Still Much Work To Done At Rebuilt World Trade Center 15 Years After 9/11
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Sunday marks 15 years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and there have been many twists and turns in the long process of rebuilding.
CBS2's Dick Brennan went to ground zero to see where things stand in 2016.
At the World Trade Center site, the skyline rises one floor at a time. Fifteen years after the attacks, the work is still years away from being finished.
Three World Trade – falling short of One World Trade, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere -- will be open for business in 2018.
Construction has reached the top, but it is not over.
"The curtain wall is glass that's going in around the building to seal everything up," said Bobbie Grandone of Silverstein Properties. "That has been going up the last few months and it's going on right now."
It has been an agonizingly slow process watching the World Trade Center come back. Buildings One, Four and Seven are complete and Three almost there. But building Two has not gotten off the ground.
World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein said he hopes that building Two will soon get a new anchor tenant, after 21st Century Fox pulled out.
CBS2's Brennan asked him how many years he expects it to take before everything is done.
"I think by 2021-2022, we're be done," he said.
Silverstein, 85, noted that he would be 90 or 91 once the project is complete and hopes to see it.
He just unveiled plans for a long-stalled performing arts center, which still needs $75 million in donations before it opens in 2020.
The World Trade Center transportation hub opened earlier this year. The stores opened a couple of weeks ago.
Visually it is absolutely breathtaking, in what Brennan called one of the most beautiful sights you will see.
But it is still all about the skyline – pushing ever higher, out of the anguish and the ashes, for a new New York. It is a New York that stands tall and never forgets.
Silverstein said he is hopeful he can soon have an anchor tenant for tower Two at the World Trade Center.
