Paterson Wants to 'Revisit' Ground Zero Rebuilding

Governor Paterson indicated he would re-examine the rebuilding effort at the World Trade Center site, where the billions of dollars of projects faced years of delays before moving into the construction phase in the past year and a half.

“We have to go back and revisit the issue at Ground Zero,” Mr. Paterson said at a breakfast this morning hosted by the Association for a Better New York. “As we stand right now, it will be September 11 of 2011 before anything is actually built, and estimates are that that may be two or three years off. We can do better than that, because Ground Zero should always be a symbol of our resilience and an engine of our downtown economy.”

The implications of this statement--and what it means to "revisit" the issues there--are not entirely clear as construction on the Freedom Tower’s foundation is already well underway (we bumped into its architect, David Childs, this afternoon, who said construction is going well), as is sub-grade work on the PATH station, and the memorial. Developer Larry Silverstein recently started early work on two of his three towers for the site, too.

As for the two- to three-year delays mentioned by the governor, we’ve got a few calls out and are awaiting comment.

Mr. Paterson also rattled off his commitment to a number of other development projects, signing onto the Second Avenue Subway, the East Side Access project that would bring the Long Island Rail Road to the Grand Central area, Moynihan Station and Governors Island.

A complete transcript of the speech can be found here.