Deroy Murdock: Ground Zero of National Paralysis - Rebuild the Towers, privately.

National Review Online ^ | July 04, 2008 | Deroy Murdock

[neverdem]

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July 04, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

Ground Zero of National Paralysis
Rebuild the Towers, privately.

By Deroy Murdock

In olden days, Americans needed just 13 and a half months to erect the Empire State Building, four and a half years to build Hoover Dam, and six years, four months to install the Transcontinental Railroad. And yet this Independence Day, six years, nine months, and three weeks have elapsed since September 11, and Ground Zero remains an 80-foot-deep international embarrassment for the United States.

The government functionaries who fathered this fiasco should yield immediately and assign private developer Larry Silverstein to arrange what already should have occurred: the Twin Towers’ return to America’s skyline.

The wholesale lethargy at Ground Zero became painfully clear in Tuesday’s report on the 16-acre site where al-Qaeda murdered 2,750 innocents.

Overall construction costs and schedules cannot be determined due to 15 pending “essential decisions.” Until then, “we are not going to set new dates until we know exactly where this project stands,” said the report’s author, executive director Chris Ward of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the public agency that controls the site.

Signature elements such as the Freedom Tower and September 11 memorial will be incomplete ten years after the 9/11 attacks.

Reported cost overruns are at least $1.23 billion, and rising rapidly.

Having floundered under the hapless “leadership” of former New York governor George Pataki and his distracted successor, Eliot Spitzer, Ground Zero still lacks an effective administrative structure, Ward said. “This has led to indecision that has resulted in significant schedule delays and cost escalation.” He added: “If a project of this size and complexity were being managed by a single owner, with overall control of the design and construction processes, it would be a much simpler story altogether.”

Right across Vesey Street from this shambles, veteran real-estate magnate Larry Silverstein produced 7 World Trade Center, an elegant, 52-story high-rise that glistens by day and glows by night. Opened just four years and eight months after 9/11, and now 75 percent full, it is this lugubrious spot’s only sign of hope. Silverstein’s skyscraper never hints that it stands where twisted debris smoldered for months.

The difference? Silverstein manages this project with limited government interference. Conversely, 19 bureaucracies — from Manhattan to Albany to Trenton to Washington — wrestle him at Ground Zero.

“For years, every public official yelled and screamed that no private developer should or could build on ‘sacred ground’ — that the Port Authority could do it more quickly and cheaply. Well, look how that turned out,” a Manhattan real-estate executive close to the Ground Zero saga told me. “With 55 years’ experience, Silverstein knows how to build, and how to find tenants. If Larry had been allowed to do what builders do, the site would be completed by now.”

Silverstein signed a 99-year lease on the WTC just seven weeks before Islamofascists demolished it. Nevertheless, politicians and pen pushers boss him around. So, they should make him this deal:

You bought it. You build it. You earn the rent from your tenants. We collect property taxes from you and commercial and sales taxes from them.

If you beat a mutually agreeable deadline, we pay you a bonus that increases the sooner you finish. Miss it, and you pay a penalty that grows the longer you delay.

Finally, restore the Twin Towers. Public enthusiasm for this effort will propel its completion. And it’s the right thing to do.

Such blueprints already exist. Twin Towers II — proposed by structural designer Kenneth Gardner and the late Herbert Belton, an original WTC architect — mirrors the sorely missed high rises. Its buildings comprise a 300-room hotel, 800 condominiums, 2 million square feet of retail, and 8 million square feet of offices. These 1,450-foot, safety-enhanced structures fit around the Freedom Towers’ foundation and feature 121 floors — 11 more than in their 1,360-foot predecessors. (Visit www.wtc2011.com.)

“Universal healing would result from people seeing these buildings rise once again,” Gardner predicts. “Seeing them go up could be as powerful as seeing them go down.”

“This is what people have asked for from the beginning,” he notes. “Construction could be underway in six months, if we summon the will.”

The gaping chasm that is Ground Zero screams national paralysis. Nothing more convincingly would signal to friends and foes alike the defiance of our Founding Fathers than to see the Twin Towers back where they belong — taller, stronger, and prouder than ever.

— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.

© 2008 Scripps Howard News Service

[goldstategop]

If the libs had it their way, America would never be built. What they've succeeded in doing at Ground Zero is a sign of what they'd like to see happen all over the country.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[garbanzo]

Overall construction costs and schedules cannot be determined due to 15 pending “essential decisions.”

I'm guessing "essential decisions" is a codeword for "bribes".

[Crazieman]

Rebuild the towers. Would be a better memorial than a $@#ing hole in the ground.

[goldstategop]

Its been almost a decade and there's still a empty space where there should be new buildings. National embarrassment, indeed!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Drew68]

Rebuild the towers. Would be a better memorial than a $@#ing hole in the ground.

Better a $@#ing hole in the ground that many of the gawdawful ideas that have been proposed. Freedom Tower? WTF?

Twin Towers II is the best idea I've seen by far. Build it now! Restore NYC's skyline.

[traviskicks]

A great article.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Put Donald Trump in charge and it would get done. House the UN in the thing too. Make the new towers bigger, stronger, and able to withstand an airplane crash. We must show the world Americans are not wimps.

[KingSnorky]

I wholeheartedly agree. Rebuild the twin towers but make them one story higher.

[supercat]

Such blueprints already exist. Twin Towers II — proposed by structural designer Kenneth Gardner and the late Herbert Belton, an original WTC architect — mirrors the sorely missed high rises.

I don't like the way the bottom columns "fork" into nothing. The forking of the old columns had a structural purpose; the new way just looks silly, IMHO. Also, I'm curious whether the new exterior walls would be as amazingly strong as the old ones were. While it's true the old walls did collapse eventually, they held up far better than would a more conventional design.

[Crazieman]

Twin Towers Alliance petition.

Technically not affiliated with WTC2011, but they're pushing for that design. I signed years ago.

[Diogenesis]

We must show the world Americans are not wimps.

Our leaders grovel, on their knees, to the Enemy,ever eager to sell out America.

[wendy1946]

There is an opening in the world for somebody to become the Andrew Carnegy of carbon fibre. We should be making buildings and bridges out of that stuff and not just arrows and tennis racquets.

[The Worthless Miracle]

That’s what I think. Rebuild them exactly as they were. No “diversity” oriented memorials, just rebuild it.

[Norman Bates]

I have always advocated rebuilding the same towers albeit with improved structural and security designs.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Donald Trump was right ( even though I don't agree with everything he says ) about rebuilding the Twin Towers AS THEY WERE.
I would go farther than just building it one story higher than the originals, build them as high as the numerals 9 + 11.. 20 stories higher than the originals.... they were 110 stories high ? build them 110 + 9 + 11 = 130 to honor the victims that day.

[Rumplemeyer]

Bribes are not the problem...allowing every two bit hack in NYC to put their fingerprints on it and accommodating all the single issue pressure groups...no to mention the lack of backbone from Governor's Patacki and Spitzer in NY, and Governor's “Fudge Pants” and “Crash” in NJ

[Quix]

PART of me wonders if all the fallderall is a function of some of the big power brokers knowing that NYC is going to be nuked in the not too distant future.

[traviskicks]

Conversely, 19 bureaucracies — from Manhattan to Albany to Trenton to Washington — wrestle him at Ground Zero.

Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.

[kbennkc]

Rebuild the twin towers but make them one story higher.

I was surprised there was ever a proposal do do otherwise .