Ground Zero construction making progress

On Monday, as news of the killing of Osama bin Laden electrified the city, a family member of one of the victims of the 2001 attacks came by the construction site of the Sept. 11 memorial and asked three ironworkers to mount a special flag.

Known as the "Flag of Honor," it incorporates the name of every victim into its red, white and blue design. The ironworkers were happy to oblige, to memorialize a special moment at a site that is much more than just another construction project to many of those working on it.

"Like the rest of America, the word vindication comes to mind," said Dennis Byrnes, one of the three ironworkers who planted the flag atop the entry pavilion to the 9/11 memorial museum, in an interview Thursday. "A lot of us worked down here when the towers fell. It's good to see progress, to be involved in something going back up."

The lower Manhattan site that President Barack Obama visited Thursday to meet family members is still a work in progress. But Byrnes, 54, of Inwood, said the major structural ironwork is pretty much done, and memorial officials say it is on schedule to be completed by Sept. 11, 2011 -- the 10th anniversary -- when Obama is scheduled to visit again.

"The completion date of Sept. 11," said Joe Daniels, president of the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum Foundation, "is an absolute, unbreakable commitment."

When completed, the centerpiece of the project will be the memorial -- two reflecting pools with waterfalls, each about an acre in size, set in the footprints of the twin towers. They are part of a plaza that takes up about half of the 16-acre Ground Zero site.

They will be surrounded by the engraved names of all the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks -- the memorial foundation just opened up a Web guide to locating each person's name -- set in a grove of swamp oak trees. The museum, scheduled for completion next year, will be underground, with access through an entry pavilion adjacent to the pools.

Today, it's still hard to visualize the finished product. The entire site is walled off by high cyclone fences covered with blue and green plastic that block off the view. From one of the few viewing locations, a footbridge over West Street, only the huge hole for one of the pools, a smattering of newly planted trees, and the flagged entry pavilion are visible. But Daniels said progress has been huge:

The pit left in the wake of the attack and cleanup has been replaced by a street-level plaza. The waterfall on one pool has been tested, and the second will be soon. Half of the naming panels for the north pool have been fabricated. Framing of the museum and atrium is finished.

For everyone from the executive suites to the machine operators working on the site, Daniels said, the events of the past week have a special meaning.

"They're the heart and soul of the redevelopment, and I think for all of us, the fact that bin Laden was out there was an open sore," he said. "The fact that he's killed brings a lot of satisfaction."

Sheryll Ingram, 50, of Far Rockaway, the hard-hatted forewoman of a crane-rigging crew who has been working at the memorial, seconded that view as she joined the throngs lining the streets Thursday to see Obama -- who "did what he promised -- to kill bin Laden."

And she had a promise of her own.

"This job is like no other construction site," she said. "I feel blessed being out there. I think it's going to be beautiful. Better than it looked before."

With Maria Alvarez