By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — In the World Trade Center history books, 2010 will be remembered as the year the rebuilding finally got off the ground.
Construction on all aspects of the site moved forward this year, and many of the features long visible only in the form of glossy renderings are finally taking shape.
Steel for One World Trade Center reached 52 stories, the halfway point, and a preliminary deal with Conde Nast gave the $3.2 billion tower its first major tenant.
Developer Larry Silverstein’s Church Street towers are also moving forward, with Tower 4 rising well above street level, and Tower 3 scheduled to follow behind. In March, the Port Authority and Silverstein ended a year-long stalemate over the rebuilding by signing a new agreement detailing how much public money will go toward the private towers.
Over at the 8-acre memorial, more than 120 trees have been planted and the Port Authority has begun testing the waterfalls that will flow in the original Twin Towers footprints. The Port Authority says the memorial is on schedule to open on the 10-year anniversary of the attacks next September.
This year also brought several major symbols of 9/11 back to the World Trade Center site, including a rehabilitated tree stump that survived the attacks and a pair of steel tridents that will greet visitors to the underground museum.
Two pieces of much older history also appeared on the site this year, as workers dug deep into the ground to create new foundations. In July, half of an 18th-century boat emerged from the muck, and one month earlier workers uncovered a stretch of Manhattan’s historic river wall.
Although the World Trade Center was caught in the middle of a controversy over the Park 51 mosque and Islamic community center project two blocks away from Ground Zero — which attracted the support of the mayor's office and the derision of some construction workers who donned stickers in protest — the politics surrounding the site largely simmered down as the construction moved forward.
Remaining challenges for 2011 include leasing the millions of square feet of office space that will be contained inside the site, as well as contending with legal action filed by the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed on 9/11 and wants to rebuild despite the Port Authority's decision to begin to build a parking garage on the property.
Chris Ward, the Port Authority’s executive director, noted in September that although the progress is heartening, the work is far from over.
"We will look back and say this was the beginning," Ward said.
