A group of Sept. 11 victims’ families won a battle yesterday in a campaign to preserve the footprints of the World Trade Center for the Ground Zero memorial complex.
Bowing to pressure from the families not to build on the two one-acre sites where the Twin Towers stood, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. proposed moving a planned underground bus garage a block away from the WTC site.
The announcement followed weeks of mounting anger in the Coalition of 9/11 Families that agencies largely controlled by Gov. Pataki had broken his vow last summer “never” to build on the WTC footprints.
The Post reported Sunday that coalition leaders called Pataki “duplicitous” and a “Wizard of Oz” for making that promise yet allowing the Port Authority to do otherwise. The PA is constructing an emergency exit for a temporary PATH station on the north tower footprint, and other structures on the south tower site.
Family leaders also went to Washington to ask several senators, including Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, to sponsor a federal law to protect the “hallowed ground.”
Family leaders said yesterday the governor had finally responded to their “cry for help,” but they remained wary.
“We’re not going to be happy until it’s written in stone,” said Patricia Reilly, who lost her sister, Lorraine Lee, of Aon Consulting.