Nearly nine months after the horrific attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, Larry Silverstein, the developer and owner of the World Trade Center site, announced plans yesterday to build a 51-story office tower on the site of 7 World Trade Center, which was the third building to fall after the attack at approximately 5:30pm that fateful day. The new building, which will be specially designed to withstand a terrorist attack, should be completed, according to Silverstein, by December, 2005 – but according to Paul Wein – the building should never be completed – because you can’t build there, period.

In my opinion, there is no way anything should be built on the site of the worst terrorist attack ever committed against this country. While no attack is minor by any means – this particular attack changed the fabric of human existence – and forever altered our lives. Since that terrible day, phrases like, “after the attack”, “Nine eleven”, and “the first [or second] plane hit” have all become phrases that most of us use at least once a day. And not a day goes by in any of our lives where we don’t hear or see a reminder of the day none of us will ever forget – so how can you simply rebuild new buildings over the remains of so many people?

I understand the fact that the 16-acre World Trade Center site may be one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world – but it is also a site where more Americans lost their lives than at any other site on American soil. Not even at Pearl Harbor did we lose as many Americans as we did at the site of the Twin Towers – some of whom are still buried under the rubble – and some, like my friend Doug, who will never be found because there is nothing to find. All I know is that you simply can not build anything on a site that once housed the two tallest buildings in Manhattan – and now houses the souls of over three thousand innocent victims who unknowingly had their place of employment become their final resting place.

Take the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building – which on April 19, 1995 became, at the time – the site of the worst terrorist attack on American Soil – the Oklahoma City Bombing. And despite the fact that over seven years have passed and that Convicted Bomber Timothy McVeigh was put to death – the site where that building stood is now a solemn memorial complete with a chair for each of the one hundred and sixty-eight victims of one man’s blind rage. What do you think would happen if someone went to Oklahoma City with a multi-million dollar plan to rebuild the building that was destroyed on that awful day? I think we all know the answer to that question. So if the thought of building over a site where one hundred and sixty-eight people lost their lives is appalling – then how is it not appalling to build over Ground Zero?

I am well aware that the City needs to move ahead and show these terrorists that they will never win. But building over the souls of lost innocents is not the way to send that message. The way to send a message to the slimes that committed the September 11th attacks is to show them that the people we lost are so important to us – that we would forgo re-building what they destroyed and leave the site barren as a reminder that acts like theirs will never be tolerated – and never be allowed to occur again.

Or, we could continue this trend – and put luxury housing over Greenwood Cemetery.