So, New York's governor George Pataki last night scrapped the proposed building that had been previously selected to replace the World Trade Center's twin towers, laying waste to about two years of work.
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/23780.htm
Can they just build the damn thing already? Or not, as a growing population of critics are pleading? There's been so much controversy about the whole bit - not to mention a likely uprising from the architects who spent so much time working on the first "contest" - that I think the project may soon become more of a nuisance than the glorious commemoration the city thinks it is erecting where one of the world's greatest structures once stood.
I'm not sure of this, but I heard that Ground Zero - a giant hole in the ground where 3,000+ people died - is now on top of the most popular tourist destinations. Is the city building itself a nice tourist trap for revenue-generating purposes? Per the Post's story, they haven't yet lined up a single tenant for the tower.
Not that the site shouldn't be memorialized in some fashion, I just think - after seeing models of the design finalists at the World Financial Center - that the architects are going after too much. Simplicity should win this contest, given its background and significance.