Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan

by Lynne B. Sagalyn

The destruction of the World Trade Center complex on 9/11 set in motion a chain of events that fundamentally transformed both the United States and the wider world. War has raged in the Middle East for a decade and a half, and Americans have become accustomed to surveillance, enhanced security, and periodic terrorist attacks. But the symbolic locus of the post-9/11 world has always been "Ground Zero"--the sixteen acres in Manhattan's financial district where the twin towers collapsed. While idealism dominated in the initial rebuilding phase, interest-group trench warfare soon ensued. Myriad battles involving all of the interests with a stake in that space-real estate interests, victims' families, politicians, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the federal government, community groups, architectural firms, and a panoply of ambitious entrepreneurs grasping for pieces of the pie-raged for over a decade, and nearly fifteen years later there are still loose ends that need
resolution.

In Power at Ground Zero , Lynne Sagalyn offers the definitive account of one of the greatest reconstruction projects in modern world history. Sagalyn is America's most eminent scholar of major urban reconstruction projects, and this is the culmination of over a decade of research. Both epic in scope and granular in detail, this is at base a classic New York story. Sagalyn has an extraordinary command over all of the actors and moving parts involved in the the long parade of New York and New Jersey governors involved in the project, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, various Port Authority leaders, the ubiquitous real estate magnate Larry Silverstein, and architectural superstars like Santiago Calatrava and Daniel Libeskind. As she shows, political competition at the local, state, regional, and federal level along with vast sums of money drove every aspect of the planning process. But the reconstruction project was always about more than complex real estate deals and jockeying among local
politicians.

The symbolism of the reconstruction extended far beyond New York and was freighted with the twin tasks of symbolizing American resilience and projecting American power. As a result, every aspect was contested. As Sagalyn points out, while modern city building is often dismissed as cold-hearted and detached from meaning, the opposite was true at Ground Zero. Virtually every action was infused with symbolic significance and needed to be debated. The emotional dimension of 9/11 made this large-scale rebuilding effort unique; it supercharged the complexity of the rebuilding process with both sanctity and a truly unique politics. Covering all of this and more, Power at Ground Zero is sure to stand as the most important book ever written on the aftermath of arguably the most significant isolated event in the post-Cold War era.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics

938 pages, Hardcover

Published September 9, 2016

Reviews

[Tres Herndon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exhaustively researched but a bit of a slog, I still enjoyed this comprehensive recounting of the reconstruction of Ground Zero. As someone who worked on a building damaged during 9/11 and being rehabilitated at the same time, I had a front row seat for a good chunk of this story. I sat in on LMCCC weekly meetings for years and saw first hand the massive difficulty of coordinating all the work, not just the WTC but all of Lower Manhattan.

I probably wouldn't recommend this book to someone not intensely interested in the subject but I found it interesting. For many years the rebuilding looked like it was standing still but it wasn't. Now that the "pit" is filled and the site is almost complete (St. Nicholas & the PAC still to go), imo, all the heartache was worth it. The site turned into a worthy tribute to the victims of the terrorist attack and also restored the commercial vibrancy to the area lost when the twin towers fell.

[Marc Laderman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read for those interested in city building and the real estate development process. I was a little fatigued by the epilogue where I thought Ms. Sagalyn was a bit shortsighted in her wrap up. Did the process move along too quickly or was it too slow? Rebuilding could have slowed down to consider what would benefit NYC the most to be built on this site. Instead, from the beginning, it was rebuilding the old city, the city of the 1970s, with its super-block, mega-structure mistakes repeated.
I had a pet idea for ground zero that is just happy talk. I doubt that the idea would have prevailed in the real world. But, now is my chance to put it in the record. By 2002, Mayor Bloomberg was looking for a venue for a sports complex. Both the Mets and Yankees were looking for new ballparks. A visionary idea would be to build a sports stadium at the WTC site. It would fit better with the entertainment future of lower Manhattan. Private developers could bring back as much office space as needed on other nearby sites. With land swaps, the old sports sites in the Bronx and Queens could have become new development zones.
In this case, city owned venues for sports franchises would have been a better use of the billions of federal dollars that flowed into the rebuilding. As it unfolded, too much money got vacuumed into the pockets of the wealthy. Transportation money is wells pent money and the superb transportation hub of the WTC site, rebuilt better, would have served the community and the fans. I would have loved to attend games with two black rectangles outlined on the field of play. It would have been a tiring memorial in a very American and New Yorker context.
Just an out of the box idea. Slings and arrows are welcome.

[Nolan S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often seems the same minuscule aspect of the larger story is being told repeatedly, but that speaks to the nature of the project I suppose. Sagalyn is precise in much of her research and provides incredible insight into the work that went into the 16 acres, but also enough of nyc history outside of the site that I may purchase one of her Times Square books.

[Sherri Robinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great subject, poorly written. Dry and boooring...

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looong - twice as long as it needed to be. But it’s a fascinating account that taught me more about government, large organizations, negotiating (who needs what deal by when), society and more. Great book, worth it.