The Freedom Tower

This just in from ProjectRebirth.org:

Was it a renewed sense of optimism that sparked a wave of compounding successes in the redevelopment efforts at the World Trade Center last year? Or perhaps it was a series of well-timed achievements on the part of builders and developers that reinvigorated the public mindset of what was being done there. Whether hope spawned progress or vice versa, it is clear that the aura surrounding Ground Zero in 2007 is vastly different than that of only twelve months ago.

The realization of the master plan for the World Trade Center will undoubtedly take many years to complete. And while offices, businesses, transit links and thoroughfares are being reconstructed and in some cases relocated in the interim, there is one thing that inevitably remains: the sanctity of the site itself.

Site construction takes place each day with relatively little interruption, and crews at the site are poised to bring the steel columns of the Freedom Tower above street level. Seven World Trade Center has opened its doors to tenants, and the public at large has seen the unveiled forms of the remaining towers that will ornament the site’s periphery. Publicized success has brought with it a widened sense of simmering exuberance that was in rare supply a year ago.

The site of the 1993 and 2001 terror attacks has become a vibrant construction site. The solemn sense of remembrance felt by visitors to Ground Zero now shares its spotlight with a sense of renewal. Yet to many, the role of the site as an icon of past tragedies there remains primary. Beset amongst the flurry of agencies working to restore the World Trade Center complex are several groups dedicated to the preservation of the solemn memories upon which the new structures will rise.

As the guiding spirit of the redevelopment efforts, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has operated for five years under the creed, “Remember, Rebuild, Renew”. It could be said that of this three-pronged offensive, Remembrance set up camp at 120 Liberty Street. From a modest storefront on the southern edge of Ground Zero, an association comprised of those who lost friends and family in the 2001 attacks have opened the Tribute Center, an interactive exhibition space dedicated exclusively to the act of remembering.

A Portland, Oregon company has won the biggest job in its 81-year history, a $160 million contract to put a glass skin on the building that will replace the World Trade Center towers destroyed by terrorists in 2001. Windows on the world
Benson Industries will build and install the windows in New York City’s Freedom Tower, which is to rise 103 floors on the site of the World Trade Center buildings.
The bomb- and fire-resistant windows will be made in Benson’s Gresham factory, adding an undetermined number of jobs, Benson officials said. The contract with The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is worth more than half of Benson’s 2006 revenue.

Exhibitoronline reports:

Thinc Design, in partnership with Local Projects, LLC, has been named the lead exhibition design team for the World Trade Center Memorial Museum. Thinc is a international exhibition firm whose practice focuses on the developing intersection of society and exhibit making in the United States, Europe and South Africa. Local Projects is a design studio that tells stories in public spaces, museums and over the Internet combining information design, media and interactivity. Both firms are based in New York City.

Together, the team of Thinc with Local Projects is at the forefront of design for public spaces that combine extensive visitor engagement, multifaceted storytelling, diverse communities and evolving narratives utilizing artifacts, digital media, broad visitor participation and the Internet. The World Trade Center Memorial Museum’s subject, artifacts and public purpose call out urgently for an integrated approach to place, community and society utilizing traditional and new methodologies. As 9/11 was the most recorded event in history, the team’s experience integrating technology and media will be a central element of the project.

‘To be selected to design this museum is a great honor. The World Trade Center Memorial Museum will be a place of social interaction and one that reflects our belief that public places such as museums can have a direct and positive impact on society,’ said Tom Hennes, founder and creative director of Thinc. He continued, ‘We have explored this kind of institutional potential most recently in The Freedom Park in South Africa, a memorial and museum dedicated to the struggle for freedom and the ongoing process of South African nation-building. With the World Trade Center Memorial Museum, we hope to make a significant contribution here at home to the important processes of remembrance, healing and reconstruction following the horrific events of February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001.

This story is really in a realm for my colleague the Hun who has faithfully read this blog and comments nightly on my blitherings.
So, for the record Jeanne, there are some restless souls at Ground Zero who may soon be laid to rest.
It has been reported that new technology has yielded usable DNA from hundreds of bone fragments from Ground Zero. This may mean there may soon be positive identifications of the remains of 9/11 victims. The New York medical examiner’s office said yesterday that 937 samples sent to Bode Technologies in Virginia have yielded “usable DNA profiles.” Bode is a private lab that has patented a new method for extracting DNA.
Of the 2,749 people killed when the World Trade Center fell, 1,146 victims have no identified remains. Most of the newly identified remains - 842 - have been linked to previously identified remains.
But the remaining 95 samples have helped the medical examiner make eight new identifications, including two announced yesterday. The families have not made the names public.

This is one of those “last man” standing stories but this one begins and ends with a view of a world view I remember quite well. Windows on the World was the best kept secret brunch spot in New York — $19.95 per person got you the best Sunday lunch and a bird’s eye view of the greatest city on earth.
This was where a survivor of 9/11 had to make his last stand. His story was featured recently in The Daily Cardinal, the campus newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The last man alive out of the World Trade Center’s North Tower Sept. 11 2001, janitor William Rodriguez, told his story of survival and heroism Saturday at a lecture sponsored by the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth.

Rodriguez held one of five master keys to the WTC—a tool he calls “the key of hope” that enabled him to save 15 people trapped inside the two towers.

The custodian’s story started at 8:30 a.m. when he arrived to work on the basement level of the North Tower. He was late and ached from cleaning the 110 flights of stairs the day before. He had missed the free breakfast he ate every morning on the top-floor restaurant, Windows on the World.

At 8:46 a.m. he heard an explosion. “Boom!” Rodriguez imitated. He heard a man screaming “Explosion! Explosion!” from underneath. “I wanted to say a generator blew up. I thought it was a bomb.”

This piece of evidence may show explosives were used in accompaniment to the hijacked planes, he said. When the plane hit, “the walls cracked and the building shook.”

Rodriguez did not pause. He helped a man with a third of his body burned and pulled two out of an elevator filled with water. He put them in an ambulance and re-entered the towers.

He met firefighters and used his key to open stairwells and guide them through the building he had worked in for over twenty years.

“We got to go up, we got to go up!” he said. “I want to go up to help my friends,” Rodriguez said, referring to the cooks at the top floor restaurant.

This blog just got very interesting.
It might be more interesting to pay more attention to the comments posted on this site in the future.
Today is my birthday and perhaps today I am born again, not in the traditional sense. Mine is an awakening of sorts, if I can hang on and start paying attention.
I’m listening Jeanne.
This spiritual advisor of mine made herself known to me recently, not that I believe in such things, being a born and bred backslider Christian, but that old time religion of mine did not prepare me for a real woman who told me she and I had a mission and this website would be our deliverance. Use this blog to enlighten a blighted world of the real significance of the Freedom Tower, she told me. This was her comment yesterday:
“The unidentified souls do speak to us. Dawn nears as a spiritual breeze gently awakens the psyche of America.” She is talking about the Freedom Tower.

I listened, but I’m not feeling it yet.
The news on this site is that New skyscrapers are planned to go up at the World Trade Center beginning in January, according to developer Larry Silverstein. A third building will be built in July, according to the New York Observer.
Silverstein holds the lease at the “job site” and will oversee the construction. The Freedom Tower lease is not owned by Silverstein.
Silverstein purchased the lease for the twin towers six weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. He took over reconstruction of the 16 acre site and agreed to build more than 6 million square feet of office space at the site.
NEW YORK - Two new skyscrapers will start to rise at the World Trade Center site in January, according to developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease there and is overseeing construction.
As usual, I’m still in the dark on this one too. Three more buildings, monuments to high rents, world trade and a global economy.
Where have all the sprits gone?

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has selected a team of three sister agencies within The Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) - Octagon, Weber Shandwick and Jack Morton Worldwide - to help plan and execute its U.S. outreach tour for the WTC Memorial and Museum. This selection reflects the Foundation’s significant progress in building the Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero.

“Our national campaign represents a great opportunity to engage the American public in building a national tribute,” said Memorial Foundation President Joe Daniels. “We look forward to the professional support of these experienced agencies to help us reach as many people as possible in every corner of the country. Building the Memorial is about bringing people together and we believe the national tour will help unite thousands of people to support our cause.”

The Foundation’s tour will feature an interactive exhibit that commemorates the events of September 11, 2001 and shows the strides being made in New York’s rebuilding effort. The tour will also further increase the country’s awareness of the WTC Memorial and Museum, and help raise funds needed for the project’s success.

“We are proud to be working with the Foundation on this historic national project,” said Harris Diamond, CEO of the Constituency Management Group of The Interpublic Group. “The Memorial and the Museum will be important historical institutions, not just for New Yorkers, but for people around the country and across the globe. Our team is honored to work on behalf of the Foundation, and we look forward to helping them accomplish their goals.”

Anything spiritual here Jeanne? If there is, I’m not feeling it.

The world is on a collision course, not racing to the bottom where common sense and value disappear. This race is towards the top. There has been a race to build the tallest building for as long as anyone alive can remember. The race has taken on new heights with the entry of Arabs in this race to the top.

The people building the World Trade Center, the Freedom Tower and all the other properties at Ground Zero are on a collision course with folks who seem to have more money, higher goals and unlimited ambition.
I’m talking about the folks in charge of a building project that rivals construction of the Tower of Babel – the Dubai government’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing.
They know how to surround their buildings with infrastructure. Here’s their latest:
In and around Dubai, “There will be several smaller cities that will cater to the financial, industrial, service and tourism industries.” To fill these airports, Emirates, the national airline, has just placed the biggest order that Boeing has ever had: $9.7bn for 42 777s, each capable of carrying 300 passengers non-stop more than 9,000 miles across the world. They have also ordered a fleet of the biggest airbuses on offer, each capable of carrying 555 people.
The Middle East’s answer to Disneyland, called Dubailand, which is far larger than Monaco, is costing $4.5 billion. It will employ 300,000 people in the various joylands, servicing 15 million visitors. A new urban railway, with 37 stops, begins construction shortly. Dubai is to have its own Silicon Oasis ($1.7 billion) for computer companies. A mixed development called Dubai Waterfront/Arabian Canal covers an area larger than Barbados and will house, when completed more people than Paris.The Baiyoke Tower II, situated on the Rajprarop Road in the Ratchathewi district of Bangkok, Thailand, is the country’s tallest building. It contains the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, the tallest hotel in south-east Asia and the third-tallest all-hotel structure in the world, with 673 guest rooms.
This makes the nattering over 16 acres in Lower Manhattan seem modest by any standards.

The land at Ground Zero remains the most famous, vacant land in America but there has never been so much activity surrounding an empty lot in anyone’s memory except perhaps the discover of Manhattan Island in the first place.
David Michaels of NorthJersey.com says Ground Zero has been “hallow ground” for years “but on Tuesday, as Port Authority officials toured the site, they could point to the signs of renewal: concrete walls that mark the boundaries of the World Trade Center Memorial, steel columns and tower cranes that will permit construction of the Freedom Tower, and a plan to incorporate the Trade Center’s original slurry wall into the memorial.

“Clearly there has been a shift of momentum to the positive,” said Port Authority Chairman Anthony R. Coscia.
The whole project is a memorial the world can’t wait to see finished.

Plans by New York City officials to downsize the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center is a cause for concern because of tighter than expected deadlines for new plans.
Catherine McVay Hughes, chair of Community Board One’s World Trade Center Committee, is disturbed by the planned redesign of the PAC building. Port Authority officials say a final structural design must be submitted as soon as possible. If not submitted soon, the PA says, the PAC project will suffer more delays.
It is rumored that the PA wants those plans submitted in eight weeks.
“This is unbelievable, after all this time, that they’ve finally given themselves an eight week deadline,” Hughes has said. “However, there was a master plan that people agreed to and it’s unfair that the costs have been allowed to compromise that plan and make the Performing Arts Center the last priority.”
Some city officials say the eight week deadline is not firm.
Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff says the city will give the Port Authority the time needed to submit plans. With other priorities and delans, he says construction of the PAC building can not even begin until 2011 so there is more than ample time to submit new plans. The real rub here involves the idea of downsizing the PAC at all.