A landing gear, from one of the airplanes that crashed into the twin towers, crashed into the building under consideration and damaged the building. It was a DIRECT casualty on 9/11. That makes it Ground Zero, by definition.
No it doesn’t. You are just wrong. “Ground Zero”, by definition, is the large 4-block-sized space where the Twin Towers stood. You can see it on this map; it’s the space between Fulton and Liberty, on the other Trinity Place.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ground%20zero%20mosque%20location&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl
That is where you can still see the footprints of the Twin Towers. There is a Memorial there. The hoarding still line the sidewalks so passersby won’t fall in the hole.
THAT is Ground Zero. That has always been Ground Zero. If you were a New Yorker, or knew anything about the place where this occured, or had ever had it actually be a meaningful place where you’d done business, met with people, ate dinner, or just enjoyed the view from the top of.. if you had ever had those Towers be a part of your life, somone who still looked for them every time they approached New York City - you would know JUST where Ground Zero is.
Perhaps the other buildings at the 16-acre Trade Center might be arguably part of Ground Zero, as they were considered part of the Complex and were destroyed that day(4, 5, 6), but aren’t considered Ground Zero. After all, the Marriott is in the complex, and it is *still* open. It’s not Ground Zero.
Some former clothing warehouse more than 4 block lengths away, no matter what fell onto it, will never be Ground Zero. Only the Twin Towers are truly Ground Zero, because that is where the people died.
As Wikipedia has captured the commonly -accepted definition:
“In and around New York City, “Ground Zero” is generally understood to mean the site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The phrase was being applied to the World Trade Center site within hours after the towers collapsed. The adoption of this term by the mainstream North American media with reference to the September 11th attacks began as early as 7:47 p.m. (EDT) on that day, when CBS News reporter Jim Axelrod said,
“ Less than four miles behind me is where the Twin Towers stood this morning. But not tonight. Ground Zero, as it’s being described, in today’s terrorist attacks that have sent aftershocks rippling across the country.[5] ”
Rescue workers also used the phrase “The Pile”, referring to the pile of rubble that was left after the buildings collapse.”