The Freedom Tower

Workers have again found remains at Ground Zero.

News agencies are reporting that the remains of six World Trade Center victims were found last week by workers at the site. They recovered four body parts under a service road and two other parts were found on the roof of a Cedar Street building near Ground Zero. Since the effort to search the World Trade Center for human remains was renewed in October, more then 600 bones and fragments have been found in and around the site, yet nearly 1,100 victims of the terror attack have yet to be identified.
What is tasteless, criminal in fact, about this is the fact Ground Zero is still a crime scene that has not been thoroughly investigated. When I covered alley shootings in Brooklyn or the Bronx, you didn’t let fools go mucking around inside or around the perimiter of a crime scene. It was just bad police work. There is something terribly out of place here and it is that 800 pound guerilla no one in charge seems willing to talk about – not halting construction until a substantial number of the 9/11 victims have been identified is insane.
The decision to go forward with construction without finishing the job is the greater crime of fools. They are we!

I’m not all that interested in celebrating the decisions fools have made …

One of the snags hiding just beneath the surface of  reconstructing  the World Trade Center surrounds whether or not the many projects going up at the site will be able to be insured.
A hearing last week was held to determine whether the federal government would extend its terrorism property insurance program. That program expires at the end of the year.
It is called the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. It was enacted 14 months after the Sept. 11 attacks. It reimburses insurers up to $100 million if foreign terrorists attack again. The government is considering extending the insurance for 15 years. So, the government is in the insurance business, the real estate business, the public relation business, just to name a few ventures. They’re not good at any of this, so stay tuned.

I first saw what has come to be modern architecture way back in 1976 when the Renaissance Center was put up on the riverfront downtown in Detroit. The hotel complex was surrounded by high concrete walls – massive bunkers really. It was a message to the city — keep out. This complex is for the safety and comfort of our visitors, not the host city that was then called the Murder Capitol of America.
Little did we know then that this kind of construction was a wave of the future.
“After 9/11, a craving for the solidity of walls reasserted itself. And the wars on terror, and fractious peaces, enforced it,” the Times said today. “The Green Zone in Baghdad, Jerusalem’s separation barrier, the concrete bollards that line corporate headquarters on Park Avenue — all are emblems of an unintended new mentality.
“The most chilling example of the new medievalism is New York’s Freedom Tower, which was once touted as a symbol of enlightenment. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it rests on a 20-story, windowless fortified concrete base decorated in prismatic glass panels in a grotesque attempt to disguise its underlying paranoia. And the brooding, obelisk-like form above is more of an expression of American hubris than of freedom.”

The Daily News, one off New York’s finest tabloids, gave the city a Christmas present last year. On Christmas Day, the News published a study on how survivors fled the twin towers on 9/11.
The conclusion: In case of emergency: leave your purse, don’t ask your boss for permission and don’t waste one second getting out.
“Researchers who interviewed nearly 2,000 people who were in the World Trade Center say many people misspent precious minutes after the first plane hit. “They’re gathering things - purses and cell phones and car keys and house keys and ID badges,” Columbia University researcher Robyn Gershon said. “They’re seeking out friends.” As many as 3% stopped to change their shoes, Gershon said. “Some survivors who took part in the World Trade Center Evacuation Study “literally got out as the buildings were collapsing and climbed out of the rubble,” Gershon said.
“So we know from speaking to those people that people behind them didn’t make it out,” she added. “Those four or five minutes [of delay] were meaningful minutes.”
The research also uncovered a woeful ignorance about the layout of the towers, even among those who worked in them 10 years or more.”
Team players won’t survive. Whole teams were entombed on 911. Whole teams did not get out.

From Project Rebirth.com
“Ambitious plans are in the making. As the most visible structure to rise from the redeveloped World Trade Center site, the Freedom Tower has been hailed by its creators as a new civic icon, an immensely visible example of the landmark architecture that will ultimately dominate the site. The design of the tower – which was unveiled to the public last winter at Federal Hall, only blocks from its future site – reveals an elegant and radiant structure, both torqued and tapering as it rises toward its apex, 1,776 feet above the streets below.

While desire for architectural innovation appears palpable, it is equally matched by the demand – from project critics and proponents alike – for safety. The structural integrity of the tower must ultimately serve to reassure not only its designers, but the thousands of visitors, employees and tenants who will find themselves inside. If the tower is to both satisfy the demand and quell the concerns of the public, it must at once be a vivid example of contemporary architecture and a benchmark of safety and security.

The writers at “Webmerica.org” have a complaint.
“The name Freedom Tower is kind of dumb,” they say. The “World Trade Center” had global meaning,” according to the site’s bloggers.
The World Trade Center was a crossroad for world commerce, a place where world-size problems were pondered if not solved. Agreed. But Freedom Tower, they say “just evokes that same, stupid naming streak that’s been going on ever since the creation of the “Department of Homeland Security.”
I can’t say I agree 100% but I must say they’ve got something if we’re talking about that God awful Homeland Security Department. An investigation of the blunders it has hatched in the short time its been around would reveal more than a troubled nation like ours could stand right now.
Was Homeland was really the best word they could’ve come up with? Webmerica asks. “How about the Department of National Security, or Domestic Security… just something to give it a little FBI or CIA feel. Homeland is pretty much the dumbest word they could’ve used … makes the whole organization seem like kind of a joke next to something like the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the National Security Agency.
So, now they’re doing it again, with the Freedom Tower… Do we really need the word “Freedom” in the title to know what it stands for? So, I will put forth this notion: We are not all morons! These names seem almost “Kid Friendly,” when they should strike fear in the hearts of our enemies, or at the very least, command a modicum of respect.”
Lets be clear about this business of striking fear in our enemies, no one with an ounce of integrity is afraid of that big bad wolf America. And no American has a dog in that fight either. That approach has already cost of more then we can afford to squander.

SEVEN WORLD TRADE CENTER

What goes around, comes around. Last summer a rather big deal lease prloposal with a Chinese company to occupy space at the Freedom Tower soured, then fell through. Well, it seems the deals back on the table. If the new deal takes rooot, Beijing Vantone Real Estate would be the first private tenant to sign a long term lease to move into the Freedom Tower. Six months ago, the company lost a bid to obtain space in the recently completed 7 World Trade Center, according to the New York Post. Woed downtown is that the company is looking to lease one million square feet of space in the Freedom Tower.
The company is reportedly talking to the Port Authority now but the PA isn’ty talking. Vantone had tried to lease the top five floors of 7 World Trade Center but World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein pulled out of the deal because financing fell apart.,” the post said.
This is good news for the PA if the firm comes through with the money and enough financing because the only other tenants so far are state and federal agencies.

A guy calling himself a “gay conservative liberal” has lots to say about construction of the Freedom Tower and all of the hoopla surrounding it.
What irks me most about the Freedom Tower is the arrogance behind the project,” he says “– we’re not showing the world anything by building an even taller edifice downtown, we’re just waving the red flag in front of the bull. Five years after thousands of people were wiped from existence it’s become our city’s prerogative to account for all the deaths in dollars and cents. Which means that this very pricey bit of real estate, which is now a cemetery, has to be repurposed and every last person who lost a loved one there needs to be placated with hollow praise and the drone of a bagpipe.

Some simple-minded people might gasp and tear up at the thought of steel, glass and copy machines soaring 1,776 feet into the heavens, ever closer to their departed loved ones. I find it sickening and audacious. But predictable. Given our heady times, when our government seems hell bent on winning an un-winnable war, it’s small, empty “victories” like these that emphasize, oh what is it, “the resilience of the American spirit” and bla bla bla.”

Two decals reading “Freedom Tower” and two U.S. flags adorned the first steel columns to rise again at the site of the fallen World Trade Center today. The steel columns went up, hoisted by steel workers at Ground Zero today. The beam was up days ago but had to come down again when it was noticed that an American flag decal had the stars flying on the wrong side. The decals are now upright and the stars and stripes are where they are supposed to be, according to federal regulations. This small glitch was just one of the many minor stumbling blocks that began five years ago when developers unveiled plans to erect the Freedom Tower. No one can say they aren’t trying their best to get it right. No one!

The promises are Gargantuan. The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled plans last fall to change the skyline of the world’s greatest city. The headliner in these plans of course is the Freedom Tower. Rising 1,776 feet tall, the Tower is just one of a magnificent array of new buildings that will rise at the 16-acre site of the old World Trade Center. Construction is continuing, slowly, but steadily. Scores of trucks come and go from the site, some pouring concrete for the base structure of the Tower, others hauling away yards of debris to be shifted through for more remains. Out with the old, in with the new. It’s a balancing act that measures the need for closure at the site of the worse disaster in American history and the reconstruction of a memorial and monument to the very same disaster that created the 16-acre site more than five years ago.