Thursday, September 23, 2010

Larry Silverstein - The Builder and Creator at the 9/11 Site - We Thank you!

You thought some smarmy middle easterner was going to build a mosque near the 9/11 site? Wrong - he has no money and it seems it was all a gimmick to get money. Anyway of more interest is that they are building already the "Freedom Tower" at that site. How awesome is that! That's a stick in the eye of all those half human terrorists! Thank you Larry Silverstein - you are a hero! This article is at "The Intellectual Activist Daily" or TIA daily - put out by Rob Tracinski. Great site.

About a month ago, I linked to a good column by John Podhoretz excoriating New York's politicians for obstructing the rebuilding of the WTC site for nine years. But a few weeks after that op-ed was published, it was made obsolete by news that—quietly, while we weren't paying attention—there is something being built to replace the Twin Towers.

Various legal and political disputes have been resolved, and the structure for the new One World Trade Center—the pretty good design for the 1,776-foot-tall "Freedom Tower"—is already more than 36 stories tall. Follow that link for a few pictures of the construction in progress. But also go to the official WTC website for some very nice renderings of what the final project will look like when it is completed in 2013.

When this is happening, it's inexcusable that we're all talking about that two-bit con-man Feisal Rauf, when the real story here is the enormous achievement of Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC site and the developer who has devoted the past nine years of his life to a crusade to rebuild. He fought against self-aggrandizing politicians who tried to oust him from the project, against defeatists who wanted to turn the whole site into a memorial, against the little minds who wanted to build small. Thanks to him, it looks like the Freedom Tower will be standing tall before they even break ground on the Ground Zero Mosque, if they ever do.

On September 11, the Wall Street Journal published a terrific profile of Silverstein in which he described his motive for rebuilding the site. Silverstein is 79 years old and has taken this on as the last project of his life, in the hope that he will be around long enough to enjoy seeing it completed
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