How Not to Rebuild
The Wall Street Journal (registration required) paints the world's most powerful mall magnate as a pig who wants to build a sprawling retail complex on the WTC site.

NEW YORK -- Frank Lowy wants to put a huge shopping complex on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center. That alarms some prominent New Yorkers, because Mr. Lowy, an Australian mall magnate, controls a 99-year lease on all of the site's retail space. …

Mr. Lowy, who heads the world's largest mall company, responds that his goal is a high-end retail center tailored to the wants of downtown workers and residents. "We paid a lot of money to be there" before Sept. 11, he says. "We are acting responsibly. We have a position which we are not about to give up."

While I was reading the story, I was thinking it's kind of like building a McDonald's at Auschwitz and not understanding why that's bad. Then the story explains that Lowry's own father was killed at Auschwitz.

Also, if this guy is so concerned about profits, he should consider the massive and permanent boycott he would surely face from New Yorkers and even tourists who would refuse to ever spend a dime at his new WTC mall. That is, assuming any retailer would open up shop there, knowing their whole chain could be targeted for a boycott for doing so.
- posted by Amy @ 6/05/2002 09:47:00 AM