Rebuilt after September 11, Global Trade Center threatened with coronavirus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As the ruins of New York’s World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks, skeptics doubted that he would ever recover.

Today, as the 19th anniversary of September 11 approaches, the wonderful vision exposed after its destruction has largely come true, but the rebuilt world trade center complex is again threatened, this time through a microscopic virus.

“People are much more worried about coughing than flying a building,” said Vishal Garg, managing director of the loan refinancing company Better. com, which is headquartered at the 7 World Trade Center next to the site known as Ground. Zero.

After dual towers and surrounding buildings were destroyed by Al Qaeda hijackers, killing 2,753 of the nearly 3,000 people who died that day, Manhattan’s declining economy was devastated.

But a plan was born and a long metamorphosis transformed the crisis domain into a giant well, then into a walled structure site and, finally, about $25 billion later, a tourist charm and a shopping center with 3 skyscrapers, a transportation center, a museum and a shopping center. Monument.

The coronavirus pandemic delayed its completion, with a performing arts center under structure and a fourth and final skyscraper planned Six months after New York City began closing due to COVID-19, the World Trade Center and the other bustling monetary district are now unsettlingly deprived of crowds.

“It’s brooding. A little dark,” said James Busse, a stockbroker who takes a cigarette break nearby.

Ground Zero has a solemn memorial and a recreational destination. Visitors suffocated to the museum or the September 11 memorial can simply climb an esplanade of young people dining ice cream or visitors from outside the city admiring the glass-covered towers.

The One World Trade Center, the tallest construction in the United States, measures 541 meters (1,776 feet), built with a bomb-resistant base, with the former World Trade Center attacked in a 1993 attack.

The vision defined in Daniel Libeskind’s 2003 master plan led to a renaissance that diversified the local economy, in the past dependent on finance.

The public and industries have invested about $ 25 billion in rebuilding, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land.

“Everyone who comes to New York to come to Ground Zero,” Libeskind said in an interview. “It’s the medium of York. Es the great public space. “

At its center are two reflective pools designed through Michael Arad, which mark the traces of the position where the dual towers once were, with a pair of four-sided waterfalls falling on a walkway. The names of those affected are engraved on their bronze edges.

Before the pandemic, many visitors accumulated there, but one recent afternoon, a circle of relatives from Wichita, Kansas, was the only user of the South Tower pool.

(Graphic: Employment in Lower Manhattan – https://graphics. reuters. com/USA-SEPT11/SCENE/jznpnxqrypl/employment. jpg)

TWIN TOWER NOSTALGIA

Nostalgia in the Twin Towers grew after their destruction with so many innocent lives, however, they were enjoyed in their time.

Completed in the 1970s, the World Trade Center replaced a community known as Radio Row with an oversized block that contained the dual towers and nothing else. The site became known as a ‘windswept plaza’.

“The challenge with the World Trade Center is that it has never been so good,” said Carl Weisbrod, a former urban planner who worked on remodeling the new site. “What has emerged is a central commercial district that is now a style for the 21st century as opposed to some kind of ancient artifact of the twentieth century. “

The development of the new one’s plans has aroused public feelings similar to the attack on the United States, the loss of life, and the worry of running backwards in giant buildings.

Critics say the end result still lacks housing and laments the lack of direct rail links to major regional airports. Architecture critics have called the One World Trade Center boring.

But it is understood that, given all the complexities, it works.

“They did a glorious task by weaving it in the city, while honoring this sacred site,” said Leslie Koch, president of the resort’s Performing Arts Center.

(Graphic: Lower Manhattan Hotel Development – https://graphics. reuters. com/USA-SEPT11/SCENE/nmovaqbggva/hotel. jpg)

THE MOVERS ARE HERE

In New York’s fast-paced genuine housing market, costs rarely fall after occasions like September 11 or a recession, and costs are falling now.

Rents in central Manhattan dropped by 1. 4 percent in July, the biggest annualized drop since 2010, said Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy’s real estate database.

As of 2019, the neighborhood’s rental market has grown faster in the city, but stock of available apartments increased by 80% in July compared to last year, Wu said.

Guy Khan, banking director of a monetary company, said the recession was obvious around his home near City Hall, with retail chains and final mothers and neighbors fleeing to the suburbs.

“You see trucks moving every day,” he says.

Developer Larry Silverstein acquired a 99-year lease on the Port Authority’s dual towers for $3. 2 billion six weeks before September 11. He’s spent the last 19 years rebuilding.

In 2015, Silverstein predicted that everything would be rebuilt until 2020, but that will be replaced after the removal of the planned primary tenant for the 2 World Trade Center.

“Life is so unpredictable,” he says.

Silverstein and Libeskind, the main planner, see the pandemic as a pause in the rise of central Manhattan, and point out how predictions of decline after 9/11 turned out to be false.

“People said New York would never come back. And it’s the same during the pandemic,” Libeskind said. ” But I don’t. New York is too resilient. “

(Report via Daniel Trotta and Gabriella Borter; written through Daniel Trotta; edited through Dan Grebler)

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