NEW YORK - A new skyline is emerging over the void at ground zero, one that will reshape the future of Lower Manhattan and much of New York.
By Miriam Hill
Inquirer Staff Writer

Yesterday, developer Larry Silverstein placed the final steel beam on a new 7 World Trade Center, the first of nine buildings to be constructed on the site.

Seven World Trade, just north of where the twin towers stood, will be ready for tenants in early 2006, though no tenants have yet committed to it. The rapid ascent of the 52-story, $700 million sparkling glass building testifies to vast renewal at a site many remember as smoldering wreckage.

The only visible remains of the original towers in the gaping pit are four partial floors of a parking garage that workers are busily dismantling.

"I think it's going to be a magnificent sort of location," said John Cefaly, vice chairman of the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. "All the improvements that are going to be made are going to be paying dividends for a very long time."

Everything about the project is big, from the gargantuan personalities that have fought over its future to the 10 years-plus required to rebuild there.

There is Silverstein, so tough that he ordered his doctors to reduce his morphine after a car accident so he could complete the bid that won him the World Trade Center lease just two months before the attacks.

In the three years since Sept. 11, Silverstein, 73, has seized control of the rebuilding effort, putting his architect, David Childs of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, in charge after Daniel Libeskind won a contest to design the site.

The battle of the architects has turned into a brutal public-relations war. On one side is Libeskind, the black-clad European best known for his design of Berlin's Jewish Museum but who has never built a skyscraper. On the other is Childs, an American best known for finding practical solutions to engineering problems.

Changing designs

In his new memoir, Breaking Ground, Libeskind chronicles his life as a Polish immigrant to this country and his epic struggle with Childs, a battle that "recalled the orchestrated arrangements between North and South Korea at the very tense border at Panmunjom," he wrote. He also has sued Silverstein for $843,750 in fees.

In a telephone interview, Libeskind sounded more conciliatory.

"What I submitted was not the end," he said. "I'm very pleased that a year and a half after the competition, the plan has brought consensus to a myriad of stakeholders."

The Freedom Tower, the predominant building planned at the site, symbolizes the architectural argument. Standing 1,776 feet high, the tower will technically be the world's tallest building, although one third of the height will be contained in a spire housing windmills for energy. Since its cornerstone was laid July 4, construction workers have been excavating and installing underground infrastructure and the foundation.

Childs modified Libeskind's Freedom Tower design. It now tapers and twists, although the spire that Libeskind said mirrored the shape of the Statue of Liberty remains.

The tower's design is likely to change further as plans evolve, but for now it "is sort of an awkward hybrid of two different architects who didn't really want to work together," said Paul Goldberger, author of Up From Zero, a book about the rebuilding effort.

Family worries

The squabbling has often eclipsed the massiveness of the undertaking. The entire rebuilding project covers 16 acres. About 4,000 workers over the next decade will mold 60,000 tons of steel and 100,000 cubic yards of concrete into 10 million square feet of office space.

Questions about how the site will get built are equally large. Family members of 9/11 victims worry that because the Port Authority, which owns the trade center site, does not have to comply with New York building and fire codes, construction may be as vulnerable to any future disaster as the twin towers were - an assertion the agency disputes.

Financing is another question. Although officials in charge of the construction promise that a combination of federal funds, bond issues, and insurance proceeds from the disaster will cover the estimated $25 billion in rebuilding costs, developer Silverstein is battling with his insurers over proceeds that he says should total $7 billion.

Construction workers pulled off some of the most challenging engineering feats immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. With the Hudson River threatening to flood the site, workers drilled 100-foot cable rods into bedrock to support the slurry wall that kept the water at bay.

Those rods stick out of the wall in the pit, which is 70 feet below street level, giving it the look of a medieval fortress. On the south side of the pit, tracks where thousands of riders once rode PATH trains into the World Trade Center are still visible.

On the west side is a gaping tunnel that, compared with the dimensions of the mammoth wall, looks like a sewer pipe. It is actually a train tunnel built in 1909 and later abandoned by the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad.

A temporary PATH train station, where service to the World Trade Center site was restored in November 2003, lays claim to the north side of the pit. It will be replaced in 2009 by a steel-and-glass canopy whose shape evokes a dove taking flight. Santiago Calatrava is creating the design for the $2 billion transportation hub.

By 2009, the area will be bursting with people and buildings, said Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corp., which is overseeing construction at the site. Plans do not include housing, but that could change if people want more of it in the area, he added.

A Sept. 11 museum and memorial, which includes two reflecting pools where the twin towers stood, is to be completed in 2009. The Joyce Theater Foundation and Signature Theatre Company will have theaters on the site, in an effort to boost downtown's cultural life; architect Frank Gehry's firm was named this month to design the arts complex.

Gargano and Silverstein pledge that all buildings at the site will comply with New York City safety and fire codes. The Port Authority has signed a memorandum of understanding with the city to that effect.

"Each commercial building at the World Trade Center site will meet and, in many cases, exceed New York City building code - especially when it comes to life safety features, where we are going well beyond the requirements of existing building codes," Silverstein spokesman Bud Perrone said.

Additional safety features planned include biological and chemical filters in the buildings' air-supply system, extra-wide stairs to make it easier for rescue workers to get in and out, and additional exits.

Promises do not satisfy family members who lost loved ones three years ago. The twin towers did not have to comply with building codes when they were constructed in the late 1960s, though the Port Authority at the time promised it would comply.

Federal investigators are still trying to determine why the buildings collapsed after the planes hit. In a preliminary report released Tuesday, investigators from the National Institute of Standards and Technology said design flaws in the towers did not play a central role in their collapse.

Sally Regenhard, cofounder of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, said she feared that the memorandum of understanding did not give the city enough enforcement power.

"It's tantamount to a kiss and a promise," she said.

Philly