I think this is the first year...

[Elok]

That I have logged on to Poly on the morning of September 11 and not seen a "9/11 never forget" thread. I suppose you might think this is a good thing, as it indicates the USA is healing and moving on, or something. On the other hand, the usual thread has been replaced by a thread about some jerkoff "minister" from Florida exploiting our national tragedy for a hateful publicity stunt. This is not an improvement.

Or so I think. What's YOUR opinion?

[GePap]

I guess that the usual thread posters are waking up late today.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm not likely to forget, as my office overlooks the big hole in the ground.

[KrazyHorse]

On cue...

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/192790-9-11-Rememberance

[DinoDoc]

Speaking of large holes in the ground, can someone explain why rebuilding has taken this long? I would have thought it could have been completed years ago.

[Hauldren Collider]

Politics.

[KrazyHorse]

They're building fairly quickly now.

The top is well above my floor. I'd say they're 25-30 stories up. Going at the rate of ~1 floor a week

We thought of it too late, but it would have been a good idea to do a series of time-lapse photos from our windows. From big, open area to tallest building in the US in 2 years

[KrazyHorse]

Of the people in my group I think only my manager was with the firm in 2001. Apparently they evacuated Lower Manhattan on foot that day.

EDIT: I guess technically his manager is also in our group, and was also with us in 2001, but I hardly ever talk to him.

[Guynemer]

Knock knock.

Who's there?

9-11.

9-11 who?

You said you'd never forget.

[GePap]

Speaking of large holes in the ground, can someone explain why rebuilding has taken this long? I would have thought it could have been completed years ago.

Money.

Weeks before 9/11 the owners of the land, the Port Authority of NY and NJ (PA), gave a $1 billion lease to a local developer, Larry Silverstein. After the attacks, there was a long battle between that developer and the insurance companies about the size of the payoff. Afterwards, the issue became what was to be built on the site. Since Mr. Silverstein signed the lease expecting to make money off the office space that was then demolished, he wanted to have a rebuilding plan that would be profitable to him, while the PA had political considerations about what was going to be built where. For a long time they have argued about the amount of public subsidies that will go into building the 3 other office towers on the site besides the hideous Freedom Tower, an argument made worse by the declining economy and the lower need for millions of square feet of office space.

[KrazyHorse]

I actually think the plans look quite nice

[KrazyHorse]

And it's "one world trade center" now, not "freedom tower" (thank god)

[GePap]

I actually think the plans look quite nice

Certainly, the plans are. Whether Silverstein can actually find enough firms willing to rent space there to make it profitable, well, that is the question. I mean, each of the other three towers will be a quite massive, with numbers two and three being larger than the Empire State Building (if not taller) and WTC4 being bigger than the new Bank of America headquarters. That is a huge amount of office capacity to fill.

[KrazyHorse]

He's already got one client taking half the space in one wtc...

[onodera]

What are the odds they'll fly the plane into this WTC as well?