The ideas and designs have come from all over the country, sent by architects, designers and everyday citizens.
Some are professional presentations, some are pencil sketches on scraps of paper.
They are the more than 2,000 unsolicited proposals for a Ground Zero memorial that the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. has received since it was established at the end of last year.
“We treat all the proposals the same, whether they come in on the back of a napkin or an elaborate presentation,” said LMDC spokesman Matthew Higgins.
“Each one is deserving of review and consideration.”
LMDC, which is charged with overseeing the permanent Sept. 11 memorial, is in the midst of setting up a process for designing the tribute, most likely through an international design competition.
The new executive in charge of the project, Anita Contini, started her job only yesterday and has been getting familiar with the issues.
In the meantime, hundreds of people who haven’t felt like waiting for the process to start have already submitted their own ideas.
Many of their designs will likely be entered into the international competition, LMDC officials said.
Months ago, a coalition of Sept. 11 families sent LMDC a position paper calling for a minimum of nine acres for a memorial.
A memorial mission statement from the LMDC family advisory group echoed that idea.
Some of the unsolicited proposals LMDC has received focus on the “footprints” of Twin Towers. Others take over the entire site.
For each idea it receives, LMDC sends back two letters, one from its own planner, Alexander Garvin, and another from general counsel Kevin Rampe, asking for a waiver that will let the agency keep the design in a file that planners may consult as the process goes forward.
The Post reviewed a sample of the memorial designs LMDC has received.
One hand-sketched design, by a woman named Laurie Bloom, incorporates a massive flagpole surrounded by pieces of the destroyed facade of the Twin Towers, as well as the damaged “Sphere” sculpture, which used to stand in the WTC plaza, and is now the centerpiece of the temporary tribute in Battery Park.
Architects from the Chicago firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates designed a plan that includes a circular walkway winding through a park between two looming buildings.
“Reconstruction of the [Trade Center] block must be more than a handsome collaboration of new buildings with space set aside for a memorial,” the firm’s detailed pitch said.
A proposal from Waterfountains.com called for a spherical memorial with gardens and dozens of globes representing different countries.
Another plan, offered by Maria Torffield, calls for a massive square, black-granite field embedded with roughly 3,000 lights to commemorate the victims.
Her sketches include two 50-foot-tall, steel and aluminum towers standing catty-corner from each other at the site to represent the Twin Towers. The open-beamed towers would bear the tragic day’s date, and the time that each tower was hit by the hijacked planes.
The entire site would be surrounded by trees and benches.
One plan, for a “Unity Park” monument, was designed by sculptor Arnold Goldstein.
The structure consists of four huge hands clasping each other as they reach skyward.
Some acknowledge their ideas are off-beat, but they simply want to be part of the process.
Staten Islander Brian Keith sketched his idea in pencil on two pieces of white ruled paper – for a building in the shape of the number 9, and another shaped like the number 11.
“The base floors could have various shops, and the upper floors used for office space or other [uses],” Keith wrote. “I know this may sound a little crazy to some but, as I said, it is just an idea and perhaps some part could be helpful.”