As the rubble was removed from Ground Zero, thoughts turned to what would come of the World Trade Center complex. Millions of people streamed through the site before 9/11 annually, hundreds of thousands every day.

What would be a fitting memorial?

What would happen to retail space and office space?

What would Larry Silverstein do and most importantly, what would the Port Authority that owns the site do?

Well, for a long time, nothing got done. Plans were floated; the Port Authority hired Beyer Blinder and Belle, and they came up with six uninspiring designs. Outcry over those plans led to a design competition from which Daniel Libeskind’s design was picked. It wasn’t the best plan and in time only the master layout would be retained - Libeskind had no experience designing skycrapers. In his place, David Childs would go on to design the Freedom Tower - 1WTC. Michael Arad would design the memorial - Reflecting Absence. And notable architects would be hired to design the remaining three skyscrapers that would hopefully ring the site and the transit hub for a rebuilt PATH station.

The memorial is ready in time for the 10th anniversary; the museum will open in the next year:

Eventually, the entire site will be completed and will one day be a place for reflection and contemplation over what happened on 9/11, but it will also be a vibrant hub of commerce and transportation:

Youtube Video

I’m just glad that we’re still not staring at a barren pit, even as some families had proposed just that as a memorial (or relocating to the WTC site millions of tons of debris removed from Ground Zero and brought to Fresh Kills in the months following the attacks).

There was never going to be a plan that was satisfactory to all constituencies, but some designs did manage to find broad appeal, including rebuilding the Twin Towers (championed by none other than Donald Trump (and here)) bigger and up to current safety standards or Foster’s Kissing Towers approach.

Yet for some, the rebuilding and the impending memorial opening isn’t satisfactory. Some families continue complaining about the memorial design, including Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son Christian in the attacks.

Family member Sally Regenhard, a vocal critic of the memorial and of plans to store victims’ unidentified remains in a medical examiner’s office built under the plaza, said the memorial is extravagant and not what many family members wanted.

“It’s just an egregious example of waste,” said Regenhard, whose firefighter son, Christian, died on 9/11. “I have real concerns about the cost of maintaining this going forward, and I think it’s going to be problematic.”

Planners have said the memorial will cost about $60 million annually to operate. The majority of the nearly $700 million in construction costs for the memorial and an underground museum will be covered by private donations, they have said.

Regenhard said she would have preferred a “simple” tribute that displayed the image, age and other biographical information about each victim. She will attend the ceremony on Sunday, she said, but it is likely to be the last time she visits the site.

There are indeed concerns about the cost of maintaining the site going forward and no one has come up with a good plan of how to deal with it.

Proposals to impose fees are a nonstarter, but that hasn’t stopped some officials proposing fees as high as $25. New York or the federal government must find the funds to maintain the museum and memorial as a free learning experience to all those that wish to visit the site.

The museum will house objects recovered from the Twin Towers, including the Survivors Staircase, tridents that comprised the exterior of the Towers, fire and police equipment, and personal effects recovered from Ground Zero.

In the end, what’s important is that a memorial is now built and in time will likely rival the Vietnam Memorial in terms of emotional impact. After all, when Maya Lin’s memorial design was proposed, it was widely reviled as inappropriate for the Washington Mall and to memorialize and honor those who died in the war. Organizers of that project eventually included a more traditional statue to accompany the wall in order to secure approvals, but the wall is one of the most visited sites because of its starkness and simple design - a list of names of all those killed and it evokes quite an emotional response precisely because of its simplicity.

For the rest, see here