I don't know. Most of his buildings are gaudy and ugly. I don't care about his personality, just about his awful, awful taste. Like this monstrosity, http://www.trumpworldtower.com/, or this one http://www.trumpintl.com/

Karol, it is my understanding he wants them basically the same, only taller. Which to me, 5 stories isn't enough. I say ensure they're back on top as the tallest buildings in the world by a margin that would prove damn near impossible to catch up to.

That my friends is the only fitting memorial to the lost and a huge 'Fuck You' to the bastards who think they can crush America.

Trump would be the guy to get half way through, declare bankruptcy, demand $50Bn more and hold the building hostage - "Big Dig" style. The guy is a sleaze, there are much better builders/developers out there - you just don't hear about them b/c they don't spend every waking hour in court.

Most of his buildings are gaudy and ugly.

Karol, it's because he is gaudy and ugly. I think this could work because a design already exists. Unless he wants to trim it all in neon or something.

My thought on this is that building a new WTC gives NYC the chance to build something modern, distinctive, and eye-catching, which the old tower were not. I thought the new Freedom tower at least had a futuristic and distinctive look, but it's design apparantly isn't actually that great. To me, two tall square buildings aren't really that great, but maybe Trump has thought of a way to make it distinctive.

As far as bulding World's tallest buildings, I don't think we will keep up with Asia or places like the UAE. They have the money, cheap labor, and more obsessions with it. See the Petronas Towers, the Taipei tower, the plans for Dubai, etc.

is it Kendra, then?

THose two both should've been fired. morons. I had hopes for the old mary kay chick, but she just bombed under pressure. should've kept the hot brunette lawyer around

should've kept the hot brunette lawyer around

are you talking about that Erin chick? are you kidding me? Is she even practicing law? can she even pass the bar? Does she even know what the bar is?

and you know Trump and his minions looked down on the mary kay lady with her whole "bedazzler" scene. You could tell just by looking on their faces they were thinking "white trash".

This season of the apprentice sucked. I think they all should be fired.

hob: Uh, are you kidding? Kendra is by far the most competent candidate to appear on the show... Ever. She decisively won all her PM assignments, finished on a 9-week overall winning streak despite Craig weighing her down, and -- for the first time in three seasons -- never was called into the final boardroom. She's too good to be stuck in a back office for Trump, though.

Now it's true, Erin's by far the most attractive candidate ever, but that's another story...

tink: Erin was apparently doing temp legal work for a few months between graduation and the show's start. Now that it's done, she's started in on her real career interest.

Why she wasted three years in law school is another matter.

1. Many downtown Manhattan businesses have relocated.

2. The WTC had vacancy problems. I suspect a new WTC would face even more difficulties finding enough tenants.

Trump has a big ego, and his plan has some appeal for obvious reasons, but all these plans are a little stupid, whether comeback or memorial oriented. There should be a small memorial and park and whatever building in the surrounding area which might occur based on the true real estate market. They need to move beyond various proposals arising from emotional reactions.

someone,

Kendra couldn't manage a herd of sheep.

Ineffectual, uncharismatic, dumb as a post, lazy, and flying with a low enough profile not to piss anyone off.

Like the dumb bitch from survivor ("I'm here b/c I played the game by being a piece of bellybutton lint." whatever.)

Kendra is a tool. WhiteTrashMaryKay had potential, but was too old to learn how to play real power games, and the rest were just all mediocre in one way or another.

Shoulda fired the lot of em.

Especially the "skinny Michael Moore" fucker who couldn't dress.

and tink, Erin knows what the bar is.

seriously, though, you look at that list, and none of those milquetoasts are as good as either of last year's finalists.

That Alex dude was a slacker. Craig was out of his depth (but not so badly as MaryKay). The rest of the relatively faceless gobs were at best middle management material for an "Office Space" type environment.

lazy

I'll stick to arguing with people who actually watch the show.

Slightly O/T, but I've been getting emailed a regular stream of resumes from New York City teenaged girls freshly out of high school. Seriously.

Previous work experience- babysitting, temporary receptionist, part-time shoe store clerk, etc.

It's a damn shame I'm in Texas...

Erin kinda looks like Danica Patrick

someone, I've watched every episode. Spastic fluttering about is not a work ethic. She's lazy in the true sense that just doesn't complete. No follow through. Let someone else do it (unless they have a brain and/or spine, and then I'll do everything myself is a hyper and mongloid fashion)

As long as Trump goes strictly by the old design plans +5 stories, has nothing at all to do with the financing and doesn't have any authority whatsoever over the project, I'm all in favor of Trump rebuilding the WTC.

slickdpdx

Baloney. The vacancy problems didn't stop them from building it in the first place, and if the rent is low enough it will be full to the ceiling of the highest floor. Wether it makes a profit right away or not is unimportant.

What is vitally important here is: the future image of this nation is at stake here. Are we going to allow the terrorists to tear down our greatest symbol of power, permanently? Or are we going to send the message that they can't stop us no matter what they do?

We either send a signal to the terrorists of defeat, demoralization, fear and shame or we send a signal of defiance, courage, and resoloute determination in the face of terrorists all over the world.

Make no mistake about it, we are locked in a deadly war with terrorists for decades to come and must do everything in our power to defeat them or they will defeat us by wearing us down.

slickdpdx

Baloney! Vacancy problems didn't stop them from building it in the first place, and if the rent is low enough they'll have tenants up to the top of the highest floor. Whether or not it makes a profit right away is unimportant.

What is vitally important is the signal we send terrorists: that they can destroy the most important symbol of our power dealing us a terrible psychological blow causing fear, shame, capitulation and eventaully defeat us, or we send a sigal of defiance, courage, and resoloute determination that no matter what they do they cannot defeat us.

Stalingrad was a symbol of the Soviet Union during the siege by the Nazis. Both Hitler and Stalin knew it and, though there were places of far greater strategic importance, they chose to expend maximum effort there. When the Soviets won, it was the beginning of the end for the Wermacht and meant the survival of the Soviets. We face the same choice here. And wether or not you accept this as true, the fact that the terrorists attacked the WTC three times shows just how important they view it.

"Stalingrad was a symbol of the Soviet Union during the siege by the Nazis."

Wouldn't that be cool? Dan Rather, Katie Couric, Mo Dowd, Peter Jennings, Paul Krugman, etc. living in cellars, eating rats, dodging bullets, going months without a bath?

Damn, those were the good old days. They just don't make international conflict the way they used to.

"May" and 72 Maniacs - The time for sending a signal to the terrorists was almost 4 years ago. We decided to take the fight to them as our "signal". We could have rebuilt the Towers almost as fast as the Pentagon, but we saw the 20 billion the taxpayers gave NYC mostly pissed away. And let the Cult of Victimhood and politics dominate the 1st two years.

We easily could have had rebuilding plans and corporate pledges to occupy the rebuilt WTC if we had acted in the 1st year.

But time has passed. No one wants to occupy WTC #7, let alone concentrate into an even juicier new WTC Towers target. Companies are cognizant we are at war, and they will not put there whole leadership and admin into one locale anymore.

And, the economics simply aren't there. Delay to talk about sacred footprints, sacred soil, the holy ashes, the complaints of residents, the architectural and whose in charge political squabbles, the thousands of lawsuits by NYC residents and their greedy shysters caused to long a delay for politics to replace economics at this late date, and no way is NYC getting another 20 billion after pissing away the 1st 20 billion to subsidize reluctant tenants.

Count on the Pit being there a long time as a reminder of the need to act fast and not pander for years to the whims of victim families, activist groups, and greedy lawyers...

Dogstar, don't you find it amazing how one person can be so wrong about so many different things so often?

Vacancy schmacancy.

We don't need a monument to sadness and defeat. That's what the new plan looks like. They can modernize within the same basic monlithic look we had before.

Love the Twin Towers II plan you linked, Ace. Laughed my ass off. You know, there's something about that plan. Original. Creative. It has that certain... something.

Cedarford,
That's how building in NYC is done. I'd like to see the towers rebuilt as they were, purely for symbolic reasons. But I'd hate for Trump to get any credit.

Notice the footprint of the old buildings in this new plan. One of the things I love about it is the little half-step-to-the-right, fuck you look.

72 Virgins, I understand where you're coming from, but those three attacks were all pretty unpleasant. The desire to build it again or higher or whatever is a satisfying reaction, but its not necessarily a good idea. Leave Stalingrad to the soviets. I don't like the idea of NY=Stalingrad. We took the fight to the terrorists in their own territory and that was the right thing to do. We shouldn't avoid doing anything we want to do out of fear of terror but we also shouldn't do something out of the bare need to "show them".

I don't really have an opinion on building a new WTC. I doubt if many Americans outside of NYC care, either.

But if they do it, I think we can all agree that they should do it in the best "Fuck You, Islam" fashion as possible.

I would love to see a ceremonial "take a dump on the Koran as we bury it in the slab of the new Towers" event.

Of course, that's just wrong. But I still like fantasizing about it.

I should have added that our best reverse barometer has the new WTC NOT happening, which means, of course, we can all bank on a new set of towers...

Newsday has the story in Wednesday's paper:

By Pradnya Joshi

NEW YORK -- Here’s a task for Donald Trump’s newest “Apprentice”: What should go at the World Trade Center site?

Trump, who has already transformed the skyline of the Upper West Side with new development, has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday morning to present his vision for lower Manhattan.

Instead, Trump is backing a plan by engineer Ken Gardner and architect Herbert Belton. The team has proposed a complex for the World Trade Center that would replicate the original Twin Towers but fortified with a tougher design. (A previous version of their design can be seen at www.Twin TowersII.com).

"Baloney! Vacancy problems didn't stop them from building it in the first place, and if the rent is low enough they'll have tenants up to the top of the highest floor."

Vacancy problems didn't stop them from building it in the first place because it was built with taxpayer money (profit? We don't need no stinking profit!)

"Whether or not it makes a profit right away is unimportant."

Judging by the last one, there's a good chance a new one will never make a profit.

New York City doesn't need more office space. I'd much rather hunt down and kill the terrorists than build empty (or, more to the point, half-empty) gestures of defiance.

But....but....if we don't build a multi-billion dollar empty building with taxpayer money that no one wishes to work in....The Terrorists Will Have Won!!

Libeskind's claim that the Freedom Tower height is full of meaning because it is 1776 feet high is BS. The antenna height on the G-B twin towers can be REDUCED to 1776 feet if it's important.