“If you dig a hole in New York City, it costs a million dollars and generates a million meetings,” jokes Mark Yoes, design principal at WXY. The design process for the Robert R. Douglass pedestrian bridge, which crosses West Street in lower Manhattan, backs up his point. Seven years and $45 million later, just before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, WXY has completed the last piece of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s (LMDC) plan for rebuilding and restoring the area below Houston Street affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. For the New York–based architects, the 240-foot-long walkway bookends two decades of work—the firm also helped with LMDC’s first project, restoring the Battery Park City esplanade and assisting with the disaster-recovery plan in 2001. “Now people can cross the bridge and not think about any of those things,” says Claire Weisz, principal in charge at WXY.