Troubles At The World Trade Center

There have been a number of problems recently at the World Trade Center site which have slowed construction of what was formerly known as the "Freedom Tower" and has brought construction on the 9/11 Museum to a halt.  Also, construction for a planned WTC 3 tower that was supposed to be 80-stories tall may now stop at the 7th floor due to a lack of tenants for the building.

All this was reported by the AP today over on the HuffPost's NY page.  The slowdown on World Trade Center 1, which was rising at a floor a week, is being attributed to technical difficulties as the building passes the 90-story mark.  But problems with the other projects are more complex, involving a problem in the steel production for the site and political/budgetary disputes with the Port Authority.

The bottom line in all of this is that completion of the site is going to be delayed for months and possibly years, with the opening date for the 9/11 Museum being pushed to 2013 at the earliest. It's disappointing news considering how so much progress was made in the last couple years. Hopefully, the mayor can intervene and get these entities working together to complete this massive project sooner than later.

Photos Of The New World Trade Center

I was downtown yesterday for a meeting and took some pictures of the new One World Trade Center building.  It's really coming along and is now more than 700 feet tall!  And despite the generally negative reviews it received when David Childs released his re-design, the former Freedom Tower  actually looks like it could be quite a beautiful building when completed.

One thing I noticed is that, with it's reflective glass, you can see an image of the Woolworth building when looking at the eastern facade (second photo below).  I thought that was pretty cool...unfortunately the effect won't last when WTC 2 is built across of the newly restored Greenwich Street.  It's glass surface is a strong contrast to the original building, which had narrow glass windows between its trademark supporting beams on the outside.

You can see echoes of the original WTC in the building going up on the southeast corner of the site, WTC 4.  This building has window panels that mimic the look of the the trade center's windows with faux "beams" running in parallel lines (see below).  This building is going to be a big one too....almost 900 feet tall!  You can follow all the progress at the site on the new Port Authority website which features a live cam.

Greater Than Zero

On the eve of the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Ground Zero has been in the news a lot due to plans to build a Muslim Community Center two and half blocks from the site.  While plans for that project are mired in debate, there is remarkable progress at Ground Zero itself.  


Construction at Ground Zero has been going full tilt for nearly two years.  However, due to the complicated multiple uses of the site (transportation, office, memorial, museum, retail) most of that work has been underground getting the pieces of this momunmental puzzle to fit.  But results are now visible above street level and they are impressive.  The new World Trade Center has risen nearly 20 stories high, the outlines of the memorial pools are now clearly visible, WTC 4's impressive lobby is framed and they recently planted the first of more than 400 white oak trees on the former site of the Twin Towers.  


There's a great interactive feature in the TIMES today which give a birds-eye, time-lapse view of the site and provides some drawings of how it will look when it's all completed in 2014.  In the meantime, the Memorial Pools will open to the public a year from now on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, with the underground museum set to open in 2012.

The Shocking Things You'll Find At Ground Zero

There has been a furious debate lately over the "mosque at Ground Zero." First of all, it's not a mosque they are planning, it's an Islamic community center and secondly, it's not "at" Ground Zero, but roughly 2 1/2 blocks away.  From the street, you can not see Ground Zero from the community center and vice versa. 


The thing that infuriates me the most about this inane debate is that the majority of the uproar is coming from people who don't live in New York City and thus don't understand how this city operates.  Given the limited amount of real estate, the sacred and the profane are often forced to live side by side in NYC. That has always been the nature of this particular urban beast and always will be....even when it comes to Ground Zero.   


To illustrate this fact, Daryl Lang's excellent NYC blog History Eraser Button showed a number of businesses that are within the same 2.5 block radius from the former Trade Center site.  He found a strip joint, a betting parlor and a Burger King.  Notably, this BK served as a makeshift morgue and then police HQ in the weeks after 9/11, as it was directly across from the site. 


My kudos to Daryl for defusing the debate by pointing out the realities of city life. Hopefully, as this controversy continues, people will look start to look beyond the headlines and consider the actual facts involved. Not to mention the merits of the First Amendment.