World Trade Center's Liberty Park Opens To The Public
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Another piece of the World Trade Center rebuilding project was put into place Wednesday, with the opening of the brand-new Liberty Park.
The $50 million one-acre park sits 25-feet above the World Trade Center's vehicle security center. It includes the "Living Wall,'' a newly planted vertical garden, as well as a sapling grown from the horse chestnut tree outside Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam. The park is modeled after Manhattan's High Line -- abandoned railroad tracks that were transformed into one of the world's most visited green spaces.
"What's very special about this park is not only does it give you a very unique view of the 9/11 memorial plaza, but it's elevated," Catherine McVey-Hughes, of the local community board, said.
For almost 10 years, the hulking shell of the former Deutsche Bank building stood where the park now sits, serving as a haunting reminder of the terror attacks, WCBS 880's Peter Haskell reported.
"With the vibrancy and the life everywhere around us down here -- it shows that we won," Hughes said.
The park is open daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The completion of Liberty Park is just another step towards the growth of the World Trade Center plaza. On June 23, a topping out ceremony at 3 World Trade Center marked the completion of the $2.5 billion building's concrete core.
The building at 3 World Trade is one of three new skyscrapers that replace the twin towers destroyed almost 15 years ago. The others are the 72-story 4 World Trade Center and the main edifice of the rebuilt site, the 104-floor One World Trade Center that dominates the post 9/11 Manhattan skyline and is the city's tallest building.
A fourth planned skyscraper is 2 World Trade Center, the foundation of which was built up to street level several years ago. That's where the money also stopped, due to the lack of an anchor tenant that would make financing more likely.
As for the rest of the 16-acre site, there is the shimmering new Transportation Hub, with huge, white "wings" that Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava says represent the souls of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the 9/11 attack. The all-white marble underground concourse that crosses the entire trade center site is filled with shops that will also open in August.
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