The horrors of Sept. 11, 2001, are still vivid for many Americans, especially the families of the victims. So it is tragic that on this Sept. 11, when family members, politicians and visitors go to the ceremonies at ground zero, they will be gathering at an unfinished place.

Instead of the two memorial pools designed by the architect Michael Arad, visitors will see their barest outlines. Instead of a circle of skyscrapers, the steel for the tallest tower stretches only five stories high. There are just the first skeletal signs of Santiago Calatrava’s magnificent transportation hub.

Why is it taking so long? That is a question that has been asked every Sept. 11. For the first few years, there were too many feuds — the architects Daniel Libeskind versus David Childs, the families versus the designers and builders, the community versus the demolition squads, the developer Larry Silverstein versus the insurance companies. Even now, Mr. Silverstein is locked in arbitration with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the site, because he wants more of the authority’s money to build more office towers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who now supports Mr. Silverstein’s excessive demands for public funds, once recognized the hazards of overbuilding office space in the area. In December 2002, a year after the attack, he bluntly acknowledged that “the twin towers’ voracious appetite for tenants weakened the entire downtown real estate market” — a possibility that today’s real estate experts fear if Mr. Silverstein builds too precipitously.

- bill 9-11-2009 5:34 pm

Yeah, a really tall building providing a vast amount of commercial real estate is exactly what's needed.

BTW, I'm thankful that you lost that job at the WTC.
- mark 9-11-2009 6:54 pm [add a comment]


thanks mark.
- bill 9-11-2009 8:14 pm [add a comment]


heres our thread. i think we had just had a 4th of july roof top party in jc to watch fireworks that year. it was very cloudy though a bit of a disappointment with the wtcs in the near background.
- bill 9-11-2009 11:38 pm [add a comment]


The Empire State Building took less than two years.
Which only serves as a measure of our increasing inability to get anything done. I would only like to see something done insofar as it helps us put this thing behind us. Maybe ten years will do it. By then we’ll likely realize we wasted one war for no related reason and couldn’t resolve another that only left us where we started, laboring under a threat that’s been vastly exaggerated as the bastard child of individual paranoia and political expediency.

- alex 9-12-2009 1:39 am [add a comment]


I would have been happy with a quick, decisive attack on Tora Bora, with an equally quick exit. I think some response was justified and necessary. There would have been some dead marines, though, and that might have sated the irrational blood lust before Dick & Junior could have invaded Iraq. So they failed upward into a bigger, stupider war.
- mark 9-12-2009 4:48 am [add a comment]


jml called it ... "Maybe it is our destiny to play into the hands of the Terrorists."
- mark 9-12-2009 4:55 am [add a comment]


i would have thought it more appropriate to send in an international coalition hit and run attack. but that wouldnt have strengthened the executive office would it.
- bill 9-12-2009 1:49 pm [add a comment]


Exactly. Rifle platoons backed up with close air support and black ops.
- mark 9-14-2009 9:17 pm [add a comment]





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