ground zero

What they were going to build wasn't safe, so they have to rethink the plans. Plus, a great deal of people just want them to rebuild the Twin Towers as they were, with extra safety precautions. It is a bit of a debate right now.

Kathleen could give you more details, as that is her field.

and what are they going to do with the landfill where all the body parts are? (I know the relatives of the victims wanted a park and that was nixed or something)

Right now the whole site is a political football. Supposedly a design was chosen and a cornerstone was installed last July 4th for the "Freedom Tower". About 6 weeks ago, there were headlines about the chosen design being "unsafe". Structurally it is not unsafe but now the people in power are looking at the securtiy of the site plan and saying that it can't be defended. One of the problems is that anyone who has any say in the matter has a different political agenda. So far no one is on the same page on the rebuilding effort and nothing will get done until some consensus is reached. The privately built tower World Trade #7 is almost finished. This has not had the attention of the press and the surviving families and therefore has been under construction without a problem since the beginning. Supposedly the Port Authority will move many of it's current employees to that location as most of them are still temporarily working in Newark (my husband included).
Here are just a few paragraphs from a recent New York Times article about the site plan:
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In addition to the Freedom Center, the development corporation has added an underground ''memorial center'' that will link to the memorial pools as well as to rooms for grieving relatives of the dead. More recently, city and state officials have suggested adding an information center at the base of the museum building to help tourists navigate the area, an idea that would be more appropriate in a theme park.

The clutter results from a tendency to parcel off sections of the site to different political constituencies, be it the developer, Larry Silverstein, the victims' families, or the cultural institutions. Notably, this has not been a bipartisan effort. Both Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki have invoked ground zero to advance their own agendas; neither of the state's Democratic senators has been invited to appear at recent news conferences on the site's development. And the Freedom Center is bound to be viewed by much of the world as a jingoistic propaganda tool.

What is missing at ground zero is a sense of humility. This is something that cannot be remedied by reducing the scale of a building. We should refocus attention on what matters most: remembering the human beings who were lost at ground zero, while allowing life to return to the void there. The rest is a pointless distraction.
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As I said - everyone involved has a different agenda. Until there is a defining philosophy not much will be accomplished.

Kathleen

I never got the thing about building a taller-than-tall tower Call me pessimistic but I thought it was a bit like tempting the terrorists to do something similar there yet again.

I think a park would probably be the best thing.

Personally, I would like to see them rebuild what was there. Not bigger, but just a safer structure. They were two awesome looking towers, that really fit the skyline perfectly.

Haven't heard much about that. They are too busy focusing on that stupid West Side Stadium and the Towers.

I know, I would have loved to see them, they must have been amazing. But I still think rebuilding them - even stronger and better - would be tempting fate.

I don't think that its a good idea not to build them just because it might "tempt terrorists". If terrorists are going to do anything they'll do it anywhere, regardless of what they do build there.

Each floor would have to be pretty high then, the ceilings would be pretty high, maybe 15-20ft for each floor.