the freedom tower is going to lay there like a lox

Leave it to Governor George Pataki to make Larry Silverstein look good. Silverstein, who New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger called “the tar-baby of developers,” managed to out-play and outlast (yes, it is like a season of Survivor) the inept and feckless New York Governor, and just plain out-frustrate NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. As a result, Ol’ Greedy Larry has made the “concession” of turning over the development, management, and leasing out of the “Freedom Tower” to the Port Authority and the states of New York and New Jersey—who will now be saddled with the impossible task of making money off of a tower no one wants to look at, let alone inhabit.

Goldberger and New York Review of Books critic Martin Filler had a great discussion on Wednesday with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer. In it, they evaluate the crime that Pataki and Silverstein are about to perpetrate on downtown Manhattan, along with the Ratner/Atlantic Yards development/debacle, with an eye toward the ideas of recently deceased urbanist and social philosopher Jane Jacobs (whom I wrote about yesterday, here and here).

Give the radio piece a listen—it’s about half an hour, and it’s pretty right on.