Govt. Reverses Course on Flight 93 Memorial Land- 2200 acres?

abcnews.go.com...

The federal government backtracked Friday and decided not to seize the western Pennsylvania property needed to build a Flight 93 memorial, saying instead it would renew negotiations with landowners.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., met Friday with people who own 500 acres where the hijacked flight crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. The meeting came a month after the National Park Service announced that talks to get the remaining land for the memorial were unsuccessful and that they would use eminent domain.

The government has said it wants the $58 million, 2,200-acre memorial built in time for the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

"They too were the victims of 9/11 in terms of what happened," Salazar said of the landowners. "I do believe we will find a good way and a positive way to move forward."

One thing I don't understand:

The government has said it wants the $58 million, 2,200-acre memorial built in time for the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

What the HELL are they building on 2200 acres!!??

Something is really fishy here!




[edit on 5-6-2009 by kiwifoot]

reply to post by kiwifoot


That's definitely going to be a ridiculous monument. Something is wrong with that.

The D-Day Memorial is near my house, 4400 people died that day and it's only a 9-acre plot off the side of a highway.

9 acres for 4400 American soldiers who died on D-Day, versus 2200 acres in PA. If this is serious then it's going to be such an over-the-top drum-beating, flag-waving scandal of a memorial, it's disgusting to even think about.

I agree. Well its not necessarily fishy to me, but damn, 2200 acres is HUGE. What could they possibly need all that land for?

Originally posted by P1DrummerBoy
I agree. Well its not necessarily fishy to me, but damn, 2200 acres is HUGE. What could they possibly need all that land for?

Maybe a test range so they can practise shooting down the next one too?

Have they not made public the plans for the memorial yet then?

That is an awful lot of land. Maybe they account for a visitors site, parking and facilities etc?

CX.

reply to post by kiwifoot


I found this:

The design

Tower of Voices

At the entrance to the national memorial, rising 93 feet into the sky, will be the Tower of Voices,” containing 40 large wind chimes, evocative of, and a tribute to, the sound of the wind and voices aboard the plane during it’s final moments.

Courtesy of Neighborhood America and Paul Murdoch Architects

The Field of Honor

The Field of Honor is a large, bowl-shaped existing landform roughly circular, that forms the heart of the memorial and park. Visitors will experience varied landscape and memorial features along the edge of and within the Field of Honor. In framing the open space of the Field of Honor with a distinct, formal edge, the memorial design expresses the spirit of the Mission Statement preamble: A common field one day. A field of honor forever.

It is the convergence of the land’s beauty and power with the strength and sacrifice of heroic, personal action on September 11 that give the memorial site its unique sanctity. The memorial design expresses this confluence by marking the Flight Path as it breaks the circular continuity of the Field of Honor edge at the Entry Portal and the Sacred Ground, where the crash occurred. The edge of the Field of Honor features five main areas of the memorial experience.

Entry Portal

The main entrance to the Field of Honor occurs at its northwestern edge. The Entry Portal is approached through a clearing of trees on a black slate plaza marking the Flight Path. High, textured concrete walls frame the sky where Flight 93 descended to the crash site. The walkway leads visitors through the first wall into a plaza featuring Red Maple trees and through a second portal to give visitors their first look at the expanse of the Field of Honor and the crash site below. From the plaza, visitors can enter the visitor center, the interpretive and educational hub of the park. A ramp rises past the visitor center to a tree-lined walkway that curves around the edge of the Field of Honor.

40 Memorial Groves

The memorial design commemorates the collective act of courage by the 40 passengers and crew of Flight 93 through 40 Memorial Groves of Red and Sugar Maple trees in a shared, curving embrace of the Field of Honor's open space as it descends to the Sacred Ground. A Red Maple allée formally defines the curving edge and monumental size of the Field of Honor. These maples naturally occur locally throughout the woodlands of the Laurel Highlands. They turn color in autumn and are bare-branched or green-leafed during the rest of the year. Pedestrian trails meander through the groves, crossing the allée on concrete radials that step down into the Field of Honor; eventually leading to the Sacred Ground.


Ponds


The ponds will serve as a "natural" threshold of experience as the visitor approaches the Sacred Ground. The area will be its own kind of healing landscape, as it will be a habitat full of life. The ponds provide a unique moment within the Field of Honor experience in being simultaneously embraced by the curving maple allée, while reconnecting to the larger natural systems beyond and outside it. Here visitors will be most aware of continuously connected living systems as the circular path literally bridges the hydrology of the Field of Honor.


Sacred Ground

As the final resting place for the passengers and crew of Flight 93, the Sacred Ground is the focus of the Field of Honor. Here is where the plane crashed and a grove of hemlock trees absorbed the impact and inferno. The public can closely view the crash site from a plaza along its edge, which breaks the continuity of the


Western Overlook

The Western Overlook, located at the western edge of the Field of Honor, is where the FBI set up its command post for their investigation after the crash and the families were first brought to overlook the crash site. The foundations and floor slabs of buildings there will remain to evoke the memory of the structures. A meandering path will allow visitors to access this area. Two of the building footprints are among planned trees and one will be within the Field of Honor clearing; marking the location where the families first viewed the crash site below.

And this:

Flight 93 memorial, too much but not too late.

Flight 93 memorial - too much but not too late

The debate surrounding the planned memorial site of United Airlines Flight 93 continues. The plane crashed in the morning of 11 September 2001 when the passengers and crew stormed the cockpit trying to regain control from the five terrorist who had hijacked the plane. I find it fitting and commendable that there is a plan to build a lasting memorial to their heroism and final act.

But, I also have a problem with this planned memorial.

The amount of land needed for the memorial is just over 2,200 acres, about 1,400 of which is near the crash site, where there will be a visitor center. The other 800 acres would create a buffer around the site to protect the rural setting.


2,200 acres. This is huge. That is more than 3.4 square miles. If it was a rectangular track of land, then that would be a piece of land measuring two miles long by 1.7 miles wide. This would be 2.6 times larger than Central Park in New York City. How does this compare to the World Trade Center site?

In addition to the twin towers, the plan for the World Trade Center complex included four other low-rise buildings which were built in the early 1970s. The 47-story 7 World Trade Center building was added in the 1980s to the north of the main complex. Altogether, the main World Trade Center complex occupied a 16 acres (65,000 m2) superblock.

So it is pretty big, almost seems a bit too big, like the article says.






[edit on 5-6-2009 by kiwifoot]

tried talking about this a bit ago.

flight 93 eminent domain case