The Freedom Tower

USA Today reports that “Across the street from the yawning void left when the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, sits a center imbued with the memory of the 2,750 people who died there.

The completion of a permanent memorial is at least two years away, and the Tribute Center is the sole space near Ground Zero where a visitor can hear the anxious radio transmissions of a firefighter inside the south tower; see a twisted steel beam from the Trade Center’s core; study the ID card of a husband who never made it home.

It has become a destination in its own right, and on Monday, less than a year and a half after it opened, the center welcomed its 400,000th visitor, a man from Kent, England, and his wife.

“I said if I ever came to New York, this would be one of the first places I would come,” said John O’Neill, 23, a personal trainer from Galway, Ireland, who visited the center the day after it reached the milestone. “It’s overwhelming.”

The $3.4-million center, opened in September 2006, was to be an interim space for remembrance and education while the permanent memorial, complete with a museum and Freedom Tower spiraling 1,776 feet high, was built at the World Trade Center site.

Now, some segments of the memorial complex will open at least a year later than originally planned. The tree-lined plaza, featuring waterfall-filled pools where the towers once stood, will not open until 2010, and the visitor’s center and museum will be unveiled in 2011. Freedom Tower is scheduled to open in 2012.

“The new timeline reflected a more realistic schedule that became clear after construction began,” says Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site. “We’ll work as aggressively as possible to complete the project as soon as possible.”

The Sept. 11th Families Association created the Tribute Center. “The memorial will be built,” says Jennifer Adams, the center’s co-founder. “It will be beautiful when it’s built, but we need something from now until then.”