Nicolai Ouroussoff, Help Me Understand What This All Means!

After near–unanimous dislike of the project’s intitial designs, a new plan is unveiled:

The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled the designs yesterday for three gargantuan skyscrapers at ground zero that would serve as steppingstones to the Freedom Tower and, with it, remake the New York skyline.

Each building has a different famous architect — Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, both of London, and Fumihiko Maki of Tokyo — and a distinct design. Known simply as Towers 2, 3 and 4, they would occupy three parcels between Church and Greenwich Streets. Together with the PATH terminal by Santiago Calatrava, they would be the trade center’s front door to the rest of downtown, with the signature Freedom Tower rising to the west.

Taken in a single sweep, the designs presented yesterday by the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the finished trade center might — just might — look like in 2011 or 2012, if development unfolds as planned.

That is something it has stubbornly refused to do so far. Mr. Silverstein still needs tenants and financing. And the Police Department, which will review the security, has only just received the plans. Its objections to the original Freedom Tower forced a redesign last summer. Foundation work finally started in March.

Odds and ends:

Construction of Tower 2 will require the removal of the Vesey Street staircase, also called the “survivors’ stairway,” which is the only aboveground remnant of the original trade center that still stands where it did on 9/11.

That answers that question . . .

Plus, there’s this charming feature:

In the 146,000 square feet of retail space at the base [of Tower 4], Mr. Maki has proposed a multilevel public chamber at Liberty Street, through which commuters bound for Wall Street will pass. He has also proposed a restaurant overlooking the memorial plaza, offering the public an elevated vantage.