Tomorrow, the city will remember the thousands of victims from the September 11, 2001 attacks during the annual reading of the victims' names. The ceremony will be held at Zuccotti Park (because of construction at the World Trade Center site) and the names will be read by family members as well as those involved with the rebuilding. A letter from Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg explained that relatives would be "paired with representatives involved in its redevelopment including architects and engineers, construction workers and administrators." And, as usual, rebuilding at the site is a theme during this time of year. Esquire's Scott Raab recently visited Ground Zero, which is a veritable beehive of activity, and wondered, "How come all these asshats are still calling it just a hole in the ground?"
The Port Authority's executive director Chris Ward told Raab, "This is the one that pissed me off... Newt Gingrich, on the front page of The New York Times, is quoted on the mosque issue: 'We're gonna allow the Muslims to build it within two blocks of Ground Zero, where we haven't built anything.'" Ward added, "We've done a lot — we've built 700,000 square feet below grade, we're building an air-conditioning system for 1.8 million square feet of public space. It's a kids' game of pickup sticks — they're tied together. You can't touch one without touching everything else." Here's a map of the site.
The National 9/11 Memorial and Museum is expected to open for the 10th anniversary of the attacks, but designers aren't sure how visitors will enter it. And it's believed that all other rebuilding—four towers and the Santiago Calatrava-designed transit center—will be done by 2014. Today, the Post's Steve Cuozzo calls out the enablers of the delayed construction.
