Archived Articles

Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

Global Real Estate Project
News Index

Directories
  Int'l Realty
  US Realty

Several teams from around the world have presented this week once again their ideas for rebuilding the 16-acre site, known as the place where once stood the World Trade Center in New York. This time like earlier in July the most serious concern of the architects was how to accommodate the idea of rebuilding millions of sq.feet of office space with the fact that this would be also a memorial for thousands of innocent victims.

Most observers praised the plans as being better than the six proposals presented in July. Some argued that all the plans were ridiculously derivative of other works; that they were looking to the past, not to the future. In fact, four of the present designs suggest building new tower(s) even taller than the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the world's tallest skyscrapers. That's completely different from the summer session when most projects were the half size of the destroyed structures on 9/11.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, will make a final decision on a plan by February 2003. Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease on the site's office space, will also be consulted, but the construction won't begin before 2007-2008.

Why choosing the new design for Lower Manhattan is so difficult? Mainly because the site is limited by size to reflect all the ideas about how it would look like. On the one hand, it has to include a memorial. Some people that have lost their loved ones even suggest that this site should be exclusively dedicated to a memorial. Such radical approach can be understood but finally it will hardly prevail. There will be a memorial, but it won't stand alone.

On the other hand, there are financial interests insisting on building as much as possible office and retail space. This will obviously strike with the idea to dedicate as much as possible space for the memorial.

There are more "buts" that further complicate the plans for rebuilding Lower Manhattan. The city population, every human being that has even once taken a look at the NYC skyline remembers the old WTC. Every new idea, every new project has to compete not only with the other plans, but also with the public memory.

Just after the 9/11 some people believed the new buildings on "the ground zero" would have to be smaller than the original WTC in order to avoid the new terrorist strikes. Then I thought that this would be an ideal gift for Osama bin Laden, because it would show that it was he who finally decided how tall Americans should build their cities.

Then I suddenly recalled something I had read about the Israel-Arab war in 1973. In the first days of the war the Arab governments claimed to have brought down tens of Israeli planes. It seemed that Israel was losing the propaganda war. Then Ronald Reagan, a man with a huge dose of common sense, proposed the following idea: the United States would deliver to Israel one plane to replace any plane Arabs have claimed to shot down. That was the end of the propaganda war.

The same decision, I think, could be applied to the new WTC buildings. They could even be the same kind of structures as the old skyscrapers with just one additional floor. This will be a signal to anyone in the world that every new strike will make America stronger and taller, that finally the Americans, not the terrorists, will decide what Lower Manhattan will look like.

One of the projects for the rebuilding of the WTC.

--------------------

See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Manhattan, New York City.