Does downtown really NEED giant office buildings that will be EMPTY for years if not decades? The City should have backed bonds to buy out both the Port, the State and Silverstein years ago. The earlier commenter is right–too many government cooks. The WTC was never a good idea. Lower Manhattan needs better, faster mass transit connections and more 24 hour life to compete with midtown. Giant, sterile, windswept plazas with hulking glass and steel monoliths to replace the ones that were knocked down is not the solution. Never was. Pataki deserves a great deal of the blame for rushing to fill the space with Liebskind's daft, cheesy master plan. 1,776 foot tall building anyone? Give me a break! Most of his ideas were rejected anyway. So we get all the boring tall office buildings and none of the promised (fudged) light shows on 9/11 anniversaries or whatever. The good news is there's still time to rectify the mistake of some of the master plan and make more human-scale buildings on the site. I'm not talking walk-ups...but why not some hotels, apartment buildings and buildings that people actually will actually like? Sure this will cost money in the short term, but does anyone really think empty office buildings will help the city's finances in the future?

Are you kidding? With all the construction already underway, there's like 1.5 acres left for your hotel/apartment/awesome likeable buildings. I agree that anything is better than a hole in the ground but the die is cast and what remains are the warm memories of what could have been if Larry Silverstein, the PA, and bloody Albany were in the trade towers on 9/11.

larry silverstein- cheap sheister fuck, scumbag.

Larry made so much money on the Trade Towers being destroyed on 9/11, you've got to wonder if he didn't fly and crash one of the two jets while donning an asbestos suit.

If the port authority is serious about getting this project done, Silverstein must be bought out. I don't think he's being obstructionist per se, he's just trying to protect his interests, which is his right. Just buy out the remainder of his lease and let's move on ... all these delays are disgraceful.

Earlier this year, Dubai opened the tallest building in the world which they started building in 2005. What is taking World Trade Center so long?

Places lke Dubai and Shanghai don't have the massive bureaucracy that NYC has, the oil barons and corporate executives just give out the orders and their minions respond.

Here we have a series of conflict of interests with different parties.

Dubai uses slave labor: they import men from southeast Asia, confiscate their passports, and pay them nothing (carpenters make under $10 A DAY, laborers about $6). Don't like it? Sucks to be you since we have your passport and you can't afford a flight home anyway.

And the price tag? $1.7 billion. That much money gets you a latte and a knish in NYC.

One word. Government. You have the City of NY, the Port Authority, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. One Government agency cant do anything efficiently why do you think three will? The WTC site is the biggest advertisement for government inefficiency in America today.

Notice there has been one building up? That would be 7 WTC. Why? It was built by a private developer.

Did you know the Empire State Building was built in 18 months. Yes. 18 months. IN 1930!!

It is about government, but not the way people think. Dubai's Burj Khalifa superskyscraper and ultraluxury resorts were built by corporations owned by the government. That's the advantage of a monarchy. Can you imagine the fiasco NYC would be if King Bloomberg gave Bloomberg LLC free reign building NYC however they wanted it?

I wouldn't hold Dubai up as a prime example of responsible development. They went way overboard and drowned in debt when the economy went south. If not for its oil-rich neighbor stepping in to help at the last minute, that building and many others would be in foreclosure today. Despite what some think, Dubai is not full of "oil barons." Their economy isn't primarily petroleum based.

too bad. imho thats the best looking of the proposed towers. just put a park in there already. seems to me that there is plenty of unused office space around here anyway. maybe im wrong.

Suppose we forget the whole thing, fill the bathtub, finish the memorial and put some office buildings and stores there.

Because this dream of WTC II won't happen till we're long dead, if then.

www.forgotten-ny.com