I don't believe that 100-story buildings should be seen there, but 70-80 stories may be reasonable for the centerpiece of the site. A park sharing space with offices and stores is rather appealing, but the idea of all sixteen acres being used as a memorial is not acceptable. I'd have a serious issue living in a city that would be so focused on death as opposed to continuing on with life.
Meanwhile, a proposal for the next 7 World Trade Center was recently shown. (the old 7 World Trade was a building about half the height of the towers, located next to them. Seven collapsed in the late afternoon on the 11th due to serious fires in the building).
The New York Times, May 14, 2002
"7 World Trade Is Envisioned As A Gateway"
Providing the first public glimpse of plans to replace the destroyed 7 World Trade Center, architects for Larry A. Silverstein said yesterday that the new building would be a transparent, "light-emanating shaft" designed as a gateway to the planned World Trade Center memorial and other buildings that are expected to be built there.
David M. Childs, a consulting partner at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, told a meeting of two committees of the local community board that the new structure would be the equivalent of 52 stories, significantly taller than the previous building, and would have a soaring glass lobby opening onto Greenwich Street to the east. The previous building was 47 stories and opened onto Vesey Street and the trade center plaza to its south.
Mr. Silverstein said excavation of the site, which started last week, will be completed by the middle of June. The Con Edison substation that will take up much of the bottom part of the building will be finished by September or October of 2003, though a portion of the station would be operational by that summer. The entire building would be finished by the end of 2005, he said.
The greater height of the proposed tower, at 750 feet versus the 616 feet of the original building, will compensate for the smaller space that it takes up on the ground. That area, known as the footprint, measures 34,000 square feet, compared with 44,000 square feet for the original, and was designed to accommodate the restoration of Greenwich Street past the building and possibly south through the trade center site.
Mr. Childs, speaking to members of Community Board 1, said that the architects had not yet designed the building's skeleton, but they had ideas of what it would look like. He said that it would be "as glassy a building as possible," and, although it would have a concrete core for elevators, would be "the inverse" of the previous granite and shaded-glass structure.
Noting that Greenwich Street originally marked the edge of the island of Manhattan, Mr. Childs said the new building "brings together two parts of the city that were destroyed in the 1970's" by the Trade Center: the street grid, with its view down Greenwich Street toward the southern tip of the island, and the original water's edge, which was pushed westward by landfill.
"We wanted to provide the city with a great shaft of light, creating those open views that are so wonderful in New York," Mr. Childs said. Noting that the architects might include some solar panels or alternative power sources in the building, he added, "We want this to be a dramatic gesture of the way we should design buildings, not only in this area but throughout the country."
The bottom 115 feet of the building, equivalent to about ten floors of a commercial office building, will contain the Con Edison substation that was destroyed in the collapse of 7 World Trade, Mr. Childs said. But the exterior of that part of the building would be covered with a lattice of artistically designed metalwork.
The remainder of the exterior would be a sort of "glass sleeve" that might drop down over part of the bottom floors, integrating the two parts, Mr. Childs said. He said he envisioned the project as similar to "the great obelisk leading into Luxor." The glass portion would extend upward over the top 42 stories. The entire tower would include about 1.65 million square feet of commercial space, about 15 percent less than the 1.93 million square feet of space in the previous building.
The community board does not have any authority over the project, which is on land leased by Mr. Silverstein from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. As such, the building does not need to conform with city building or environmental codes. But the community board will be making a recommendation about the project to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which along with the Port Authority, has jurisdiction over the redevelopment of the trade center area.
By restoring Greenwich Street, a triangle of land will be created, bounded by Barclay and Greenwich Streets and West Broadway. Madelyn G. Wils, a director of the development corporation and the chairwoman of the local community board, encouraged Mr. Silverstein to consider converting that space to parkland, adding to the open effect the new building will have on the area.
Mr. Childs said that was being considered, although a truck ramp into that portion of the site would in all likelihood remain there at least through the reconstruction. But he added that the design could provide for Greenwich Street either to be used for cars or only for pedestrians.
The copilot actually hit the guy with a hatchet! 
HAHA! 
