The rebuilding of the World Trade Center complex is still in progress, two decades after it was destroyed by the Sept. 11 attacks.
Two planned skyscrapers, a performing arts center and a church are still unfinished at the site, which plays host Saturday to the annual ceremony honoring nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks.
The commemoration site will not feel like a construction zone to visitors, but it will still have the feeling of one.
In 2011, the memorial plaza was opened with its twin reflecting pools. The memorial plaza with its twin reflecting pools opened in 2011. Three more glassy towers were built to replace the ones that were destroyed in the attack and are now open.
However, cranes and construction fencing can still be seen on the site. This is the final product:
2 WORLD TRADE CENTER
2 World Trade Center is planned to be the tallest skyscraper on the site and could eventually reach 80 stories. The Trade Center site’s northeast corner is covered in colorful graffiti-style murals, so for now, a stump of a building serves as a placeholder.
Developer Larry Silverstein has said he wants to sign an anchor tenant for the tower before starting construction.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic emptying out office buildings, the now-90-year-old says he is confident a tenant will be found so the Norman Foster -designed tower can be built in his lifetime.
Silverstein stated in an email that “at the end of the day my goal is to shovel the earth as soon as possible and complete the rebuilding projects we started 20 years back.”
PERFORMING ARTS CCENTER
The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center, which is currently under construction to the west and future location of 2 World Trade Center, is expected to open in 2023.
While a performance center was part of World Trade Center master planner Daniel Libeskind’s original scheme, disputes over its budget and design threatened its viability in the years after Frank Gehry and the Norwegian firm Snohetta were tapped to design it in 2004.
Joshua Prince-Ramus, of Rex Architecture P.C., was announced by the center’s leaders in 2015. plus the firm Davis Brody Bond, who have designed a translucent glass and marble cube.
The arts center’s top-floor will be home to a flexible collection of spaces that can all be reconfigured into theaters for music, drama, and film. A small stage will be available on the lobby level for free performances.
Leslie Koch, president of the center, stated that all components are automated so the walls, floors, and seats can move.
Perelman, a banker and investor, obtained naming rights with a $75million donation. The center will also be funded with $100 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (an agency established after the attacks to encourage redevelopment). Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is the chair of the board and a donor.
GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH
Construction of the St. After years of delays, the construction of the St.
The building, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, is going up near the southeast corner of ground zero and will look down on the memorial plaza from a perch atop another building that holds the entrance to the World Trade Center’s underground garage.
The church, which is expected to be completed next year in the midst of a small park, features a Byzantine-style dome with marble cladding and can be lit from the inside.
First, the project was delayed due to a dispute about the location of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and New Jersey’s Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Then, project costs soared and construction halted in late 2017 after the archdiocese fell behind on payments.
A new entity, Friends of St. Nicholas, led by a core of wealthy Greek Americans, assumed management on behalf of the archdiocese and raised the remaining funds. Construction was resumed in August 2020 with estimated final costs of $85 million.
The archdiocese will hold a lighting ceremony at the unfinished building on September 10, 2010.
5 WORLD TRADE COUNTER
Construction has yet to begin on the tower that will replace an office building, occupied by Deutsche Bank, that was was damaged and contaminated by debris from the collapsing twin towers. Between 2007 and 2011, the original building was demolished. This job came with its own tragedy. Two firefighters were killed in the fire that occurred in 2007.
In recent years, the LMDC and Port Authority of New York & New Jersey chose a partnership between Brookfield Properties and Silverstein Properties for the development of the land. It will be a 900-foot tower (270-meters) with office and retail space. There will also be 1,325 apartments.
Dara McQuillan, Silverstein Properties’ marketing executive, stated that “if everything goes according the plan, that building should be completed within approximately five years.”
Plan calls for 25% of these apartments to be affordable and rented below market rates. Some residents feel that this is not enough. They want all apartments to be affordable.
“The universal demand was always that there be affordable housing,” said Todd Fine, a lower Manhattan preservation advocate. Fine described 330 apartments below market rate as “very minimal.”
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