Build Anything Anywhere Please—Even in My Backyard

Seems like all those sweaty press conferences this summer about breaking ground on the Calatrava transit station, fortifying the Freedom Center and subsidizing Goldman Sachs did little for the way New Yorkers view the Governor. Just 18 percent of city voters want Pataki in charge at Ground Zero, compared to 24 percent in May, according to a Quinnipiac poll cited by Crain’s. Some 65 percent of those surveyed would rather the Mayor take the reins. The Mayor said yesterday that’s exactly what he plans to do. This turn of sentiment has something, though perhaps not everything, to do with the Governor’s pushing out the International Freedom Center. The Times teamed up with Pace University for an excruciatingly focused poll also released today—of 518 residents living below 14th Street—and found them split on the Governor’s decision. David Dunlap adds: “And 1,011 New Yorkers were asked six weeks ago by Blum & Weprin Associates for The New York Times Magazine what they thought should be built at ground zero: something shorter or taller than the World Trade Center. Fifty-four percent replied, ‘Any size building as long as they stop arguing about it.’” -Matthew Schuerman