'Freedom Tower' work starts July 4

NEW YORK -- Developers of the Freedom Tower will break ground on the 1,776-foot skyscraper at the World Trade Center site on July 4, Gov. George Pataki said Wednesday.

The July 4 date is well ahead of Pataki's stated goal of breaking ground by late summer.

Freedom Tower is expected to be finished in 2009, and the full trade center site by 2013.

Organizers say the tower will be the world's tallest building, including a spire meant to remind of the Statue of Liberty. It will be built on the northwest part of the trade center site, not the footprints of the vanished twin towers.

The plan calls for a cable suspension structure that creates an open area above the building's 70 floors of office space, and houses windmills to generate energy.

Pataki announced several other dates in the redevelopment timetable, including that a complete design of the Sept. 11 victims memorial, "Reflecting Absence," would be finished by the end of the year and construction starting in 2006.

Private donors will need to raise money to build the memorial, which is budgeted for at least $350 million.