Kevin Rampe '88, president of the
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and honorary chancellor of the 2004
Commencement on June 13, was profiled in the New York Times on June 17 in an article titled “A Consensus Builder
for Ground Zero's Renewal.”
Rampe delivered the main address
at Commencement, urging students to follow the model of recovery in lower Manhattan
by pursuing public service. (For more on Rampe's talk at Commencement, with a link
to the full text of his address, click here: http://www.union.edu/N/DS/s.php?s=4583).
“Mr. Rampe, 37, a corporate lawyer
by training but a make-it-better guy at the core, heads a group charged with
waving $2.78 billion in federal money like a magic wand to initiate the
revitalization of downtown Manhattan,” said the article, by Times reporter Robin Finn.
The article continues:
“Last week, the development
corporation completed its selection of four diverse arts groups – a theater
company, a dance troupe, a museum and a drawing center – that will serve as the
cultural beacons of the rebuilt World
Trade Center.
And on July 4, a date not selected by coincidence, the groundbreaking is
scheduled for the Freedom Tower,
a sort of single-spire reincarnation of the twin towers. As of that date, says
Mr. Rampe, there will be 'nonstop construction' at the site.”
“Getting downtown rebuilt is
not a moral responsibility, it's a moral imperative,” he says, choosing
his rhetoric carefully. He is sitting in a small, utilitarian office where the
wall art consists of photographs of a reimagined trade center as envisioned by
the architects Daniel Libeskind, David Childs, Michael Arad and Peter Walker,
along with a site plan – a trade center composed of Legos and designed by a
6-year-old New Yorker – that was not chosen but embodies the same sense of
civic engagement that spurred him to take on this chronically thankless job.
Not that he has a martyr complex.
Consensus builders can not stoop to self-indulgence. Or kowtow to bullies.
“Anyone who tries to insert their ego into this process is summarily
destroyed,” he says with a satisfied smile.
As for the critics, amateurs or
pros, who dislike the Libeskind design, dislike the memorial, dislike the
Freedom Tower, disagree with the arts groups chosen, and ad infinitum, Mr.
Rampe is all for dialogue, with a caveat: “It doesn't mean you put
everything out for referendum.”
“This is a process
tailor-made for Monday-morning quarterbacking. The worst thing would be if we
made these decisions and there was no reaction. And the best thing that ever
happened to this agency is that we failed at the beginning. No, really! When we
put out the first site plans and everybody said they were horrible, it changed
everything. Once you turn that switch on and let the people in on the process,
there's no going back.”
Once Mr. Rampe left home for Union
College, he switched from a farm
boy's career aim (veterinarian) to the law. After graduating from Albany Law
School of Union University in 1991, he joined Shearman & Sterling as a
litigation associate; when a not-so-plum assignment arose – travel to Kuwait
to prepare $200 million in environmental and health claims against Iraq
in the aftermath of the first Gulf war – he fought for it, and went.
“It was incredibly
interesting and incredibly sad,” he says. “What had happened there
was really a rape of their country, and my job was to document that.”
He says the Kuwaiti people were
intent on rebuilding. They were resilient. Just like New Yorkers.