Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
Points of View
Ground Zero Lacks GravitasWounds, physical and spiritual, of 9/11 remain unhealed.I have just returned from Ground Zero, a great open sore in lower Manhattan. A con-struction fence girds an empty lot of 20 blocks -- that stretch from West Street to Broadway.Until Sept. 11, 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood here, the nerve center of a cluster of buildings to the south and east that constitutes Wall Street. Just to the west is the World Financial Center, the Wintergarten Theater and an artificial cliff that commemorates the Irish potato famine.Due north is the miniature Arch of Triumph that opens on to New York University. A few blocks away is Ludlow Street where my mother was born a century ago. One mile south lies the Battery and access to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.More than 3,000 Americans were killed when Arab terrorists hijacked, then slammed three jet aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Today tourists come and peek through the fence at what appears to be a great construction site. They glimpse seven stories of concrete, which to the untrained eye represent a foundation for a subway system. It doesn't take long to grasp the true meaning of the site.Tourists are accosted by hawkers who vend cheaply fabricated pamphlets on terrorism. The vendors prey on out-of-towners even though posted signs ban the peddling of such junk.A twisted girder in the form of a symbolic cross rises from the construction floor. Nearby buildings are draped with great rubberized coverings that fail to conceal the scorch marks that run over dozens of floors. Within the fence, near the southeast corner, authorities have constructed a shrine to the hundreds of police officers and firefighters who died 9/11. Real or imagined, there is a thickness of air and dust in the area.A great banner that promises to rebuild the center stretches across one building. Seven hundred windows in the atrium of the World Financial Center have been replaced.But there is a sense of incompleteness, a lack of focus to the entire complex. For want of a better word, it lacks the gravitas of a memorial. It is not the USS Arizona or the grave site of John F. Kennedy or the Iwo Jima memorial. Many New Yorkers, including families of victims of 9/11, have expressed reservations about plans to reconstitute the trade center as the world's tallest building (a symbolic 1,776 feet).They worry that the complex will invite attacks from future fanatics. There is concern that after all the grand plans about a reflecting pool with places for individuals to meditate there just may not be enough money to do the job properly.And there is growing doubt about a nation that, in the immediate aftermath of the assaults on New York and Washington, pledged itself to unity. Does that nation, which squabbles whether Nick Berg was "butchered" or merely "decapitated," have the will to achieve victory over terrorism?"