{"id":342699,"date":"2026-09-10T10:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T10:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342699\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T10:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T10:24:08","slug":"lower-manhattan-must-go-on-living-25-years-after-9-11-otherwise-terror-triumphs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342699\/","title":{"rendered":"Lower Manhattan must go on living 25 years after 9\/11 \u2014 otherwise, terror triumphs"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some, 9\/11\/2001 is distant history. But for many families that lost a loved one, 9\/11 is \u2014 even now, 25 years later<\/a> \u2014 as present and immediate as yesterday.<\/p>\n

Early that morning, I walked to my polling place to vote in New York City\u2019s mayoral primary. Shortly afterward, we heard the news: a small plane had struck the World Trade Center. When we saw the size of the gash on television, my heart sank: I knew it couldn\u2019t have been a small plane. And then the second plane hit.<\/p>\n

Michael R. Bloomberg, the 109th mayor of New York City, visited the 9\/11 Memorial & Museum last month.<\/p>\n

Three Bloomberg LP employees \u2014 Peter Alderman, Bill Kelly and Paul Ortiz \u2014 were at a
customer conference at Windows on the World <\/a>in the North Tower. They never made it home to their families. Neither did nearly 3,000 others.<\/p>\n

The scale of the loss and depth of the grief our city suffered remains hard to put into words, but it is seared into our hearts. And it is not just the sadness we remember.<\/p>\n

In the dark days following 9\/11, our city and country came together like never before. We gave blood. We donated food. We volunteered. We prayed. We hung American flags. We thanked those in uniform. We attended vigils and funerals.\u00a0We all did all we could, though it never felt like enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cStanding at the Memorial and seeing the names etched in bronze, the reflecting pools set in the\u00a0footprints of the Twin Towers and the waterfalls that drop beyond our line of vision is deeply\u00a0moving,\u201d Bloomberg writes.<\/p>\n

That spirit of unity was unlike anything most of us had ever experienced. It was patriotism at its best: love of country in action, through service to one another. And it was a spirit I was determined to keep alive as I began the greatest challenge and privilege of my life \u2014\u00a0leading our city forward as its new mayor.<\/p>\n

When I took the oath of office, many wondered whether the city would ever recover. People worried that residents and businesses would flee and crime and decay would return. And the most pressing question of all hung over us: what to do with the World Trade Center site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some wanted the whole 16 acres to be a memorial. Others wanted cultural buildings but no commercial ones, while others wanted to rebuild exactly what had been there. After attending so many funerals and seeing so much grief, I made a solemn promise that the city would build a memorial worthy of the sacrifices of so many. <\/p>\n

The 9\/11 Memorial & Museum displays artifacts from that day at Ground Zero. Craig Warga<\/p>\n

But I also believed the greatest tribute we could pay to those we lost, and the strongest rejection of the terrorists we could make, was to bring new life and vitality back to the site, and all of Lower Manhattan, by reimagining and rebuilding in ways that would attract new families, companies and visitors.<\/p>\n

Doing that meant making room for all the proposed elements: commemoration, culture and commerce, plus a renewed spirit of community, through new housing, open space and a reconnected street grid.<\/p>\n

Not everyone agreed, of course, and we didn\u2019t control the site; the states of New York and New Jersey did, through the Port Authority, which had leased it to a private company, Silverstein Properties. We could not dictate what got built there, but we collaborated closely with them and we got to work on what we could control\u00a0\u2014 what happened all around the site.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the sacred ground of the World Trade Center, memory lives on,\u201d Bloomberg writes. \u201cSo does life. And so does the spirit that inspired us in the wake of 9\/11: unity, resolve and a patriotism that transcends party lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

We began working to turn an area that had long been a 9-to-5 business district into a 24\/7
neighborhood, with new homes, schools, parks, businesses and cultural opportunities. \u201cA downtown for the 21st century,\u201d I called it.<\/p>\n

As the years passed, we made steady progress that people could see and feel on the streets, but the World Trade Center site remained empty. Disputes among different groups kept arising, which kept turning into delays, which kept pushing out construction timelines.<\/p>\n

By 2006, the Memorial plan had stalled. Costs had soared. Design decisions became divisive.\u00a0And as people began to wonder if it would ever get built, donors stopped giving.<\/p>\n

Failure was not an option. We owed it to the families \u2014 and to the city and the country \u2014 to do\u00a0everything we could to get the Memorial and museum built, so I agreed to become chairman of\u00a0the effort.<\/p>\n

The Perelman Performing Arts Center, which opened in 2023, stands next to the Freedom Tower and the tree-filled Memorial plaza, \u201cbringing together culture, commerce, commemoration and community.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the first shows produced at the Perelman Performing Arts Center was \u201cWatch Night.\u201d The production followed a reporter who visits a \u201csacred space defiled by American violence,\u201d per the Center\u2019s website. Perelman PAC<\/p>\n

In the months that followed, the great team we assembled broke logjams, brought down costs\u00a0and raised money needed for construction. We worked with victims\u2019 families to resolve difficult\u00a0questions, including how the names would be arranged on the Memorial. And we set a clear\u00a0goal: open it by the 10th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Thanks to countless people, we kept our commitment. On September 11, 2011, families gathered\u00a0at the completed Memorial. Its brilliant design, by a city employee and immigrant named\u00a0Michael Arad, was selected by a special jury after an open competition that drew more than\u00a05,000 submissions.<\/p>\n

Standing at the Memorial and seeing the names etched in bronze<\/a>, the reflecting pools set in the\u00a0footprints of the Twin Towers and the waterfalls that drop beyond our line of vision is deeply\u00a0moving. More than 100 million people from around the world have experienced it, and many of\u00a0them have also visited the powerful and inspiring museum completed several years later.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s mission \u2014 preserving the stories of 9\/11 and honoring its heroism and compassion\u00a0\u2014 grows more urgent with each passing year. About one in three Americans are now too young to\u00a0remember the attacks. In the decades ahead, responsibility for carrying that history forward will\u00a0pass from those who lived it to those who learned it.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg writes that he \u201cbelieved the greatest tribute we could pay to those we lost, and the strongest rejection of the terrorists we could make, was to bring new life and vitality back to the site, and all of Lower Manhattan, by reimagining and rebuilding in ways that would attract new families, companies and visitors.\u201d Above, the restaurant Metropolis. Olga Ginzburg for the N.Y. Post<\/p>\n

In 2023, we opened the Perelman Performing Arts Center<\/a> (PAC NYC), a project we championed\u00a0in City Hall and that I have chaired. The center stands next to the Freedom Tower and the tree-filled Memorial plaza, bringing together culture, commerce, commemoration and community, all\u00a0in one place. Today, people come to the World Trade Center to remember, to work and to meet\u00a0friends and see theater \u2014 just as we had hoped all those years ago.<\/p>\n

On the sacred ground of the World Trade Center, memory lives on. So does life. And so does the spirit that inspired us in the wake of 9\/11: unity, resolve and a patriotism that transcends party lines.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, our country could use more of that spirit. And so in honoring the vow we made back then \u2014 \u201cNever forget\u201d \u2014 let us also remember, and share with the next generation, the full extent of its meaning.<\/p>\n

Michael R. Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies and chair of the 9\/11 Memorial & Museum and PAC NYC. He served as mayor of New York from 2002-2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For some, 9\/11\/2001 is distant history. But for many families that lost a loved one, 9\/11 is \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5301,113412,34583,75,84,83,57,12363,9,24,63,38438,58],"class_list":["post-342699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-9-11","tag-9-11-25th-anniversary","tag-9-11-memorial","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-metro","tag-michael-bloomberg","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-ron-perelman","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}