Location, location, location...

Mrs. F's company pays $2.6 mil per floor (they occupy the top two of the Merrill Lynch Building) per year in rent. Some of the rents in WTC were twice that. That's why we're gonna have the Freedom Tower soon enough. - Fixer in comments on yesterday's post

Anna Quindlen riffs on Fixer's comment:

It's all there at the construction site. Tourists peer through the fence, but it's hard to understand what they think they're seeing. Everything that once spoke of the magnitude of the events of September 11 is gone. As much as its jagged smoking ruins were once a symbol for unparalleled disaster, now its bland expanse is a symbol of how narrow and parsimonious the long-term response has been. It's business as usual there, except for one small section of the fence with a listing of the names of those who died in letters so small that you almost have to squint to read them. Remember how we said we would never forget them? We forgot them. If the spirit of the day had prevailed, the sense that this was a moment like no other and demanded a gesture in kind, someone would have had the guts to leave this national graveyard solemn, empty and still. Instead there is a sign there that says that the job now is "to recover the 10 million-sq. feet of commercial space lost in the attacks." How American. It's all about the real estate.

Yep.