Future of Ground Zero remains in question

NEW YORK -- They come from all over the world to prove to themselves that it's real.\nDay after day, thousands of tourists shuffle along the viewing platform on the edge of Ground Zero. It's a perpetual wake to mourn the dead and quantify the chaos.\nThe macabre march is filled with discussion about the site's future. The city has six plans for the site, all including a memorial, some larger than others. Some would set aside the acre-wide footprints of the Twin Towers as part of the memorial park. \nComplete strangers stand shoulder-to-shoulder behind the fence separating them from the sharp cliff and seven-story hole.\nWith a box of tissues tucked under his arm, George Stoddard sweeps his silver-gray hair back across his forehead, making his way out from under the scaffolding leading up to the viewing platform. Stoddard works at 50 Rockefeller Center, seven miles from Ground Zero and with tears in his eyes he recalled seeing the planes hit as he looked south on Fifth Avenue. It was his first time visiting the site.\n"I wasn't sure if I was going to need them," he says, the tissue stuck by tears to his right hand.\nNYPD Officer Steve Donnelly wears a black mourning band over his silver badge as he patrols around the site. Donnelly will wear the band in honor of those who died until someone makes him take it off, he said. The mood around Ground Zero is always a somber one. Donnelly said he is there to keep the peace -- even though there are never any incidents. "Not here, never."\nPosing for photographs with tourists with a grin on his face, Donnelly expresses his thoughts about the rebuilding and memorial plans.\n"It should be some type of memorial. It's a gravesite," Donnelly says. "It's difficult to come here every day."\nEveryone who passes the site wonders what seeds will be planted on the WTC footprints. \n"It should not be another building," says Pauline Bartley-Brown, visiting from London. "I don't think people could go back to work in the same space these people died in. It should be a memorial. No one should work there again."\nSandra Heron, traveling with Bartley-Brown, says the site should be rebuilt. \n"The spirit of the people was that they were working," Heron says. "The spirits want to go back to work. If I want to memorialize, I go back to work."\nAll six proposed plans facilitate the business needs of Lower Manhattan, which lost thousands of jobs and nearly seven million square feet of business space because of the attacks.\nThe city said it hopes to present a final plan by year's end.\nKirk Atkinson, visiting Ground Zero with his daughter Megan, says the memorial should dominate the new landscape of Lower Manhattan.\n"A good 50 percent should be some type of memorial as well as some type of office building to get back in business," Atkinson says.\nEdwin Cruz, from the fire department of Humacau, Puerto Rico, looks across the sea of badges, T-shirts, flowers and other memorabilia on the wrought-iron fence around the nearby churches.\n"There should be a memorial for the people," he says.\nCruz was in town visiting his cousin. Many families were drawn to New York after Sept. 11 to visit relatives or to spend time together.\nThe DeLucia and Wergiles families of Muttentain, N.Y. brought their children to the city even though they knew their kids would not fully grasp that site's impact.\n"It's a good experience for the kids even though they don't understand the scope of it," Diana Delucia says. "They can see the ugliness."\nJordan Wergiles, 5, straightens up quickly and his eyes became fixed on the ground when he spoke about the tragedy. \n"Osama bin Laden had a bomb," he says. "(The site) looks dead and broken, and there was fire in the buildings and smoke. It's very sad because the people died."\nNick DeLucia, 7, looks over his shoulder at Ground Zero. \nHis small eyes couldn't see half of the devastation that took place there.\n"They were big buildings," he says.