A wide variety of reasons, including disputes over who owns the property and the fact that there are absolutely too many cooks in the fucking kitchen on this project, and a LOT of powerful emotions from families who just want the right tribute to their lost relatives, but of course, don’t all agree on what that should be - and that’s multiplied by a factor of about 2,800. Some of the buildings at the site have been replaced. What hasn’t been built is the Freedom Tower (and what a shitty name that is). There was hope that it could be done by September 11, 2011, but everybody’s now acknowledged that that’s not happening.
Some time after the attacks, people realized the building needed to be replaced. Personally I would have preferred a park, but I recognize that the office space is needed. So in time, major firms were asked for designs and one of those designs was chosen. That design wasn’t just for one building, it included the FT, a museum, the memorial pool and some other memorial/museum type structures. But several thousand families were involved and groups of them had different views. I believe some firefighters’ families thought the firefighters should be listed along with the people who had worked in the towers, but others thought they deserved special recognition. That’s one example. There were fights over how things should be set up at the memorial pool, the content of the museum, and on and on it goes.
Then there’s the FT itself. One design was chosen, but almost immediately, elements of it had to be reworked. It was decided that the atrium was too close to the street, for example, which left it vulnerable to car bombs. So that was redesigned into something that - last time I looked at an artist’s conception - looked like an unpleasant military bunker instead of an open, airy structure with a lot of huge windows. Elements from rejected designs were worked into the accepted FT proposal as everybody fought to get the bestest and nicest tribute for the group they represented. The overall effect made the whole thing more confused and crappier, and for the record the winning choice was not my favorite to start with. I think the whole thing had to be redone from scratch at one point, and I remember disputes about whether the big spire should be centrally located or somewhat off center.
Early on, but contemporaenous with some of that bullshit, the NY-NJ Port Authority got into a fight with Larry Silverstein, who I believe was the WTC landlord. He said it was his property, they said it was theirs. Eventually they reached a settlement, but naturally, it took a long while.
And THEN there was the minor problem of a lack of interest in the FT from potential tenants. The owners assumed demand would be huge, but actually, it hasn’t been. The potential tenants are concerned that the building is a target for terrorists, and they probably anticipated that construction was going to be much delayed and didn’t want that kind of uncertainty. Meanwhile the market for rela estate is less than great, if you hadn’t noticed.
And of course, none of the building could start until all the wreckage was carried away and everyone was satisfied that all the human remains had been gathered. More remains were found relatively recently, which lead to another search and complaints that that part of the process had been deliberately rushed through so construction could start. I suspect that’s at least somewhat true.
I think that’s a fair overview. The problem is not “America.”
