Ground zero rebuilding still unfinished, 20 years later – KIRO 7 News Seattle

NEW YORK – (AP) – Two decades after it was destroyed by the 9/11 attacks, work to rebuild the World Trade Center complex remains incomplete.

Two planned skyscrapers, a performing arts center and a church are still unfinished on the site where the annual ceremony in honor of nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks will take place on Saturday.

However, visitors to the memorial service will also find a place that no longer looks like a building zone.

The Memorial Plaza with its two reflective pools opened in 2011. One World Trade Center – originally known as the Freedom Tower – opened in 2014, as did the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum. An underground transportation hub and shopping center opened in 2016. Three more glass towers, built to replace those lost in the attack, are open.

However, cranes and construction fences can still be seen around the site. Here is a look at the unfinished work:

2 WORLD TRADE CENTER

Planned as the second tallest skyscraper on site, 2 World Trade Center, could one day reach 80 floors. But at the moment only a low building stump exists as a placeholder, covered in brightly colored graffiti-style murals on the northeast corner of the Trade Center site.

Developer Larry Silverstein has announced that it will sign an anchor tenant for the tower before construction begins.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic emptying office buildings, the now 90-year-old is confident that a tenant will be found so that the tower designed by Norman Foster can be built during his lifetime.

“Ultimately, my goal is to get the shovel in the ground as quickly as possible and complete the rebuilding project we started 20 years ago,” Silverstein said in an email.

PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

After years of delays, the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center is being built west of the future location of the 2 World Trade Center and is scheduled to open in 2023.

While a performance center was part of World Trade Center master planner Daniel Libeskind’s original plan, disputes over its budget and design threatened its viability in the years after Frank Gehry and Norwegian company Snøhetta were hired to design it in 2004.

In 2015, the centre’s leaders announced a new team of architects, Joshua Prince-Ramus of Rex Architecture PC and Davis Brody Bond firm, to design a translucent glass and marble cube.

When completed, the top floor of the arts center will host a flexible series of rooms that can be configured into one, two or three theaters for drama, dance, film and music. Free performances take place on a small stage on the lobby level.

“All components are automated so that the walls, the floor and the seats move,” said the president of the center, Leslie Koch.

The banker and investor Perelman secured the naming rights with a donation of 75 million US dollars. Aside from this gift, the $ 500 million center will be funded with private donations and $ 100 million from Lower Manhattan Development Corp. built, the agency that was founded after the attacks to push ahead with the redevelopment. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is the chairman of the board and a donor.

GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH

The long delayed construction of the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas and the National Shrine, which will replace the only church that was destroyed in the attacks, is now progressing rapidly after years of delays.

Designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, the building rises near the southeast corner of Ground Zero and will look down on the memorial square from a pole on top of another building that houses the entrance to the World Trade Center’s underground car park.

The church, slated for completion next year, is surrounded by a small public park and features a Byzantine-style dome and marble cladding that can be lit from within.

The project was initially delayed by a dispute over the location between the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the commercial center. Then project costs skyrocketed and construction halted in late 2017 after the archdiocese defaulted on payments.

A new unit, Friends of St. Nicholas, led by a core of wealthy Greek Americans, took over administration on behalf of the archdiocese and raised the remaining funds. Construction resumed in August 2020 with final cost estimates of nearly $ 85 million.

The Archdiocese is planning a light ceremony on the unfinished building on September 10th.

5 WORLD TRADE CENTER

Construction of the tower, which will replace an office building occupied by Deutsche Bank that has been damaged and contaminated by debris from the collapsing twin towers, has yet to begin. The original building was demolished between 2007 and 2011 – an order that brought its own tragedy. A fire in 2007 killed two firefighters in the building.

The LMDC and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have in recent years decided to partner under the direction of Brookfield Properties and Silverstein Properties to use the now cleared property as a 900-foot (270-meter) tower to develop additional office and retail space on 1,325 apartments.

“We expect this building to be completed in about five years if everything goes according to plan,” said Dara McQuillan, Director of Marketing at Silverstein Properties.

25% of the apartments should be shown as affordable and let below market prices. But some local residents say that is not good enough. All apartments should be affordable.

“The universal requirement has always been that there be affordable housing,” said Todd Fine, a conservation advocate in Lower Manhattan. Fine called 330 below-market apartments “very minimal”.

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Associated Press journalist Peter Smith contributed to this report.

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