A hole in the sky

Before the toxic dust settled Sept. 11, 2001, we had already named the spot where the towers fell. We called it Ground Zero, because the ground had been erased, and from the nothing, we would rise. Ground Zero was where the world had changed, and Ground Zero was where we would build anew. \nMore than four years later, the scar of dirt and concrete still mars Lower Manhattan. The statement "United We Stand" has devolved into farce now, as developers, politicians and bean-counters wrestle over the plans for the former World Trade Center site. \nThe current battle is a free-for-all between the Port Authority, which owns the property, Larry Silverstein, who owns the lease, New York Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who control the money, and the 9/11 families, who believe they hold some sort of monopoly on emotional capital. Other players have come in and out, and the current gridlock might yet be resolved, but the bottom line is this: Ground Zero is still empty. \nPataki placed a cornerstone for the new Freedom Tower on Sept. 11, 2004, but no significant construction on the site has been completed, save for Silverstein's new World Trade Center 7, whose 2.6 million square feet of office space have yet to find a tenant. \nNo one can agree on exactly what they should look like, though a number of trite and uninspired designs have been proposed. The final design for the ironically named "Freedom" Tower has a base like a bomb shelter and looks like it climbed out of "1984." \nAdditionally, the separate 9/11 memorial causes its own problems, as the victims' families find it unsuitable. The idea of looking down at two gaping holes in the ground seems unpalatable to many, yet work has commenced on the memorial anyway. Consequently, instead of building up, we're digging \ndown again. \nMeanwhile, the current hold-up concerns the funding for the project, especially the total lack of prospective tenants for 10 million square feet of real estate. Also, Silverstein stubbornly demands control of the project, despite not having the funds. He's got a right to be a little peeved. As soon as he picked up a 99-year lease for a piece of property, it was all destroyed, and he had to pay rent on a smoking pile of rubble for four years. But now, his desire to make it a good investment has stalled the project indefinitely.\nAlas, the slow pace of progress is expected in a committee-based governance of consensus. But for many of us, who wanted to believe that 9/11 stopped the squabbling somehow, the hole in the sky grows deeper every day. We wanted to fill that hollow absence with something, anything that would replace what was lost, but the bickering and the hole remain. \nI want so much to be angry at them, to scold and scream for agreement, but maybe all this petty bickering demonstrates just how difficult it will be to rebuild, and how woefully incapable any building is of replacing what was lost. Surely something will be built on the site eventually, and when it's finished, there will be much bickering then, too. \nYet no matter what is built, the gaping hole will remain, in the sky and in our hearts.