Politicians: Ground Zero rebuilding on schedule

With much work still to be done after nine years of rebuilding at Ground Zero, New York's political leaders nevertheless said Tuesday the giant construction project has defied naysayers and is on schedule as an important part of the revitalization of lower Manhattan.

"Though we have had delays and unfortunately we have had conflicts of opinion, we are now, we believe, on the road to a very great success," Gov. David A. Paterson said at a news conference inside 7 World Trade Center, the first structure completed by developer Larry Silverstein in 2006 as part of the project.

"We stuck with it through not-so-great times, but we stuck with it," Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia said of the mammoth project.

Outside the window, the 36-story steel skeleton of Tower One, also known as the Freedom Tower, was illuminated by brilliant sunlight. The structure will ultimately reach 106 stories and open in 2013, Silverstein said.

Paterson and other speakers who joined him, such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, acknowledged the project had been dogged for years by fights about design, financing and government budget crunches, as well a debate over the role of the memorial that will occupy the footprints of the fallen trade center towers. But with Saturday's ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks fast approaching, the mood among the politicians and other officials was self-congratulatory.

"It's a great day for New York," said Bloomberg, whose allusions to religious freedom seemed to serve as a reminder of the current controversy a the proposed Islamic center two blocks away.

"It's a political thing; it all came up in two months and it's going to go away on Nov. 4," said Bloomberg, referring later to rancor about the center.

Asked later about the plans by a Florida minister to burn copies of the Quran, Bloomberg sided with free speech. "In a strange way, I'm here to defend his right to do that. But I think it is distasteful," he said.

Referring to the Sept. 11 memorial, Port Authority officials noted it will contain 400 trees and the largest man-made waterfalls in the country when it opens on Sept. 11, 2011. The first set of 16 trees have been placed at the memorial plaza. Other trees are being cared for at a nursery in New Jersey. Below the plaza, the museum - designed to tell the story of Sept. 11 - is scheduled to open on Sept. 11, 2012.