The fact that it is still an empty lot almost 10 years later:
We’re just three weeks shy of the moment, nine years ago, when the landing-gear assembly from the plane that hit the South Tower smashed through the roof and two floors of 45 Park Place, which housed a Burlington Coat Factory.
Imagine that, in the weeks following, you had expressed the opinion that in nine years’ time, that building would sit abandoned only 560 feet from Ground Zero — and there would be no memorial, no museum, no nothing on the 16 acres on which the towers themselves sat.
It is that failure that makes this controversy happen and although Podhordez gives the blame to Pataki (a fair amount that he earned btw) I have to say that President Bush should have lit a fire under these people. I think it should have been federalized and rebuilt as was with a museum in maybe the bottom 4 floors.
memeorandum thread here.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 
To juxtapose this with what Americans are capable of doing — when bloated government, special interest groups, and policital activists with lawyers aren’t in the way — consider this. The Pentagon was the largest office building in the world at the time of its construction. Measured by square footage, it still rates among the largest on earth.
The basic plans were laid out by one Lieutenant Colonel, one civilian architect, and a relatively small staff, in just four days in July, 1941. Construction began on Sept 11 (yep), 1941. The building was complete on January 15, 1943.
Math: two months to complete basic design, approve funding, let contracts, and begin work. 16 months to build.
There is no acceptable excuse for the current situation at ground zero.