Pentagon seeking ideas for Sept. 11 memorial

Defense Department officials announced a competition Tuesday to choose a design for a memorial to honor those killed in the Pentagon terror attack nine months ago.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attack, Congress authorized a memorial to those killed. The Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of the competition.

The memorial is set to be built on a two-acre plot near where the hijacked jet slammed into the building. The Corps team, working with family members of the victims and representatives of the services, looked at 10 sites before selecting this one.

"One of the family members said Sept. 11 chose the site," said Carol Anderson-Austra, the Corps project manager.

The competition is open to anyone. Anderson-Austra said the Corps is ready to receive any and all submissions "from schoolchildren, ... professional architects or truck drivers in Oklahoma or Kansas." The families of those killed are looking for "just the right idea," she said.

Rules for the competition will be on the Web at http://pentagonmemorial.nab.usace.army.mil. Entrants can also receive the rules by writing:

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District
Public Affairs Office
P.O. Box 1715
Baltimore, Md. 21203

Deadline for submission is Sept. 11, 2002, at 5 p.m. EDT. The Corps will appoint a jury to winnow down the entries. The jury will consist of six sculptors, architects and landscape architects; a representative from the victims' families; and two prominent citizens from the Washington, D.C. area.

Anderson-Austra said she expects thousands of entrants and is prepared for them. She said the Corps is not looking for final ideas and a blueprint, but rather an artistic idea. She expects that by mid-October the jury will select five or six designs for further work. By mid-December the jury will meet again and select its recommendation for a memorial.

Anderson-Austra could not say who will make the actual design selection.

The budget for the design and site work right now is $2 million. If all goes as planned, the memorial will be dedicated on the second anniversary of the attack-Sept. 11, 2003.