Questions remain: What will rise at ground zero, and when?

NEW YORK | The five skyscrapers were all supposed to rise by early next decade to replace the ravaged World Trade Center, with the city’s tallest towers set in a spiral evoking the Statue of Liberty’s torch.

They would frame a massive memorial in a tree-filled park, plus a theater and a transportation hub with uplifted wings - one of several symbols intended to defy the terrorists who destroyed the 16-acre site in under two hours.

While standing on the site now - a multilevel labyrinth of concrete and steel, from the entrance resembling the rooftops of an underground city - it’s all too obvious the sweeping design unveiled 6 1/2 years ago still hasn’t materialized.

And while the most symbolic pieces of the puzzle at ground zero are taking shape, it’s become increasingly clear that the grand scheme will take decades to be fully completed, if it ever is at all.

Vickie Cooper had mixed feelings as she peered through a fence at the site’s stark northeast corner, a spot reserved for a skyscraper now mired in arbitration over its financing.

Its history is “too sad to even really think about progress,” said the 48-year-old Austin, Texas, insurance worker. But “I am a little surprised - I thought there’d be something built there.”

When will there be? As the eighth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks approaches, there’s no firm due date for that office tower or two others supposed to help line the eastern side of the site; only one is under construction.

Developer Larry Silverstein has gone to an arbitrator to renegotiate his lease with the site’s government owner after months of fruitless negotiations. An analysis done for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey this spring projected there might be no market for Mr. Silverstein’s third tower until 2030.

The fifth tower in the spiral is rarely discussed as viable. The spot reserved for it is still covered by a skyscraper contaminated with toxic debris from the attacks, its dismantling slowed after a 2007 blaze killed two firefighters. There’s no finished design or money and little public pressure for the performing arts center.

A poll last month found that more than half of New York City voters think the rebuilding is going badly. More than 60 percent don’t think the highest-priority projects - the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower and the Sept. 11 memorial - will be finished by announced deadlines. The Quinnipiac University poll of 1,290 voters had a margin of sampling error of 2.7 percentage points.

The doubts don’t surprise Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward.

“The only way you could cure that skepticism is to deliver on the things we are now delivering on,” he said this week as roughly 1,000 workers labored on the site.

The Freedom Tower’s frame is several stories above street level. Work has begun on one Silverstein tower and continues on underground elements of the $3.2 billion transit hub. The memorial pools’ outline and plaza - some built from a pit 70 feet below ground to street level - have filled in a swath of the site.

“It’s not a pit,” Mr. Ward said. “Now, it’s a sense of rebirth.”

Daniel Libeskind’s master design was chosen in early 2003 amid an atmosphere of unfettered possibility. Officials praised the plan’s bold symbolism and its vision of a bustling business district enhanced by shops, restaurants and arts that repair the broken skyline and honor the nearly 2,800 people killed.

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