Westfield Pushes for WTC Retail

Westfield Group, the mall owner that operated the retail space in Manhattan’s World Trade Center before it was destroyed by terrorists on 9/11, wants to start building at Ground Zero, according to this article.Peter Lowy, Westfield’s global co-managing director, says that his firm has the money to fund the project on its own. “We could write a check,” he told the Journal. His firm’s plan calls for 540,000 square feet of underground and street level retail. Apparently it won’t be an easy effort, though, because Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein is supposedly against Westfield’s plan because it would further delay the development of his office buildings on the site.We don’t want to point any fingers saying who is right or wrong in this debate, but we just wish SOMETHING would get built at the site. It’s pathetic that this has taken so long. In this city we can get two baseball fields open on time, but we can’t rebuild a section of town where thousands lost their lives.