Five years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers, many New York City residents are wondering when they will see progress on the planned office tower and Sept. 11 memorial at Ground Zero. There's plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of opinions about the delays in construction of the Freedom Tower, now currently scheduled for completion by 2012.
MADELEINE BRAND, host: When Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans recently referred to Ground Zero as a hole in the ground, New Yorkers reacted angrily. But no one disputes the accuracy of Nagin's remark.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: In the five years since the 9/11 attacks, progress has been slow at Ground Zero. NPR's Mike Pesca talked to New Yorkers frustrated with the pace of rebuilding.</s>MIKE PESCA: Yesterday was a brilliant afternoon here in New York as residents lounged and jogged through a strip of grass off the West Side highway called Hudson River Park.</s>MIKE PESCA: Five years earlier would have been the last afternoon you could have seen the Twin Towers looming over this vantage point. It was made famous in news stories when a dust cloud bellowed through here after the buildings collapsed.</s>MIKE PESCA: There's still nothing built where the towers stood. And some people are laying blame. Marion Collins(ph) is from Scotland, but after more than two decades here, she's acquired the bluntness of a New Yorker.</s>Ms. MARION COLLINS (New York Resident): Well, I think Pataki's a waste of space, don't you? I mean, he's done - I don't see what he's done.</s>MIKE PESCA: Some New Yorkers just say politics is tough and building is complicated. But many were like Alice Albrecht(ph) and Peggy McCullough(ph) of Queens. They largely absolved Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but blamed Governor George Pataki for the delays.</s>Ms. ALICE ALBRECHT (New York Resident): If anybody, it should be the governor. You know, he should have stood up a long time ago and said this is what we're going to do - you know, not just walk around and look at each other and say, all right, now what are we going to do?</s>MIKE PESCA: And the only relevant local politician who was there on September 11th, 2001 and who's still there today, Governor Pataki will of course come in for criticism. Rebuilding Ground Zero is an enormously complicated job. And so many players hold a stake.</s>MIKE PESCA: There's the leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Port Authority, the families, local residents. You could go on and on. And the planning and replanning has.</s>MIKE PESCA: But as David Dyssegaard Kallick - a fellow with the Fiscal Policy Institute -notes, all those government entities answer to the same person.</s>Mr. DAVID DYSSEGAARD KALLICK (Fiscal Policy Institute): There needed to be some kind of political leadership to round that up and to form some sorts of consensus and to really kind of move things forward so that you didn't get blocked up in the way that New York projects too often do.</s>Mr. DAVID DYSSEGAARD KALLICK (Fiscal Policy Institute): The obvious person to lead that would have been the governor. He didn't have all of the cards, and he couldn't just say, okay, this is how it is. But he certainly was not the obvious one to play that kind of leadership role. And the fact is he didn't.</s>MIKE PESCA: Yesterday, Bob Schieffer on CBS asked Pataki if he was surprised that rebuilding was taking so long.</s>Governor GEORGE PATAKI (New York): No, Bob. I'm really not. And you focused on part of the reason that I believe as you do that this is hallowed ground. And we have to act very respectfully and prudently.</s>MIKE PESCA: The governor went on to note that 30 million square feet of office space was lost five years ago. We're now two-thirds of the way back towards replenishing it.</s>Governor GEORGE PATAKI (New York): What we are doing at the actual site is being done respectfully. And this cornerstone is going to be the memorial. You'll see that rising behind me. But it's not going to soar to heights.</s>MIKE PESCA: But the Freedom Tower is to soar - 1,776 feet of defiance. Only many New Yorkers on the street say I wouldn't want to work there. David Kallick.</s>Mr. DAVID DYSSEGAARD KALLICK (Fiscal Policy Institute): It's a kind of, in my opinion, a kind of amity project for the governor because there's not a market demand. And Larry Silverstein doesn't want to build it and the Port Authority doesn't seem to want to be stuck with it. But the governor wants to get it done.</s>MIKE PESCA: It's a project that the governor frequently touts in speeches as he pursues the possibility of a presidential run. No Republican candidate has been to the state of Iowa more than Governor Pataki - 12 days spent there in 2006. He's also taken half a dozen trips to New Hampshire.</s>MIKE PESCA: To the historian Mike Wallace - co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of New York titled, Gotham - George Pataki's presidential ambitions are very much tied in to his Ground Zero vision.</s>Mr. MIKE WALLACE (Co-Author, Gotham): I think that if George Pataki had not been under the grip of this astonishing fantasy that he could someday be president, and therefore was going to tailor every move in this business to what would play best as a wet finger to the wind constantly before doing anything - we would have been far better off.</s>MIKE PESCA: In the past five years, New Yorkers have had to call upon their resources, including courage, ambition, and humor. The feelings are all right there on the newsstands today. The New York Post offers a glimpse of President Bush laying a wreath. The New York Times offers a 19,000-word story on the rebuilding process. And the satirical newspaper The Onion shows a current photo of Ground Zero under the headline, NYC Unveils 9/11 Memorial Hole.</s>MIKE PESCA: Mike Pesca, NPR News, New York.