Newsday, September 11, 2006
Ground Zero (briefly) revisited

Verne Gay

After these last few weeks of 9/11-related programming - and, oh yeah, a certain vaguely controversial miniseries, too - there's something comforting about tonight's "America Rebuilds II: Return to Ground Zero."

Get past that title - and I know, it's not going to be easy - and viewers will enter a realm that could best be described as optimistic, even life-affirming.

"America Rebuilds" is, in fact, a life-goes-on coda to a phalanx of programming that has explored every conceivable aspect of 9/11, from medical to global. Over the last five years, life has gone on in lower Manhattan pretty much the way it has since New Amsterdam was precariously perched here - with, of course, one excruciating difference. Buildings have been built. A vital train service - the PATH - is back. And the Freedom Tower will rise by 2011. But the process has been so deeply emotional that "America Rebuilds" - the second part of a planned trilogy - can be faulted for only one minor sin: It is still far, far too brief a treatment.

Anyone who has paid close attention through the press to the rebuilding efforts probably won't learn much here, but the rest of us only vaguely attuned to the background din will be rewarded. Cleanup and recovery at Ground Zero were explored in the first edition, which aired in 2002, while tonight picks up with the rebuilding of 7 World Trade Center (the last tower to collapse on 9/11). "We're kind of leasing out a piece of public consciousness," says an official with Silverstein Properties, which hired a guerrilla marketing firm called the Via Group to help fill the space. There were many issues in filling the building, but "first and foremost, fear," says John Coleman, a principal of Via.

The other issues? Those are never spelled out - certainly an unfortunate omission, as that would cast a light on the challenges facing Freedom Tower one of these days. Nor do we learn where the occupancy stands now - another failing. (Silverstein is one of the tenants, and so is the New York Academy of Sciences, but probably most of the 40 floors remain empty.)

There's a reasonably good overview of the controversy surrounding Michael Arad's design of the memorial, "Reflecting Absence." Arad is given his say, and so are the detractors who appear to raise some cogent points (it is underground, and they point to a variety of concerns, from noise to crowd control, which Arad and his supporters never seem to get around to fully addressing here).

Meanwhile, "Rebuilds" makes a side trip to Kansas, of all places, to follow a group of high school kids to Ground Zero. An idea here is to say that this is how the rest of America sees Ground Zero - with a kind of golly-gee, mouth-agape, "I had no idea" naivete. But during their somber visit, they vividly see the past and also a glimpse of the future. "Rebuilds" offers such a glimpse, leaving viewers with just the slightest glow of optimism.

AMERICA REBUILDS II: RETURN TO GROUND ZERO. A solid but far too brief look at rebuilding efforts. Tonight at 9 on WNET/13.