A Las Vegas developer who submitted one of the 5,201 entries in the World Trade Center memorial contest says the process was marred by politics that drove a wedge between victims' families and the company assigned to redevelop the site.
"It's like the Hatfields vs. the McCoys," Bob Dyson of Dyson Development said, referring to the famed 19th-century feud between West Virginia and Kentucky mountain families. "It sure felt like politics caused divisiveness between the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the victims' families.
Last month the eight finalists were announced and Dyson's entry, "The Freedom Tower," failed to make the cut for the memorial to remember the victims of the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the September 2001 attack by hijacked commercial jets that destroyed the two towers.
Dyson, who has been in Las Vegas for three years but does development work primarily in California, says his criticism of the selection process is not the result of sour grapes over his entry not going forward.
"I'm a happy camper because the learning process was worth far more than what we spent (about $100,000) getting our proposal together," he said. "But to me it was very disheartening to see that the concerns of the families of the victims were not met. Something needs to be said and done about that."
Retired New York City firefighter Lee Ielpi, whose son Jonathan Ielpi of the New York City Fire Department Squad 288 was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, echoes Dyson's sentiments.
"We have been fighting them (Lower Manhattan Development Corp.) tooth and nail for two years," Ielpi said in a phone interview. "We have tried to negotiate our position and they have not given us a minute. They just don't get it."
Ielpi is a member of both the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s Family Advisory Board and the Coalition of 911 Families. The coalition recenlty issued a "report card" giving each of the eight choices of a 13-member contest jury F grades for failing to meet issues of the victims' families.
The finalist entries are:
Ielpi said he liked Dyson's proposal because Dyson's 2,001-foot tower with an eternal flame and a nighttime projection of an actual-size ghostly green laser design of the World Trade Center towers has a degree of starkness to it.
"The eight entries that were chosen are all so sterile -- they do not reflect what happened," Ielpi said. "We're not advocating total starkness, but you have to have some of that to accurately depict what happened, so that future generations understand that nearly 2,800 people were killed by terrorists."
On Dec. 11, 2001, three months after the attack, Ielpi, as a volunteer recovery worker, found his own son in the rubble beneath the surface and, with the help of another son, carried the remains out.
"We have to preserve this site all the way down to the bedrock (60 feet below the surface) because that is where most of the bodies were found," Ielpi said.
Dyson's design, which has bedrock components as well as video capsules featuring animations of victims telling their stories, was created "from a series of interviews with many relatives of the deceased and it embraces their desires for a sacred site," Dyson said.
"The family members have been given no real input into the selection process," he said.
Joanna Rose, spokeswoman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., said the jury was picked for its diversity, with representatives from many interests, including a family member of one of the victims of the trade center attack.
"We have a family member, a business leader, an architect, an arts representative -- people from all walks of life," Rose said in a phone interview. "We picked a jury to represent everybody's feelings."
Ielpi said that with so many people killed on Sept. 11, one family representative on the memorial jury was not enough.
Rose noted that to keep the jury protected from politics and public relations pitches, all entrants were barred from speaking to the news media or others who could otherwise influence the jurors. That restriction still applies to the eight finalists.
Rose disputes allegations that the agency doesn't care about the families, noting that the coalition group does not represent every victim's family and that it has been critical of many decisions the agency has made.
"When the process started, we sought public comment at a large forum," she said."We mailed notices to family members of victims. We reached out through the arts community. We were duplicative in our efforts to get all of the input we could from the public."
A selection of first, second and third place finishers is expected as early as the end of December, she said.
Ielpi said his organization is considering potential legal action to stop the process from going forward.
Even if court action won't get Dyson's design into the final group, Dyson said he still would like to see family members of victims continue their fight.
"Maybe in the court of public opinion -- and through actual court action -- they can turn this process around," Dyson said. "If that happens, maybe the families' voices finally will be heard."
archive