 |
|
||
 |
|||
 |
 |
 |
   | 
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pataki to terrorists: 'We're stronger than ever'Freedom Tower to be ready by 2010From Phil Hirschkorn RELATED
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSNEW YORK (CNN) -- Looking down on ground zero from an office 20 floors above the site, New York Gov. George Pataki sees progress. A few days ago he stood in the pit with other politicians including the city's mayor, the state's two U.S. senators, a neighboring governor and dedicated the first rail, a 39-foot, two-ton piece of steel fabricated for a future transit hub at the World Trade Center site. The train station by architect Santiago Calatrava -- a soaring design of glass and steel -- is a $2 billion federally-financed project slated for completion in 2009, a key year in Pataki's rebuilding timeline. If all goes according to his plan, that will be the year a permanent memorial is completed and the site's main skyscraper, which Pataki has dubbed the Freedom Tower, tops out at 1,776 feet. "All the government projects are moving forward as we anticipated," Pataki said in an interview at the state-city agency overseeing the rebuilding process, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. For Pataki, 60, a Republican serving his third and final term as the state's chief executive, rebuilding carries a message for the terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers four years ago. "We're stronger than ever; we're just going to continue to rise," Pataki said. A day after Tuesday's transit hub ceremony, Pataki joined memorial architects Michael Arad and Peter Walker to tag sweet gum trees on Long Island. The trees, along with oaks from along the East Coast, will fill a six-acre plaza encompassing "Reflecting Absence" -- Arad's design featuring reflecting pools in the one-acre squares where the towers once stood. "The memorial is the centerpiece of everything we do, and it will be very, very moving," Pataki said. "The voids, the absences, where the footprints of the towers stood, will remind people, will teach people, the magnitude of what we lost." Memorial disagreements continueHow the memorial will list the names of the 2,749 people killed in the September 11 attacks on New York and six people killed in 1993 by a terrorist truck bombing in the north tower's basement garage remains a point of controversy. So do plans for a cultural building on the site that will house the newly-conceived International Freedom Center, a museum that proposes a hodgepodge of exhibits on American values, from the Revolution to the civil rights movement. Hundreds of September 11 families again protested the plan Saturday, saying it would detract from the necessary focus on September 11. "I think the Freedom Center, if done right, makes enormous sense because we were attacked because of our belief in freedom," Pataki said. "We were attacked because we believe in freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to choose our own leaders, and freedom to worship as we see fit, which some find unacceptable and threatening." This summer, Pataki pushed for the Freedom Tower, conceived by World Trade Center master site planner Daniel Libeskind and modified by architect David Childs, to be redesigned, again, responding to NYPD concerns about safety, especially vulnerability to a truck bomb. A spire to achieve Libeskind's symbolic height remains on top, but it will encase a broadcast antenna and no longer resembles the Statue of Liberty's arm. Pataki said the tower will be "the most secure office building ever built anywhere in the world," with a 200-foot high, two-foot-thick concrete base surrounded by a steel skin. "The base, which is reminiscent of the Washington Monument, will be built in such a way that it exceeds embassy standards for foreign embassies. It will have redundant safety systems, and I would be proud -- and this is about as strong a statement as you make -- if I had my kids working in the top floors of the Freedom Tower," Pataki said. The Freedom Tower is slated to be ready for occupancy in 2010. Ground zero attracts an estimated 9 million visitors a year. "We're not building for next week, or next year, or the next decade. We're building things that we hope, stand here, for a century or more. The memorial should a place that, not just Americans, but people from every corner of the globe, come to hear the story of September 11th," Pataki said. "So we're not building for now; we're building for posterity. And we're going to continue with that aggressive timetable." Construction and deconstructionOn Friday, the governor announced that the long-awaited deconstruction of the black-shrouded Deutsche Bank building adjacent to the southern end of the site will begin. Scaffolding is being prepared to start dismantling the gashed and uninhabitable former bank headquarters early next year. At the same time in 2006, construction will be completed on the replacement building for World Trade 7, the last building to collapse on September 11, 2001. A gleaming 52-floor office tower stands in its place across the street from the northern end of the site. Realtor Larry Silverstein, who leased the trade center for 99-years six weeks before it was destroyed, is still shopping for his first tenant [in addition to Silverstein Properties] to occupy 1.7 million square feet of commercial space. Pataki signed legislation last week to help him. It will provide prospective tenants a $10 per square foot rent discount and a sales-tax exemption for purchases of office equipment to be used there. The incentives come up against the fear factor for companies locating at a site twice hit by Islamic terrorists and the glut of vacant commercial space in Lower Manhattan. 
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| © 2007 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map. |
|
External sites open in new window; not endorsed by CNN.com
Pay service with live and archived video. 
