New York Times Special Report On Ground Zero Rebuilding

"Five years after Sept. 11, 2001, ground zero remains a 16-acre, 70-foot-deep hole in the heart of Lower Manhattan. High above it, a scaffolded bank building, contaminated during the attack, hulks like a metal skeleton, waiting endlessly to be razed.

The wreck that still stands tall and the pit that still sinks deep sum up the troubled history of ground zero. A site of horrific tragedy whose rescue and cleanup operation was a model of valiant efficiency, ground zero turned into a sinkhole of good intentions where it was as difficult to demolish a building as to construct one.

For all that has not yet risen from the ashes, there has been considerable sturm und drang, “like a novel, a cheap novel,” said Daniel Libeskind, the master planner for the site. The combination of big money, prime real estate, bottomless grief, artistic ego and dreams of legacy transformed ground zero into a mosh pit of stakeholders banging heads over billions in federal aid, tax breaks and insurance proceeds.

Only now, after a whirlwind of negotiations to resolve crises in advance of the fifth anniversary, is subterranean work substantially under way, raising the hope that reconstruction may proceed. Even so, many family members of victims are quick to point out that they still have nowhere to go to mourn their loved ones and only shaken faith that they will see a fitting memorial in the near future. "