The Freedom Tower

The tallest proposed buildings under construction in New York City

1. Freedom Tower 1,776 feet tall 2010
2. Bank of America Tower 1,200 feet tall 2008
3. New York Times Tower 1,046 feet tall 2007
4. Goldman Sachs 749 feet tall 2009
5. The Epic 615 feet tall 2006

There is a visualization of what the Freedom Tower will eventually look like once the wrangling and wringing of hands is over. It’s a respite from the uproar that has ensued since the remains of more victims has been found at the WTC site downtown. This view of what the new WTC will look like comes from Giroud Pichot at feed.stashmedia.tv/feed/2006/10/30/wtc-visualization.html

Go there and take a gander at their two minute animation. It places the WTC towers into footage shot of Manhattan. It seems to work.

While the bedfellows of politics were celebrating the resurrection of the World Trade Center, the families of the victims of 9/11 faded into the background noise of all the celebrating over the Freedom Tower. Mike Kelly of the Bergen (County) Record takes not of this in a recent column.
“The supposedly hallowed landscape know as Ground Zero speaks in two voices now,” Kelly writes. “At one end of the site, the thump of jackhammers tells you about the beginnings of the Freedom Tower skyscraper. At the other, the slow scraping of earth by a backhoe tells you about the unfinished task of find victims’ bodies. The recovery and identification of human remains at Ground Zero has become a painful, unclosed wound for victims’ families.”
The silence of family victims is over now. What they felt … that the search had ended too soon … is the fact of the matter. Now what?
The government botched the recovery. It looks like they’re botching the task of repopulating Ground Zero too.
Critics who said family members were just too sensitive about what should be done with the most expensive real estate in the world. Well maybe the critics can be silent now because we’ve still got some gruesome work to do.

The University of Virginia campus newspaper wondered recently what has happened to that good old American know how when it comes to rebuilding the World Trade Center.
“When you look back at the attacks on Pearl Harbor before the United States entered the War, we see that the Japanese crippled the U.S.Navy. Subsequently, the Navy bounded back and either repaired the damaged ships and bases or built new ones with astonishing speed. In short, the United States’ industrial might was catalyzed tremendously from the catastrophic Japanese assault,”
Charles Lee wrote in The Cavalier Daily. “Curiously, the United States awesome resiliency in rebuilding is missing in New York City. The attacks on Pearl Harbor share more than just one resemblance with the attacks on Pearl Harbor: They were unprovoked and unexpected attacks on our homeland, and they were egregious acts of war.”
Lee is upset over the recent pronouncement that the recent discovery of human remains could possibly delay construction of the Freedom Tower. Lee noticed, as some of you might have too, the is no measurable progress in the construction of the tallest building in the world, let alone New York City.
Lee isn’t wrong in his comparison. As one of my students said recently, errecting the Freedom Tower is a modern marvel. What’s next, he asked, raising the Arizona? Its a good question, a very good question.

There is no official word on this yet but the discovery of more human remains at the World Trade Center will undoubtedly delay construction of the Freedom Tower. News of the botched recovery effort to find the remains of 9/11 victims has given everyone time to think.
Expect to see a report before construction resumes that tells us whether or not the initial search efforts was botched, hurried or bungled. Clearly it was, as the families of victims clearly understood. The question that confronts us now is what will the United States, the state of New York and New York City do now?
There are reports that dozens manholes on the western edge of the World Trade Center were overlooked and are now the site of further searches where hundreds of bone fragments were found.
The Port of Authority, which owns the World Trace Center site, has said the discoveries have had no impact on construction. If it hasn’t happened, it will soon.

After five years, there’s finally some good news coming from the World Trade Center. The human bones discovered recently at the WTC “are so well preserved they will yield usable DNA, the experts are saying.
The remains were found last week by utility crews working in a paved over manhole. This has changed the mood of the stories about 9/11 and the aftermath. While some families of victims have complained about a lack of closure, others are now apprehensive about the new finds, saying this new situation has opened new wounds. In an AP story by Sara Kugler quotes Lynn Castrianno as saying while some families naturally want to know if they find relatives of the missing victims, she said it also opens all of the old wounds of 9/11. So far, workers have found almost 200 human remains, whole bones and shards. Scientists say the remains were protected from the weather, a situation which preserved them.
Finally, its time to come together again because as a nation, we’ve got some people to remember again – thousands of them.

“How badly our enemies underestimated the power and endurance of freedom. In less than three years, we have more than just plans on paper—we place here today the cornerstone, the foundation of a new tower.”—George Pataki in 2004 (as reprinted in last week’s New Yorker)

From the Blog called “Metro Dad: Poppy Cock from a Cocky Dad”:
We live a short 4 blocks away from Ground Zero. Were I a little younger, I could go on our building’s roof, throw a baseball and hit the tarnished site. I mention this because 2 years after Pataki’s statement and more than 5 years after 9/11, they have only now begun to start construction on Freedom Tower. As has been abundantly documented, the bungling of this project has turned into an egregious example of bureaucracy and politics in action. By the end of the day on September 11, 2001, it was clear that the terrorists’ act had enormous symbolic power in the eyes of the world, and it was also clear that whatever arose at Ground Zero should make an equally important symbolic statement of its own. Sadly, we may find that instead of inspiring us and representing our values, the Tower will now represent the giant clusterfuck known as Politics In America.”
And it can only get worse unless the politicos in charge now relinquish their hold out of embarrassment. Well, that’s not gonna happen either.

The New York City mayor’s office has ordered the Department of Environment Protection to test the air where the remains of World Trade Center victims has been found in recent days.
Deputy Mayor Ed Sklyer says they ordered the air and material samples to make sure that people working in the area are safe. He said they are searching for asbestos.
In the year 2002, other officials had asked for a more thorough search but the project was finished months ahead of what city officials had planned. A retired police lieutenant has said the initial search was done too fast and retired cop John McArdle said the search had been done poorly.
Well, its all on the record and its coming back to haunt those who called the search off too soon.

It was a prediction that came true.
“Someday some utility company is going to be down there digging and uncover remains and you can all think back to this day.” Those were the words of Port Authority Cop John Ryan at a meeting at the city Department of Design and Construction at the World Financial Center.
Consolidated Edison electric company discovered more than one hundred bones last week along West Street, a place the Port Authority said had been thoroughly searched after 9/11.
The Port Authority police are on record having said that the West Street area needed additional searching and said it as far back as 2002.
Families of victims have said this all along so now maybe they’ll get their wish. Anything else is unthinkable.

The unrest and ire of family members who were recently informed by the New York State Medical Examiner’s Office that the search for remains of their loved ones had ended, was ignited again last week by the news that workers had found more human remains.
The nephew of a woman who died when the Twin Towers collapsed five years ago told us recently that his family was unsettled by the ME’s decision to stop sifting through WTC rubble carted off to the Fresh Kills landfill.
All that changed when workers found several human bones in a manhole at Ground Zero. New York city officials immediately responded to the discovery by saying workers would scour Ground Zero for more remains.
Relatives are now asking for federal intervention and a broad-based probe into the five year search for the remains of WTC victims.
The discovery is a dramatic turn of events in the neverending saga that began with the terrorist attacks. As painful as all of this has been for the families, it is equally difficult for all Americans because closure just seems to be an impossible dream that never comes true.