corner, Silverstein Properties is planning to build the Freedom Tower. None of these companies would offer a comment on the tunnel or the portals.

It is a fairly reliable rule of thumb that when executives have nothing to say publicly about a project in which they have a large stake, big things may be happening behind the scenes. If that rule applies at West and Vesey Streets, something is up.

Perhaps as far up as Murray Street.


The West Street tunnel is seen as a buffer for the memorial site.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[krulltime]

TUNNEL VISION ON WEST ST.


By STEVE CUOZZO

December 28, 2004 -- TEMPERATURES are rising Downtown over Gov. Pataki's proposal to build an $840 million West Street tunnel that would sink the six-lane highway under a landscaped median.

Local residents who didn't want a tunnel to begin with are livid over a new scheme to make it longer by extending it north to Murray Street, two blocks beyond its original planned entrance/exit portal at Vesey Street.

And the extension proposal has also become a hot potato for commercial and residential developers nearby who strongly favor or oppose it, but can't comment publicly out of political sensitivity.

Pataki wants the tunnel to protect the "sanctity" of the memorial planned for the World Trade Center site's southwest quadrant adjacent to West Street.

But tunnel portals, wherever they fall, will generate pedestrian-impassable incisions across West Street similar to the ones on First Avenue near the United Nations — precisely the sort of rupture to the urban fabric that Downtown planners have pledged to avoid.

As originally conceived, the West Street tunnel would run the length of Ground Zero's western edge from Liberty Street to Vesey Street.

But as the Times first reported on Dec. 2, Goldman Sachs, which plans to build a new headquarters in Battery Park City between Vesey and Murray streets, put up a stink over having 260-feet wide tunnel ramps on its doorstep.

The firm's objection led to the idea to extend the tunnel two blocks north, the Times reported.

In fact, sources told The Post, a tunnel mouth at Vesey Street would "be a dealbreaker" for Goldman Sachs, which wants convenient 24/7 auto access — which it now lacks at its Broad Street offices hemmed in by security barriers.

The Wall Street firm's campaign to move the tunnel entrance is said to enjoy the support of Brookfield Properties, which owns the World Financial Center next to Goldman's site. Brookfield and some of its tenants, such as Merrill Lynch, "really want to see Goldman's tower go up" to affirm the area's commercial future.

"They're afraid they could end up surrounded by apartment buildings," a source said.

But keeping Goldman Sachs happy would not be without consequences. A tunnel portal at Murray Street would cleave West Street at two now-barren sites where the city is promoting big-league residential projects. West Street, because it is part of Route 9A, falls under state control.

Both sites abut schools. They're also across from ballfields in Battery Park City, and some fear the tunnel portal will make the West Street crossing even more hazardous for youngsters trying to get from one side to the other.

After three years of haggling, the city's Economic Development Corp. is close to a deal to sell developer Edward Minskoff a lot on the east side of West Street between Murray and Warren. The project would include hundreds of new apartments and a retail base of up to 100,000 square feet.

Through an aide, Minskoff declined to comment. But it is reasonable to assume that after years of tough talks with the city — during which he agreed to drop his original plan for an office building — he can't be thrilled by the sudden idea to extend the tunnel to his front yard.

The tunnel depressions might also impact the block just north of Minskoff's, where Jack Resnick & Sons just paid the city $40.5 million for a lot bounded by West, Chambers and Warren streets.

Resnick's complex will include around 400 apartments — many of them in a 300-foot tall wing along West Street — as well as a kindergarten annex to P.S. 234 next door. Groundbreaking is scheduled in a few months.

Company president Scott Resnick could not be reached. A call to Brookfield CEO Ric Clark was not returned.

Goldman Sachs spokeperson Andrea Raphael declined comment.

State Transportation Dept. spokesman Peter Graves said, "We're continuing with the environmental review process that's looking at all the issues currently affecting the corridor. No decisions have been reached as yet."

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[BPC]

NY POST:

CHOKING DOWNTOWN
By STEVE CUOZZO

GOV. Pataki has again lost his footing on Downtown: Rather than pushing for the progress needed at Ground Zero, he seems intent on digging up West Street to build a worse-than-pointless auto tunnel.

Pataki's best moment on rebuilding came in April 2003, when he set out a firm timetable for Ground Zero and took steps to improve Downtown's abominable street and sidewalk conditions at once.

However belated, Pataki's decisiveness rescued the area — at least for a time — from the anti-commercial, post-9/11 clamor for a dubious paradise of "24/7" uses, "moderate-income" housing and a 16-acre shrine to America's sins. But now, nearly two years later, all the progress shows signs of unraveling.

The speeches, slide-shows and endless televised press conferences should fool no one. Despite last summer's cornerstone-laying, significant issues of infrastructure, financing and engineering must be resolved before the Freedom Tower can rise. The New York Times reported yesterday that the tower's broadcast-antenna spire — an integral part of the design unveiled a year ago — might not work as positioned at the building's corner.

In fact, sources tell The Post, it will likely need to be centered if it is not to tear the tower's roof off. (The currently-planned-but-untenable off-center antenna is a vestige of Daniel Libeskind's original design — a holdover included by Freedom Tower architect David Childs at Pataki's insistence.)

Until the problem is solved, Larry Silverstein can't build, no matter how much insurance money he has. Nor is there a hint of when work might start on the memorial. But until both projects are under way, no one will believe Ground Zero is going anywhere.

Consider, too, Pataki's failure to break the logjam over Fiterman Hall. With no agreement on a cleanup plan, the college building will remain a blackened hulk near Ground Zero on the fourth anniversary of 9/11.

Fixing or rebuilding Fiterman Hall will cost under $200 million — peanuts for Downtown. Yet, while Pataki dawdles on it, he is putting his clout behind a billion-dollar scheme that has nothing to do with 9/11: the West Street tunnel, a dream come true for the forces still hoping to sabotage Downtown's recovery.

Supposedly meant to ensure the "sanctity" of the Ground Zero memorial, the project might well do what terrorists couldn't: Chase business out of Downtown for good.

It guarantees years of traffic and transit paralysis — plus a carnival of cost overruns. (For a taste of what's in store, ask any Bostonian about the "Big Dig," a highway project that ruptured their city, ran five years late and cost $10 billion more than its $2.6 billion estimate.)

Nor will the tunnel even deliver the promised insulation from vehicular traffic: Cars will still buzz by the memorial on three sides — on Liberty Street and on newly extended Greenwich and Fulton Streets.

Pataki's push for the project is doubly galling because, if the memorial is too close to West Street, he has only himself to blame. He chose the Libeskind master site plan, which shunted the memorial to Ground Zero's southwest quadrant.

In any event, if Pataki still insists on a buffer, one already exists: the wide, unused, two-lane service road just outside Ground Zero's western boundary. It provides plenty of elbow room to insulate the memorial from traffic.

(Also up in the air: where to place the tunnel's northern portal — and the ensuing traffic havoc. At Vesey Street, plunking impassable incisions on the doorstep of Goldman Sachs' new headquarters? A few blocks north, placing them in front of planned new apartment towers? )

The MTA's new Fulton Street Transit Center — the "Grand Central of Downtown" — promises subway riders years of inconvenience far worse than any posed by the existing station's shortcomings. Yet that disruption may seem pleasant compared with the job (perhaps a decade long) of depressing six-lane West Street under a landscaped median.

It's hard to imagine how a tunnel could be built without closing West Street during construction or, at best, reducing traffic to a trickle. That means rerouting cars and trucks east onto Church Street and Broadway. Both, of course, are already likely to be snarled for years — Church Street by construction of the new PATH terminal and Broadway by work on the Transit Center.

And has everyone forgotten that tunneling must also be done beneath Broadway and Church Street to link the PATH and transit centers underground, with unpredictable effects at street level?

We're told the tunnel will link Battery Park City with Ground Zero and the rest of Downtown. Where's the demand for that? Battery Park City's apartments are full, and the World Financial Center's commercial space, half-vacated after 9/11, is fast being re-absorbed.

So why is the tunnel scheme on the table? One interpretation is that certain powerful interests see windfall profits — a boondoggle that will batten on labor payoffs, concrete-cost overruns and pork-barrel procurement.

Beware public-private influence-peddling of the sort epitomized by Alfonse D'Amato's infamous $500,000 phone call to expedite an MTA contract.

We may yet be spared. The state is also considering an option simply to retain and spruce up the West Street surface road for a mere $175 million. It isn't too late for Pataki to do the right thing and save us from a tunnel with no light at either end.

E-mail: scuozzo@nypost.com


http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...ists/38917.htm

[NewYorkYankee]

The tunnel is not needed. Period.

[Douglas Willinger]

A so-called long West Street tunnel that directly connects with the BBT and the BPU is needed to deal with the future traffic to and from Brooklyn's Gowanus Expressway which will be rebuilt with improved interchanges and hi-speed easy pass.

All of the current plans including the short tunnel and the NYPIRG preferred all traffic on the surface with traffic lights option, all maintain the existing deficent BBT Manhattan transition, with its pollution generating 9-10% grade ascent. Only a long tunnel can mitigate this.

There should be a lawsuit as to the dropping of the long tunnel from consideration (with reasoning that would sooner drop the other options).

A WST should be planned as part of an integrated highway network, rather then simply for real estate enhancement.

Douglas A. Willinger
Takoma Park Highway Design Studio
http://www.HighwaysAndCommunities.com

[Kris]

February 24, 2005

West Street Decision Won't Be Easy, but It's Needed Soon

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

N the stretch of West Street-Route 9A that runs along the World Trade Center site, the rubber is about to meet the road. Whether the road will be on the surface or in a tunnel, however, is a question only Gov. George E. Pataki can ultimately answer.

What faces the governor is a choice. There is a cheaper, easier and politically palatable option: rebuilding Route 9A as an eight-lane surface road. And there is an unpopular, complex and far more expensive alternative - tunneling four lanes of express traffic through an underground bypass - that he has already endorsed in principle and that may, in the long run, be a better planning approach.

This is not an easy choice. Understandably, he seems to be in no hurry to make it.

At the moment, said a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki, the governor is waiting for the State Transportation Department to complete a detailed environmental analysis of roadway alternatives.

"The decision for Route 9A will be based on pedestrian safety and traffic needs that are expected when the area is fully developed," said the spokeswoman, Lynn Rasic.

But Mr. Pataki is almost compelled to say something definitive soon.

He wants a spending plan on his desk next month for the unallocated $772 million in federal Housing and Urban Development Department grants that are controlled by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Some of that money may be earmarked for public portions of the trade center infrastructure, like roadways.

Should the state pursue the less expensive "at-grade" approach to the Route 9A reconstruction, which is to be financed by the Federal Transit Administration's $4.55 billion Lower Manhattan program, it is possible that some of the savings, at least $500 million, could be applied to transportation-related improvements at the trade center site.

"If there are savings from a project, the money will remain in the program account for eligible Lower Manhattan recovery projects," said Paul Griffo, a spokesman for the federal agency. "Once the local decisions on 9A are made, the governor will be in a position to assess the priorities for using any funds that may still be available."

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver already has his priority: a seamless rail link from Lower Manhattan through an East River tunnel to the Long Island Rail Road. He said Tuesday that the plan for a Route 9A bypass should be scrapped.

"Based on resources- based on just about everything - you should not have the underpass," said Mr. Silver, a Democrat whose district includes much of Lower Manhattan. As for the surface alternative, he said: "What's compelling about it is not that it's an at-grade solution. What's compelling about it is the resources."

Money, or the lack of it, seems to be the theme of 2005 in the saga of Lower Manhattan's recovery. This is the year budgetary realities are colliding with planners' dreams.

Yet there are still strong planning arguments that can be made for a tunnel.

A TUNNEL would keep some trucks - and, potentially, truck-borne bombs - at a greater distance from the West and Vesey Street crossroads, which will eventually be the site of the Freedom Tower and the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, Verizon and American Express.

By diverting express lanes underground, a tunnel would preserve the dignity of the memorial, which would otherwise be exposed to eight lanes of traffic along much of its western flank. With express traffic hidden from view, there would be a greater sense of connection between Battery Park City and the rest of downtown.

"It is so correct that it's unthinkable that it not happen," said Alexander Cooper of Cooper, Robertson & Partners, consulting architects to Brookfield Properties, the principal owners of the World Financial Center in Battery Park City.

However, Goldman, Sachs & Company is strongly opposed to a tunnel entrance at Vesey Street, in front of the headquarters it is planning.

And Verizon has expressed unhappiness with having to relocate conduits under Route 9A that were installed at a cost of millions of dollars, should the tunnel be chosen. The company plans to move its headquarters into its landmark switching center at 140 West Street.

State transportation officials have been exploring a compromise under which the tunnel entrance would be moved north, around Murray Street. This would put it closer to schools, ball fields and apartment towers.

And that has "generated even more consternation" in a neighborhood already opposed to the tunnel, said Madelyn Wils, the chairwoman of Community Board 1, in a Jan. 14 letter to Governor Pataki.

"If the argument is that it is not safe for Goldman Sachs employees to cross the highway near the bypass," she added, "then you certainly cannot expect schoolchildren, their parents and residents to accept a decision to move the mouth of the bypass into their front yard."

Asked in a survey in April to rate the priority of transportation projects, 46 percent of 800 residents of Community Board 1 polled by Blum & Weprin Associates said the Route 9A tunnel was "not very important."

Paul Goldstein, the district manager of the community board, said: "I suppose if we had unlimited sources of funds, there might be more support for a project like this. But at this point we have to make decisions."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Douglas Willinger]

Gov. Pataki could apply to make a 9A Tunnel that is continious with the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel as part of a extended Gowanus Expressway project. He could furthermore extend it north of Chambers Street, with at least the northbound lanes continuing north of Canal Street, hence mitigatiing the left hand southbound 9A movement to Canal.

It should go all the way to about 29th Street, but should at least extend the northbound tunnel to the meat packing areas. Splitting the location of the nb and sb northern portals would allow the project to be staged for financial considerations

Unlike the old Westway project this would use existing land fill. Ironicaly, the money taken from Westway ($1.5 billion) would be just 1/20th of the some $30 billion that groups such as NYPIRG's "Straphangers' Campaign" achieved for extra transit funding since.

With pollution filtation systems, along with the gentler ascent grades that are geometrically possible ONLY with the continious with the BBT "long" tunnel, this would offer clean air benifits for Manhattan's West Side that are denied by the status quo.

Douglas A. Willinger
Takoma Park Highway Design Studio
http://www.HighwaysAndCommunities.com

[Schadenfrau]

Governor Pataki might take your suggestion a bit more seriously if you spelled his name and the name of your website correctly.

I assume you meant to direct us to this?

http://www.highwaysandcommunities.com/

[Douglas Willinger]

I doubt it, as my letter to him last year about the 9A-Gowanus planning disparity did not have that error, yet I got no reply. Nor have I heard sylable one from NYSDOT or USDOT on this. Or for that matter, any of the "transportation advocacy" groups.

Given his response instead to extending the tunnel north to placate Goldman, Sachs & Company, the formal planning for the 9A tunnel places a far greater priority to real estate enhancement, rather then planning this tunnel as being part of a continious transportation network.

Douglas A. Willinger
Takoma Park Highway Design Studio
http:www.HighwaysAndCommunities.com

[mkeit]

This tunnel idea is nonesense and a HUGE waste of money.

[Douglas Willinger]

Do you feel that way about the proposed Gowanus tunnelization?

Douglas A. Willinger
Takoma Park Highway Design Studio
http:www.HighwaysAndCommunities.com

[ZippyTheChimp]

The only similarity is the word tunnel.

I have always supported a West St tunnel as a concept, but there are two realities that must be considered:

1. The present tunnel plan is too short. It should connect directly to the BBT and the FDR underpass to move thru-traffic through the area. This could have been done after Westway was scrapped. Having witnessed the rebuild of Rt 9A and the expense of mining the streets for hidden utilities, a tunnel could have been constructed at relatively equal cost. But after Westway, the word tunnel was taboo, so we got a blvd.

2. There is no money for the tunnel. NYC has several projects that are in planning that have not been guaranteed full funding. It would be nice if we could do them all, but the reality is that choices have to be made. The city and state cannot print money. This is not the time of the Big Dig and federal budget surpluses. With a federal deficit approaching $450 billion and $1 billion pouring into Iraq every week, we can't expect any help from Washington.

Your example of the Gowanus Tunnel is similar to my example of a tunnel after the defeat of Westway. The Gowanus Expressway is deteriorating and must be replaced. Temporary repairs have been going on for years costing hundreds of millions. There is no way to detour traffic and tear down the roadway and rebuild, so it must be done in stages, lane by lane - a process that multiplies the cost. This high cost of replacement makes a Gowanus Tunnel a financially competiive option, and that is why it is being considered.

Removal of the elevated highway would transform Sunset Park and Red Hook. The tunnel has broadbased support, including Transportation Alternatives - not exactly a highway advocacy group.

[BPC]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/

• March 11, 2005 | 9:40 p.m. ET

Freedom Tower politics (David Shuster)

The blogs we've been posting on the Freedom Tower continue to generate a huge number of e-mails. Every day, I've been receiving articles and stories detailing a host of new engineering problems associated with the current plan for lower manhattan. [Blog: Freedom Tower Vs. Twin Towers; Blog: Rebuild the Twin Towers]

The latest issue concerns a plan by Governor Pataki to sink an eight lane street beneath the proposed Freedom Tower park.There are two problems: First, Verizon says it would need to relocate a massive amount of underground telecom gear in order to clear a path for the tunnel. (Verizon says this move could delay the entire project for two years.) Secondly, the proposed underground construction project would be akin to Boston's "big dig." Only this time, the chaos and mess would be in Lower Manhattan.

I could go on and on. It seems likely that this Freedom Tower project is going to keep a hole in the Manhattan skyline (and thrill Al-Qaeda) for at least a decade. Many of you have said that construction on "newer, stronger, and taller twin towers" should have already begun. To all of you who have been wondering, "Is it too late to scuttle the freedom tower and rebuild the twin towers?" the answer is clearly "No."

One of my contacts recently sent me a copy of the Environmental Impact Statement done a year ago in lower Manhattan. The 30-chapter volume refers to the Freedom Tower as the Proposed Action. But in Chapter 23, the EIS examines a "restoration alternative." This alternative is to "rebuild the Twin Towers." In other words, the environmental impact study for rebuilding the twin towers has already been conducted... a crucial first step. It's also worth noting that the public architectural blueprints and models for a new Twin Towers (architect Ken Gardner at makenynyagain.com) are more detailed than the public blueprints and models for the Freedom Tower put forward by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Putting all of that aside though, there is a factor that I'm convinced will soon come into play... presidential politics. New York Governor George Pataki (who has always backed the LMDC and the Freedom Tower) has made no secret of his 2008 presidential ambitions. And on the face of it, Pataki could be a formidable candidate. But imagine what will happen if John McCain holds a news conference, discusses the ongoing problems with the Freedom Tower, speaks about the need for America to stand tall, not weak, and declares that nothing is acceptable other than stronger, taller, Twin Towers. "Under this scenario," a political strategist told me, "Pataki would be dead, absolutely dead." Now imagine if Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first to hold such a news conference. As everybody in the U.S. Senate knows, Mrs. Clinton is preparing for a possible 2008 run by moving to the center, bolstering her standing on red state values issues, and looking for ways to demonstrate leadership and "toughness" on foreign policy issues. On the issue of terrorism, what would be "tougher" than bashing George Pataki's Freedom Tower and demanding, in the name of true freedom from our enemies, that the Twin Towers be rebuilt.

So, where do the possible 2008 presidential contenders stand?

John McCain, I've been told, "is not considering this issue right now." But, I was drawn to the words "right now."

Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to her spokesman, "has not taken a stand on the Freedom project or on the twin towers. The Senator believes lower Manhattan should be rebuilt." Hmmm. That is not an endorsement of the Freedom Tower. And given that Mrs. Clinton is one of the senators from New York, her withholding of any Freedom Tower endorsement, and her absence from all Freedom Tower events, is revealing.

Will presidential politics be the issue that ignites this debate? How nervous should George Pataki be right now? Who would win this fight?

Comments/ Questions/ Questions for the next blog cast: DShuster@MSNBC.com

[ZippyTheChimp]

So how long has David Shuster been covering politics...6 months?

John McCain, I've been told, "is not considering this issue right now." But, I was drawn to the words "right now."

Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to her spokesman, "has not taken a stand on the Freedom project or on the twin towers. The Senator believes lower Manhattan should be rebuilt." Hmmm.

These are typical remarks that politicians make on issues that they consider to have no political capital (either for or against). They will not commit and risk being on the wrong side if the issue becomes important down the road.

The FT is hardly a political issue in New York State. Nationally, it is not even on the radar. For Pataki, any presidential aspirations are going to depend on his centrist views on gay rights and abortion (look at what happened to Giuliani), not on a hole in the ground in Manhattan.

[mkeit]

Fortunately for everyone, Pataki would't last five minutes in a national spotlight.

As for the Freedom Tower, foundation work was to begin last month. Demolition of the existing parking levels is still underway. It is moving very slowly.

The decision on the tunnel won't be made until the end of the year. How this will affect the Goldman Sachs building, which should be getting underway soon, is unclear; unless the decision has already been made but not released to the public.