Construction continues on several projects at the World Trade Center site and officials are hoping to soon reach an agreement to ensure the progress continues.
Some of the W.T.C. Memorial plaza is scheduled to open by 2011 on the tenth anniversary of the attacks. The memorial will include two reflecting pools at the footprints of the Twin Tower sites, one of which is visible in the top right photo. The memorial will also have the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 attack as well as the six killed on Feb. 26, 1993 in the World Trade Center bombing. About 95 percent of the memorial’s steel has already been installed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is overseeing the construction for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
The Port, which owns the W.T.C., is building One World Trade Center, also called the Freedom Tower because of its symbolic height of 1,776 feet. Last month the tower passed 200 feet. It is expected to be finished in 2013. The authority is also building the $3 billion W.T.C. transit hub designed by Santiago Calatrava, which could be finished in 2014, bottom.
Silverstein Properties, the site’s main office developer, is currently building Tower 4 at the southwest corner of the site, top left, and hopes to be able to begin construction on a second tower this year. The current completion date for Tower 4 is 2012. The firm signed a 99-year lease for the Twin Towers a few weeks before they were demolished.
Silverstein and the Port have been locked in a dispute for more than a year over how to finance the rest of the office construction. Facing a deadline from an arbitration panel two weeks ago, the sides released a joint statement with the mayor and two state governors saying the talks were proceeding well.
