9/11 memorial cornerstone returned to sender

From WCBS880:

A 20-ton block of granite once envisioned as the cornerstone for New York's Freedom Tower is getting a new home on Long Island.

Although dedicated at the ground zero site in 2004, the stone was quietly removed in 2006 and returned to the company where it was inscribed.

The stone was initially hauled away to allow for actual construction at ground zero.

Innovative Stone CEO Karen Pearse says now it's not clear if the 5 1/2-foot-tall stone will ever return to New York City. Rather than keep it in storage, Pearse says the company wants to give it a place of honor.

Giant cranes moved the stone on Tuesday to a garden in front of the Hauppaugue facility. It will be rededicated on Friday, the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

From the NY Observer:

...as the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 approaches and the redevelopment once again is tied up in delays and hurdles, it’s becoming clear that the site has fully lost whatever place it once held, perhaps to the point where it has passed as a political issue of any strength at all.

Not that there’s nothing to discuss. The more–than–$10 billion project is as troubled as ever—gripped by a months-long stalemate between the public-sector owner and its private developer that threatens to add years of delays to large portions of the project (some components are more than five years behind initial schedules) and hundreds of millions in additional public costs.

Yet with the city campaign season in full swing—normally a time when any and every public boondoggle is exploited by insurgents against incumbents—the World Trade Center has come up about as much as proposals to raise taxes on the poor: that is to say, not at all. Unions, which typically offer a deafening roar when the prospect of more work awaits, are mum, as are most civic groups.

The result is a situation in which there is little to gain for any elected official to stick his or her neck out and speak up on New York City’s biggest construction project, an apparent product of the issue’s tremendous complexity; a paucity of easy solutions; and the broader political and popular fatigue of a familiar story line (more delays!) as the years since 9/11 tick away.