I've said it many times before on this blog: no one is going to report to work in the Freedom Tower. This is one of those things where we're going to look back in five years, if the thing actually gets built, and say: "What were we thinking?" It obviously needs to be an Eiffel Tower-like symbolic structure, not a working office building. Maybe if enough stories like this one run, they'll finally get wise:

Employees of state and federal agencies that may be among the first occupants of the Freedom Tower said yesterday that for many of them, horrible memories of Sept. 11 were still too fresh to consider a return to ground zero. Their emotional responses indicated that engineering a government-led reoccupation of the site may be more difficult than public officials recognize.

Comments

[Mikeachim]

Yes.
Both as a reminder of what was, and a back-of-the-mind reminder of what could be - permanently unsettlingly negative, if not low-grade terrifying.
And when some companies are now successfully selling parachutes for high-rise office workers....this has not healed. How could it?
As a political bombastic move, I'm sure it looked great on paper. As a humanistic move, it stinks.

[dorsey]

If we could point to a clear victory over terrorism, I think it might be a more reasonable idea to "get back on the horse." The problem is that no one has any assurance that the horse has stopped bucking.

[seamus]

Shortly after the war in Afghanistan, a Photoshopped graphic got emailed around of the WTC rebuilt in the shape of a hand flipping the bird. My thought is that the Freedom Tower design is, essentially, just that.

But, yes, who would want to work in such a target?

Additionally, all the time and money we're spending on the memorial (MILLIONS of dollars???) is a form of appeasement. We as Americans should stop celebrating death, build some medium-rise office buildings on Ground Zero, and move on.

[Bob Hawkins]

They'll need to give people offices with ball turrets and twin .50 calibres.

[Dave Munger]

I'd work there, if I lived in New York. It's probably got a great view, and it's got all the latest anti-terror safety stuff.

It's no more a target than the white house, the capitol, or any other prominent landmark.