The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 186

More bone fragments have been recovered from Ground Zero as the expanded search of the area has gotten underway. The latest finds are in an underground utility vault not far from where the initial finds more than two weeks ago led to a massive outcry among relatives of victims to bring in the feds to search the entire area.

The bones, 1 to 2 inches long, were recovered on Saturday along a service road on the lower Manhattan site's western edge, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office. They were the first remains recovered from the site in more than a week.

Officials have targeted 12 manholes and other subterranean areas along the road, which they acknowledge were missed during the initial recovery of body parts after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. So far, workers recovered 199 remains in the first manhole and have found none in another manhole and a utility service box, Borakove said.

She said the manhole where the remains were found on Saturday is directly across from the first manhole where utility workers accidentally discovered bones on Oct. 19.

Since then, the city has ordered a search of the service road, another area near a subway line under excavation at the site, in manholes along dozens of blocks near ground zero, on two rooftops and at three buildings.

Borakove said none of the 202 remains has been matched to the 2,749 people killed on Sept. 11, 2001, although forensic experts have said the bones found underground are in good condition and could yield positive identifications soon.

Elsewhere, it now appears that the WTC Memorial Museum will not be ready as previously scheduled. Should this be a surprise? Nothing about the rebuilding within Ground Zero has gone according to any schedule. That means additional costs and delays. The memorial is expected to be opened as scheduled in 2009, but the museum will not be fully opened until mid 2010 at the earliest. So, how come the delays? Well, part of it has to do with the delays in deconstructing the Deutsche Bank building:

The delayed museum debut must await completion of a visitors center, which will provide access to the museum's underground exhibition space.

The two-phase timetable, which is hinted at in a new environmental analysis of the WTC site, was confirmed by officials when The News sought clarification yesterday.

"The memorial will open first and be followed by the visitors center and museum in order to coordinate with the construction of other projects at the site," said Lynn Rasic, vice president of the WTC Memorial Foundation.

Another wrinkle affecting visitors will be a delayed opening of the vehicle security center, below where the contaminated former Deutsche Bank tower now stands.

The first phase of the security center, which will provide parking for 28 buses, won't be completed until 2011, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said yesterday.

2009 will be the busiest year in and around Ground Zero, as construction at the Freedom Tower will overlap with the construction schedules at the other three planned towers at Ground Zero.

Meanwhile, Steve Cuozzo notes that the vacancy rates in Lower Manhattan are at their lowest levels since the attacks, and despite attempts by Bloomberg and Pataki to scare off businesses from coming to Lower Manhattan, they're still coming in droves. And much of the business is coming from private sector development, aided by Liberty Bonds, and not by the government projects like those at Ground Zero proper:

Welcome to today's Lower Manhattan - furiously renewing and reinventing itself despite years of thumb-twiddling in Albany and near-sabotage by City Hall.

One day last May, reporters and Wall Street types gathered on a high floor of the new 7 World Trade Center to hear public officials explain why Ground Zero reconstruction was so far behind schedule.

Yet, more arresting than the comments of the bureaucrats was a sight through the window: the ongoing rise of 10 Barclay Street, a 40-story apartment tower, a few blocks away. In the space of a few hours, while the speakers split hairs over Ground Zero's lack of progress, construction workers actually added an entire floor to the project.

The contrast between political paralysis at the World Trade Center site and the dynamism all around seemed an obvious metaphor for Downtown - a neighborhood spontaneously regenerating on every side of Pataki's Pit.

In the heroic zone south of Chambers Street, commercial and residential energy drives on, with little or no help from any of the politicians' master plans and "visions." (Yes, both 7 WTC and 10 Barclay Street benefited from low-interest Liberty Bonds. But that's a no-brainer: The bonds were federally authorized, all the locals had to do was allocate them.)

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein, mount sinai, respiratory ailment, wtc cough, bloomberg.