NEW YORK -- Designers have offered six proposals to renovate the 3,000-acre Fresh Kills landfill as a park and all of them include a memorial for victims of the World Trade Center attack.
The landfill on Staten Island was closed in March but has been used since Sept. 11 as a place to sort through trade center rubble for remains and evidence.
The site is to one day be turned into a park. Models and poster board depictions of the designs went on display Friday.
Most of the designs promoted a multi-use park theme, some with public amphitheaters, stadiums and soccer fields. Others offered more serene settings that include kayaking on estuaries where giant garbage barges once traveled, bird sanctuaries and nature trails.
The most contaminated sections of the landfill would not be available for public use for at least 30 years but still-pristine parts could be open to the public as soon as 2004, said Ellen Ryan of the Municipal Arts Society, a co-sponsor of the design search.
Rios Associates proposed including a Memorial Forest, where trees would be chosen to try and reflect the diverse cultures of the people who died in the terrorist attack. It also calls for a three-mile long picnic table made of recycled laundry detergent bottles, a water park, floating gardens and an annual garbage rodeo to commemorate the park's roots.
Hargreaves Associates proposed an open tract of parkland as "a place for the global community to retreat, remember and seek peace." The design brought tears to the eyes of John Barney, a landscape architect and lecturer at Cornell University.
He liked the idea that visitors would be able to look directly across New York Harbor to the space in Manhattan where the twin towers once stood.
"It's a pretty compelling way to take a negative space like a garbage dump and tie it in with remembering the negative events of the World Trade Center," Barney said.
The designers will present their ideas later this month. Anywhere from one to three teams could be chosen to prepare the final plan.
