The Leonard Lopate Show

I feel disappointed – why it takes so long? Hopefully, we will hear answers today.

6 years and not even a tree as a memorial.

The politics, real estate and mone quickly dehumanized a human experience.

The whole idea of the Freedom Tower is a misguided attempt to erase the memory of the original World Trade Center while allowing developers to cash in on the sudden availability of space in lower Manhattan.

I believe that the day after September 11th, the President should have declared the site a national monument, to be preserved like the battlefield at Gettysburgh, the remains of the battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor, or the site of the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The import and impact of this event needed to be preserved in the fullest measure. Instead, commerce and greed are preparing to relegate the site of one of this country's most historic moments to a garish building which will in no way reflect what happened in any significant fashion. History weeps.

It seems to me the delay has to do with the site being a big tourtist attraction. I see as many tourists there as at Times Square. The city appears to be milking the site.

I agree with William but I am afraid that we are seeing this takeover throughout our culture, our professions, our government and more. I think we have lost out to greed, and it's really all over. Money is THE consideration everywhere you look.

I'd like to know what role Sheldon Silver has played in all this. He is one of the three people who makes things happen in Albany. This is his constituency, is it not? Clearly this was incompetently handled by Pataki and his cronies. Silver is an obstructionist -- he held up movement on the traffic plan. Why is no one delving into his role in this? It would be nice to think progress is being made now that Spitzer is in charge -- which your guests seem to indicate. I don't trust anyone to run this properly. Though I suppose it couldn't be worse than the original planning for the WTC back in the 60s.

would somebody please address the general topic of fighting major fires in the upper stories of very tall buildings? has the state of the art and/or local preparedness progressed since 9/11?

I was at Tower 7 last night and saw the presentation by Silverstein’s company to Community Board 1 on the buildings to be built on Greenwich Street.

Building on street grade level is an improvement over the old raised “super block” however a major disappointment for me comes from the lack of a public outdoor space that is for the community and the workers as the Plaza had been. The memorial should take the lions share of the public space, but people have and will continue to live and work here and there used to be public space for us. Where will the

The southernmost tower’s plan is not set back as it had been, but goes right to the street line. We used to have a farmer’s market there and there is no room for that now either.

Worst of all are plans for thousands of private tourist bus parking under ground with the only entrance for them on Liberty Street.. This is not Disneyland – let the tourists take the subway and city busses like the rest of us.

As for the comment about contaminated soil, I could see from my 8th floor windows as the soil was being dug at the south west corner got below brown damp looking soil to the unmistakable dry pale grey “dust” blowing around.

No plan will make us all happy but there is much room for improvement to this plan.

Our strength as a city is that we are not about the past, but about the future. If you want complete preservation of the site, do you also think that the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire should be reserved for a memorial of that tragedy?

The WTC site is an open wound. Don't let it cripple us. It's time for it to heal.