New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week called for New York Gov. David Paterson to hand over development of the World Trade Center Site from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to the city.
In a Sept. 10 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg said shifting oversight will ensure the redevelopment project will stay on budget and on time.
“We will ask [Paterson] to dismantle the LMDC and hand over its development responsibilities to the city,” Bloomberg wrote.
The mayor also said the site’s memorial and the PATH station project, both managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, must adhere to fiscal and time constraints.
“Most important, the memorial must be complete by the 10th anniversary,” Bloomberg wrote. “No more excuses, no more delays .... In addition, the PATH station’s design, including the underground hall, is too complicated to build and threatens to delay the memorial and the entire project. It must be scaled back.”
In an announcement released the same day, Paterson, applauded the mayor’s op-ed article, and pledged his support towards completing the site’s memorial by 2011. The governor also called for the Port Authority to file a “comprehensive review” of the authority’s progress by the end of this month.
