Sept. 11 Tribute Faces Legal Challenge

SORE SPOT Some Jersey City residents (many LSP users from JC, and elsewhere in Hudson County and NJ), including members of the Friends of Liberty State Park, have objected to plans to erect a large Sept. 11 memorial on this temporarily fenced-in site at the park’s edge. (The 3 brief comments in parenthesis in this story are by Sam)

By JONATHAN MILLER
Published: March 25, 2007

The New York Times - New Jersey Section

JERSEY CITY

Photographs by Dith Pran/The New York Times

THE OPPOSITION Sam Pesin, of the Friends of Liberty State Park, with Cynthia A. Hadjiyannis, a lawyer for the group.

ANOTHER Sept. 11 memorial in this waterfront city, another nasty fight.

First, there was the so-called Tear of Grief a 106-foot-tall bronze-plated slab bequeathed by a Russian artist and slated to rise on a pier downtown. Greeted initially with enthusiasm by leaders here, it succumbed to protests by residents and a new mayor who blanched at the memorial’s size and aesthetics. It wound up in Bayonne.

Now, heated words are being exchanged over a memorial scheduled to rise in Liberty State Park, at one of the easternmost edges of Jersey City. A local nonprofit group filed legal papers this month in Trenton in an effort to stop the memorial from being built, contending that it would obstruct views of Lower Manhattan.

“The memorial blocks panoramic views of the New York City skyline, one of the most important views of our nation,” said Sam Pesin, the president of the Friends of Liberty State Park. “This memorial severely harms Liberty State Park.”

The group argued that in its zeal to construct the park memorial, the state, which commissioned the project, did not obtain the appropriate permits and as a result did not allow for public comment and notice. The group hopes to force the state to get a new permit and possibly modify(relocate) the memorial’s design.

But the state contends that there were sufficient opportunities for public input and that it properly obtained all the necessary permits. And one state official had harsh words for the litigants.

“To think someone could be opposed to this because it could obstruct some views is just disturbing,” said the official, Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversaw the approval process and hopes to begin construction in June. “This isn’t a matter of aesthetics. This is a matter of life and death. It’s a little shocking this is still going on.”

Over time, however, the state’s argument appears to have changed. Initially, officials said there had been sufficient opportunity for public comment before the memorial’s approval. But recently, they have begun suggesting that meetings convened by the Friends of Liberty State Park last summer and attended by a Department of Environmental Protection official about two years after the memorial had been approved were tantamount to public meetings.

“All along the way there were opportunities for public input,” said John S. Watson Jr., the department’s deputy commissioner for natural resources. “I don’t know what more we could have done at this point.”

Around the country, memorials commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks have a touchy history.

Some groups objected to a museum proposed for the former World Trade Center site, the International Freedom Center, because of displays about the Jim Crow South, gulags in the former Soviet Union and the Third Reich. In 2005, Gov. George E. Pataki stopped the plans for the center. In Pennsylvania, the memorial commemorating the crash of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 was criticized when some thought the design resembled an Islamic crescent. The design was eventually modified.

The memorial at Liberty State Park, “Empty Sky,” by Frederic Schwartz, would feature two stainless steel columns (walls), each 30 feet high and 200 feet long, atop a 10-foot mound. The names of all 691 New Jersey residents who died in the attacks would be inscribed on the walls. The memorial, which would be angled toward Manhattan, is meant to mimic the twin towers. Its estimated total cost is $13 million, to be paid for by the state and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

James C. Cahill of West Caldwell, who was a member of the Family and Survivor Memorial Committee that helped approve the memorial in 2004 and whose 30-year-old son, Scott, died in the attacks, called the suit ridiculous and said those opposing it are “so shortsighted” that they “can’t see how it will improve the park.” He said he and others got assurances from Gov. Jon S. Corzine last fall that the memorial would be built and that “there was no reason not to go forward.”

Opponents say they do not begrudge the idea behind the memorial, just the location in the park.

“It’s like apples and oranges,” said Mr. Pesin, comparing this memorial fight with the “Tear of Grief” debate. “This is a memorial that may well be here for hundreds and hundreds of years.” ( the Teardrop may last for hundreds of years also but the hill and walls memorial blocks powerful views of NYC and the Hudson River and eliminates LSP's only Public Plaza).

Jersey City has built several smaller Sept. 11 memorials, including a two-ton slab downtown, on the waterfront at the foot of Grand Street. In Liberty State Park, a 691-tree Grove of Remembrance was planted in 2003 to commemorate the New Jerseyans who died.

John Guarini, chairman of the city’s Sept. 11 memorial committee, called the loss of the “Tear” memorial “a disgrace,” but agreed with opponents of the current memorial.

He said the state did not properly involve residents. “They circumvented the whole situation,” Mr. Guarini said, “and did what they wanted.”

The city had no formal role in the approval process, and most elected officials here have come out against the project. Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy was quoted last summer in The Star-Ledger of Newark as saying, “It destroys a natural attraction and a beautiful vista.” But of late he has remained quiet on the matter. A spokesman for the mayor did not return calls seeking comment.

There had been little protest until last summer, when contractors for the state dumped tons of soil on the site, creating a 14-foot mound enclosed by a green fence.

Tanya Chauhan, 36, a mother of two young girls who lives nearby, escaped from 5 World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and had four colleagues die there. She said she visits the park frequently for picnics and does not need a constant reminder of the attacks or to hear tourists’ remarks about them.

“Everyone in the area has pain related to that day,” she said. “You’re making the park a place where when you go it’s creating a place where you feel pain.”