>Thirteen years after the 9/11 terrorist attack , the resurrected World Trade Center is again opening for business marking an emotional milestone for both New Yorkers and the United States as a whole.
Publishing giant Conde Nast will start moving on Monday into One World Trade Center, a 104-story, $3.9 billion skyscraper that dominates the Manhattan skyline. It is America’s tallest building. It’s the centerpiece of the 16-acre site where the decimated twin towers once stood and where more than 2,700 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, buried under smoking mounds of fiery debris.
“The New York City skyline is whole again, as One World Trade Center takes its place in Lower Manhattan,” said Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that owns both the building and the World Trade Center site.
With construction fences gone and boxes of office equipment in place, Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend planned to walk on Monday into what Foye calls “the most secure office building in America.”
Only about 170 of his company’s 3,400 employees are moving in now, filling five floors of the tower, said Patricia Rockenwagner, a Conde Nast vice president and spokeswoman. About 3,000 more will arrive by early 2015.
The building is 60-percent leased, with another 80,000 square feet going to the advertising firm Kids Creative, the stadium operator Legends Hospitality, the BMB Group investment adviser, and Servcorp, a provider of executive offices.
T.J. Gottesdiener of the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill firm that produced the final design told The Associated Press that the high—rise was built with steel—reinforced concrete that makes it as terror attack—proof as possible.
“We did it, we finally did it,” he said.
>Edit: An attack on the civilised world
