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NEW YORK (AP) – Two decades after its destruction in the September 11 attacks, reconstruction work on the World Trade Center complex remains incomplete.
Two planned skyscrapers, a performing arts center and a church are still unfinished at the site, which hosts the annual ceremony in honor on Saturday nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks.
Visitors to the commemoration will find a place that no longer feels like a construction zone, even as construction continues.
The Memorial Square with its twin reflective pools opened in 2011. A global trade center – the spire originally known as Freedom Tower – opened in 2014, as did the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. a underground transit center and shopping center opened in 2016. Three other glass towers built to replace those lost in the attack are open.
However, construction cranes and fences are still visible around the site. Here’s a look at the unfinished business:
2 WORLD TRADE CENTER
Planned as the second tallest skyscraper on the site, 2 World Trade Center, could one day reach 80 floors. But for now, only a low stump of a building exists as a placeholder, covered in colorful graffiti-style murals at the northeast corner of the Trade Center site.
Developer Larry Silverstein said he wants to sign an anchor tenant for the tower before starting construction.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic emptying office buildings, the 90-year-old says he is confident that a tenant will be found so that the Norman Foster -the designed tower can be built during his lifetime.
“Ultimately my goal is to put the shovel in the ground as soon as possible and complete the rebuilding project that we started 20 years ago,” Silverstein said in an emailed statement.
PERFORMANCE ARTS CENTER
After years of delay, the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center is under construction just west of the future 2 World Trade Center site and is expected to open in 2023.
While a performance center was part of the World Trade Center senior planner Daniel Libeskind’s original program, disputes over its budget and design threatened its viability in the years after Frank Gehry and the Norwegian company Snøhetta designed it in 2004.
In 2015, the centre’s executives announced a new team of architects, Joshua Prince-Ramus of Rex Architecture PC and Davis Brody Bond, who designed a translucent glass and marble cube.
When completed, the top floor of the arts center will house a flexible set of spaces that can be configured into one, two or three theaters for theater, dance, film and music. Free performances will take place on a small stage at lobby level.
“All the components are automated, so the walls move, the floor and the seats move,” said center president Leslie Koch.
Perelman, the banker and investor, secured the naming rights with a donation of $ 75 million. Besides this donation, the $ 500 million center is built with private donations and $ 100 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency created after the attacks to stimulate redevelopment. Old New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is the chairman of the board of directors and a donor.
GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH
The long delayed construction of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, replacing the only place of worship destroyed in the attacks, is now proceeding rapidly after years of delay.
Building, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, Climb near the southeast corner of Ground Zero and look at Memorial Square from a perch atop another building that holds the entrance to the World Trade Center underground garage.
The church, scheduled for completion next year, is surrounded by a small public park and features a Byzantine-style dome and marble cladding that can be illuminated from inside.
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 mall. Then, project costs skyrocketed and construction was halted at the end of 2017 after the archdiocese fell behind in payments.
A new entity, Friends of Saint-Nicolas, led by a core of wealthy American Greeks, assumed management on behalf of the Archdiocese and raised the remaining funds. Construction resumed in August 2020, with a final cost estimate of nearly $ 85 million.
The Archdiocese is planning a lighting ceremony on September 10 in the unfinished building.
5 WORLD TRADE CENTER
The construction of the tower which will replace an office building, occupied by Deutsche Bank, which was damaged and contaminated by debris from the collapsing Twin Towers. The original building was demolished between 2007 and 2011 – a job that came with its own tragedy. Two firefighters died in the building in a fire in 2007.
In recent years, the LMDC and the New York and New Jersey Port Authority have chosen a partnership led by Brookfield Properties and Silverstein Properties to develop the now cleared land into a 900-foot tower with office and retail space in over 1,325 apartments.
“We anticipate that if all goes as planned, this building should be completed in about five years,” said Dara McQuillan, Marketing Director of Silverstein Properties.
Plans call for 25% of apartments to be designated as affordable and rented at below market rates. But some locals say it’s not good enough. They would like all apartments to be affordable.
“The universal demand has always been for affordable housing”, said Todd Fine, an advocate for the preservation of Lower Manhattan. Fine called the 330 apartments below the market rate “very minimal”.
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