Fill the damned hole
: The NY Post’s Steve Cuozzo has, more than anyone in New York media, kept pushing officials to keep moving on building the new World Trade Center. Yesterday, the paper gave over its editorial pages to a sharp poke in the eye of politicians and bureaucrats who have let the process grind to a shameful halt.
While all eyes were turned to the fight over the West Side stadium, redevelopment at the far more vital World Trade Center site crawled to a virtual halt….
More than 31/2 years since 9/11, all the various projects for which designs have been approved and publicized appear bogged down to different degrees. The need to “start filling the damned hole” ó as one very involved, very exasperated executive put it ó has fallen subordinate to turf battles and bean-counting on all sides….
Now, insiders privately doubt that the tower can be completed by its announced 2009 target (itself a quiet retreat from the 2008 date that Pataki promised two years ago).
At this rate, if history is any guide, the city’s skyline will still have a void where the Twin Towers used to be, 10 years after the attack ó and maybe 15.
Just the day before, I came through the PATH station, as I often do, and I shook my head at the lack of activity there and at the scar of the Deutsche Bank Building carcas still standing. The only good news there has been the reopening of PATH and the building of WTC 7, which is now the bright and shining exception.
