While the Port Authority confirmed there will be many rebuilding delays at the World Trade Center site, executive director Christopher Ward told lower Manhattan residents the WTC memorial will be ready by 2011. The Daily News reports that at a Community Board 1 meeting, Ward said the memorial should be completed by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but "accomplishing this will very difficult...You cannot build a memorial by forgetting its interconnection to the......

The Federal Trade Administration's head emphasized the alarm over the cost of building the World Trade Center transit hub. James Simpson said, "if the project is as advertised today, it's in the $3 billion." He added that the FTA is "holding the Port Authority's feet to the fire" to make sure the FTA's $1.9 billion grant for the project is spent wisely. Last week, the NY Times revealed the Port Authority was trying to cut......

Gorilla, by jenna bascom at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: A construction accident at 32 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, shots fired over the air at Meeker Ave & Frost St in Brooklyn, and an evidence search at 50-30 Broadway and 50 St in Queens Brooklyn Heights Blog has a great picture of the front entrance The Moxie Spot, a still-to-be-opened establishment on Atlantic Ave. The door comes in three sizes: adult, child, and pet.......

Tomorrow, the city and other organizations will mark the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Here's the official city commemoration:7AM: Families start to arrive at Zuccotti Park, where the ceremony will take place. 8:40AM: Mayor Bloomberg begins the program, which includes first responders reading victims' names and readings from NY Governor Spitzer, former NY Governor Pataki, NJ Governor Corzine and former NYC mayor Giuliani. Bagpipers and drummers lead......

Five days before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, developer Larry Silverstein released yet another round of renderings of the three Greenwich St. towers that will rise along the eastern edge of the 16-acre World Trade Center site. The final designs were unveiled yesterday at 7 World Trade Center. The buildings are scheduled to begin construction in January. The three towers’ new designs, described in a press release as “refined and more detailed......

Plans for a World Trade Center memorial continue to crawl along, and WNBC has a story today about the personal donations that are funding the effort and the memorial itself. $300 million has been raised to build a set of reflecting pools and a museum at Ground Zero, much of that money coming from a fundraising drive over the last six months. The story includes a list of top donors, and we found it interesting......

Today, Mayor Bloomberg met with the Bronx fire victims' families and later held a press conference about the tragedy, which is the deadliest fire (aside from September 11) since 1990 . The Mayor has been under fire for leaving the city yesterday - after a Thursday press conference about the fire - for a scheduled appearance in Miami, where he made jokes about "Mayors Gone Wild" in South Beach. In Miami, Mayor Bloomberg explained he......

We image Mayor Bloomberg had some talking-to with the new governor! A few days ago, Governor Eliot Spitzer dipped his toe into the dispute about how victims' names would be arrange at the World Trade Center Memorial. Spitzer said a "very public discussion" should be had to satisfy still-lingering unhappiness from some victims' families about the WTC Memorial Foundation's plans. The foundation, led by its chairman, Mayor Bloomberg, decided not to signify civilian victims' names......

Governor Spitzer is totally diving into the World Trade Center redevelopment. One moment he's proclaiming support for Freedom Tower (after pre-gubernatorial earlier grousing that it was a "white elephant"), the next he's discussing the naming scheme for the WTC memorial. The WTC Memorial's display of victims' names has been a source of much controversy for many victims' families. At first, the names were going to be arranged randomly, but then the WTC Memorial Foundation agreed......

We were happy to read in the NY Post that the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation turned down a $30,000 donation from National Collector's Mint. The WTC Memorial Foundation said, "We weren't comfortable [with the donations] because of the history," proving that even though the foundation needs donors, no one wants money from horrible companies trying to profit from the tragedy. NCM is the company behind those horrible ads offering coins made from silver "found......

Politicians believe more names need to be mentioned at the World Trade Center Memorial Museum. Assemblyman Michael Gianaris of Queens and State Senator Marty Golden of Brooklyn will be introducing a bill that would ask that the names of deceased Ground Zero workers be included. Jimmy Nolan, carpenter who worked at Ground Zero tells the Daily News, "I'm a carpenter who's now allergic to wood. I was there for my country and my city, and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: jumper down on the Triboro, an actor injured on the I Am Legend Set, and "white powder" at a High School on the West Side. Hide your wife: Prince Charles is in town this weekend! A documentary about young African-American kids and their preference for white dolls is stirring up some controversy. Why does the Brooklyn Critical Mass get police cooperation, while the Manhattan ride gets nothing but trouble?......

Families of some September 11 victims have started an advertising campaign to express their unhappiness over the planned naming scheme for the World Trade Center Memorial. Last December, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the names of victims would be grouped by company or association. However, civilian employees would not have their employers listed while city workers, like firefighters, would have their companies listed. The names at the North Pool will have those at Tower 1......

This morning, construction workers will be laying down the first part of a steel retaining wall for three towers at the World Trade Center site. The towers are the ones designed by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki on the east side of the site. The Port Authority is in charge of laying the foundation for the three towers by the end of 2008, and then WTC developer Larry Silverstein will complete the......

Officials announced that victims names will be arranged at the World Trade Center Memorial, instead of being placed randomly. WTC Memorial designer Michael Arad's original plan was for a random listing of victims. From his winning submission:The names of the deceased will be arranged in no particular order around the pools. After carefully considering different arrangements, I have found that any arrangement that tries to impose meaning through physical adjacency will cause grief and anguish......

+ An 11 year old in Jersey got busted for "carrying 234 bags of heroin and 111 bags of cocaine with an estimated street value of $3,450." + A man stabbed his ex-girlfriend's grandmother to death, stabbed another woman, and then turn the knife on himself. + A new playground dedicated to late Challenger astronaut and Harlem native Ronald McNair is opened - it has a space theme - "A climbing set is based......

This morning, workers will take down the iron cross at Ground Zero and prepare to move it to St. Peter's Church this afternoon. There will be a small ceremony for the cross's transfer, and St. Peter's will be its home until the World Trade Center Memorial Museum is open. If you're near the site, you may see a flatbed truck bringing the cross to St. Peter's around 2PM. WABC 7 explains the cross's history: "The......

The city must have many storage closets that escape notice. The city will release 1,613 phone calls made on September 11 by emergency workers and trapped people at the World Trade Center. As Newsday explains it, "The fire department is releasing these recordings now because of an oversight that occurred after a March decision by the New York State Court of Appeals to release all calls, according to a statement. A personnel error led to......

Just weeks before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency created to manage the rebuilding process, has announced it has ended its "mission" and will close soon. The NY Times' David Dunlap explains that the mission included "selecting a master plan and a memorial design for the trade center site; allocating more than $2.7 billion in federal grants, including support for downtown residents and businesses; financing park......

Hooray, the Port Authority has officially agreed to build the World Trade Center Memorial. Whether to take advantage of construction efficiencies or to just do what others seem unable to do (there's some advantage to being affiliated with the state), we just hope the memorial gets built at some point. But then there is the matter of the $170 million still needed for funds. Which is why the city and state turned to ad......

WTC leasholder Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority are suing comapnies for withholding funds which are keeping them from starting work on the World Trade Center. Naturally, in surance companies don't want to pay out, but to prevent the building of something as symbolic as the new World Trade Center sounds like a PR disater. And the construction union members rallied in support of the lawsuit - one carpenter told NY1, "The question everywhere I......

Almost two years ago, the cornerstone at Ground Zero was placed at the World Trade Center site. But now it's been moved to Hauppague, NY! The NY Times reports that the largely symbolic slab of granite was moved in order to accomodate the new designs for the space, as there's been a new Freedom Tower design in the meantime. Developer Silverstein Properties said the cornerstone "needs to be repositioned to make sense in the new......

Ever since one contractor estimated it would cost $1 billion to build the World Trade Center Memorial, it's been a downhill process at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Actually, it was probably downhill from earlier than that, but the $1 billion price tag helped prompt cover stories about the memorial mess, create more teams to figure out a solution, and lead to the resignation of the WTC Memorial Foundation president. Anyway, the WTC Memorial's builder,......

There's a fascinating NY Times article about the challenge of maintaining and organizing materials from September 11, 2001 as there's no official organization up to the task. The World Trade Center Memorial Museum is easily years from happening, all while there is so much information from the "best-documented catastrophe" that needs to be sorted through. According to Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, there may be thousands of possible collections. Some mentioned: - Camera......

The head of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has resigned, after months of controversy over the memorial's ballooning costs and lower-than-expected fundraising. To be fair, many of these factors seem to be out of Dykstra's control, considering how many players (we're tempted to say a cast of hundreds) bickered over the situation. The NY Times printed this excerpt from her resignation letter:There is general agreement that the multiplicity of authorities and the unclear roles......

If there's something politicians know how to do, it's to convene a committee! The NY Times focuses on how everyone wants new plans to bring the WTC Memorial budget down - there's that much agreement. But the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has one committee working on it...and Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg created another committee to work on ideas! Double the thinking, infinite times the resentment! The LMDC team includes the builder Bovis, whose......

With the rest of the World Trade Center redevelopment mired in a bureaucratic morass, the opening of 7 World Trade Center was greeted with joy, excitement, and yes, even praise for beleagured developer Larry Silverstein for actually building something. The festive opening ceremonies lacked Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, who had "other commitments," giving center stage to Silverstein who said, "We've come a very long way. What you're looking at today is just the beginning."......

The lawsuit trying to stop the building of the WTC Memorial has been thrown out by a state Supreme Court justice. Victims' families group was upset that the memorial design would not preserve the footprints of the World Trade Center, and said the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation didn't consult with them. Justice Shirley Kornreich disagreed, saying the LMDC "exhaustive[ly]" worked with other groups during the process. As the AP reports, Kornreich's ruling states, "[The agency......

If you want to be thoroughly depressed by the rebuilding process at Ground Zero in a matter of pages, versus a matter of years, Gothamist highly recommends reading New York magazine's cover story about the WTC Memorial and its architect, Michael Arad. It's an exclusive interview where Arad spill his guts about the process, but also gets worked over as one of the many egos in cast of a million egos and billion interests.......

- $500m spending cap for WTC Memorial? Not likely! - An 81 year old man was attacked and robbed in his Washington Heights apartment building elevator - Fox 5 went on the fritz last night - we think of it as slight justice for Rupert Murdoch effing up the channel 9 schedule - A Bryant Park webcam for those us stuck in our offices to envy those who get to leave - The skatebowl......