While Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo fight over the fate of the 9/11 museum, which almost certainly won’t open as planned on September 11, 2012, the 9/11 Memorial Foundation quietly announced some good news at the end of December. The foundation has selected a five-member board for the still very much up in the air ground zero cultural center.
The move is largely logistical, according to Downtown Express, which first reported the arrangement. If a board had not been selected, the project would have forfeited $100 million in funds from the essentially defunct LMDC.
The board is made up of many of the people one might expect: the mayor, who also chairs the foundation, World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein, CB1 chair and downtown dogooder Julie Menin, now-very-famous Brookfield co-chairman John Zuccotti and Zenia Mucha, vice president of the Walt Disney Company. Maybe The Lion King is thinking of joining the Joyce as an anchor at the new theater.
The funds would not necessarily have been reallocated if the deadline had not been met, according to Downtown Express, but the foundation did not wish to run that risk.
“It shows the project is indeed a priority and has come from the backburner to the front burner,” Ms. Menin told the weekly. “Now that we have the founding member board in place, we need to [take] all the steps required to make this project happen.”
They’ll be dancing in the streets, if so.
