It appears that the World Trade Center Memorial will be downsized considerably to get it within a $500 million budget. The NY Post reports today that the underground gallery would be scaled back, the two waterfalls would be eliminated, the Port Authority would take over the building of the memorial, and the World Trade Center victims names would be moved to an above-ground plaza. (Hopefully they will rethink that idiotic idea of randomly listing the victims' names as well.) The details of the changes were supposed to be available on the Internet yesterday, but that appears to have been pushed back until next week.
This is good news for us that have been fighting to bring the memorial above ground. I received a nice email from Rosaleen Tallon, who was at the forefront of the fight:
Dear Fellow Family Members, Friends, and Supporters of the "Put It Above Ground" Campaign,
It looks like the names of the precious souls lost on 9-11 may finally be coming up into the light of the day. From all reports, one of the major changes to the design will be to put the names above ground at street level at the Ground Zero 9-11 memorial, instead of underground as previously planned. Thank God and thanks to all of you. Together, we raised public awareness of the underground nature of the memorial and we made sure the politicians and the public knew what we wanted changed, we wanted the names brought to street level for a dignified and safe memorial experience in the light of the day.
With their names moving up "into the light of day", the world and the future will now "Never Forget". Thanks to all of you who played a part in this from sleeping out in front of the firehouse, to organizing press conferences and rallies, to working on the website, to gathering signatures at Ground Zero, to signing the petition!
Let's hope this is the beginning of something positive happening at Ground Zero.
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