[newwahoo]

I think this is going to be a big issue eventually. Sooner or later the city and the whole country need to have a serious discussion about what is appropriate. I believe the city owns the site, which is about 15 acres, but there is also a 99-year lease involved.

[NYC GOP Chick]

The mayor appeared to completely abandon his earlier dream of building a world-class office complex at Ground Zero

*Very* bad idea. Besides completely destroying the surrounding neighborhoods, it would mean that what the bastards accomplished on the morning of 9/11/01 -- the destruction of the major commerce center of NYC -- was permanent. It would mean that the shot they took at the heart of our financial center was fatal.

[anniegetyourgun]

The city "owns" it, but there's a "lease" involved? Can you explain this further? After the 99 years does it go back to the Indians?

[newwahoo]

For a while I wanted the towers to be rebuilt to be the highest in the world with the same basic design. Now I'mm not so sure. Can we really ever have people working in offices on the site of such an atrocity? Can we have a striking memorial and still get that beautiful skyline back? A massive empty memorial tower? I don't know.

I'm curious, now that its been a few months, what others think. Especially you folks out in the rest of the country. Maybe I'm too close to the forest to see the trees.

[eureka!]

I would hope that there would be a "Never Forget" (a la the Holocaust) museum, with all of those pictures and films that bring that fateful day back. It will instill resolve to continue the fight against evil for generations to come...

[Celtjew Libertarian]

I don't know if it would be a memorial or a new office building, but whatever goes at Ground Zero, should be big enough to be seen from wherever the WTC could be seen from.

Actually, if I had my druthers, I'd actually rebuild like that picture of five towers giving the world the finger, but I don't think that's going to happen.

[Tallguy]

but maybe not as commercial as Gettysburg."

Ok, I'll bite: What, exactly, is so "commercial" about Gettysburg? The town? The Park Service has no control over that. Does he think that some enterprising Manhattan entreprenuers might not try to take financial advantage of any memorial that Mayor Guiliani might envisage?

[Question_Assumptions]

Build four 50 foot towers. Put two of them in the same position as the old towers. Extend those two towers up to the 110 stories but as a framework filled with frosted glass etched with the names and (if the family wants, silhouettes) of those who died so that it looks somewhat like the old towers. Run 4 stairwells up each corner and a stairwell/elevator core up the middle to light it at night. Build a restaurant on the top of the one tower and put the TV broadcast antennas on top the way it was before. Build an observation floor and observation deck on the other tower, just the way it was before. Add window cleaning equipment like the old towers had.

That would put NYC's skyline back the way it should be. It would give people back their view of the city both from a restaurant and an observation deck, it would provide a platform for TV broadcasts and cell phone antennas (which could be hidden inside of the "hollow" upper floors), and it would be a memorial that you couldn't miss.

As for terrorists, it would still provide a target but, at most, hundreds of people would be near the top and not thousands. And with stairwells near the corners, it would be more likely that they could escape and there would be less to collapse. The big benefit is that you wouldn't have to worry about renting those upper floors -- only the restaurant.

[Arthur McGowan]

I like the idea of a statue of the firemen and cops at the site, and converting the dump across the river into a cemetery, with a view of the site, and away from the hubbub of Lower Manhattan. And rebuilding REAL buildings at the site. Land is too valuable to just plant grass there.

[lowbridge]

Mayor Tells of Dream For 'Beautiful' Memorial

Unless it's two buildings, each one at least 110 stories tall, I don't want to hear it.

[TRY ONE]

The Mayor Tells of a Dream .....

...Then Joseph said: "I dreamed that 7 beautiful large buildings were built....Then, out of nowhere, came 7 small lean, ugly buildings that ate the 7 beautiful large buildings...."

[NativeNewYorker]

The Port Authority of NY and NJ owns the site - it is a bi-state bureaucracy ultimately controlled by the governors of the two states.

The $3 billion 99-year lease was to the Silverstein property company, completed this past summer. The reason for the lease is that a formal sale is diseconomic under the tax code, but a lengthy lease provides cash flows analagous to a sale without IRS nightmares.

Current economic conditions notwithstanding, that is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world, given its location and transit connections. Leaving it fallow as a simple monument ain't gonna happen. Nor need its profitable, dense, living redevelopment be impeded or lessened by a memorial.

Plaques/statuary can pay tribute to those lost, and ensure they are never EVER forgotten.

But the best, indeed the only fitting memorial is to put as much life and activity on that site as possible.

Yes, the original WTC, as iconic as it is now, was always deemed second-rate architecture. And yes, it was not a commercial success until it was more than 10 years old. But given what we know now, a WTC2 can be a success both architecturally and commercially, while providing a suitable memorial to those who perished with the Twin Towers.

[bigjoesaddle]

A museum would be fine, BUT A BIGGER AND BETTER BUILDING MUST BE BUILT SOMEWHERE!

[hattend]

Put up a memorial at the WTC site and build a new, bigger, better WTC where the UN building is standing.

[Lazamataz]

The meeting took a serious turn when the mother of a cop killed in the Trade Center collapse asked the mayor "to give the [NYPD] cops a living wage."

A union scum who would clamber over the smoldering corpse of her son to spout the union party line? Good G-d. The left literally has no soul.

[LN2Campy]

how about a giant LOTTO ticket, since that seems to be the way this thing is playing out...

[LN2Campy]

I don't think emotions should control this issue (like the moronic knee jerk "we gotta rebuild it just like it was -- otherwise the terrorist win")

People forget that when first built the WTC was a huge socialistic boondoggle, and remained largely unrented for a long time. Some type of memorial should be built, but as for commercial development, let the leaseholder build whatever he thinks he afford to build with his insurance proceeds. This whole incident is turning into a disgusting pork fest.