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Documentary Pick: 16 Acres

16 Acres is about one of the longest, bloodiest and divisive battles coming as a direct result of the terrorist attacks on 9/11: the decision about how to redevelop Ground Zero. The intersection of hallowed ground and some of the most expensive real estate on planet Earth made for a process that was controversial at every turn. Given all that, director Richard Hankin manages to get many of the power players on the record to talk openly about the best of intentions, how it all went wrong and how they all made it right in the end. Maybe.

Hankin impressively balances the three different goals and expectations of the project: the practicalities of replacing all that office space, the personal need for the families to build a memorial, and the patriotic need to overcome the terror attack that brought down the original World Trade Center towers. The staggering political game that followed betrayed all three of those goals in one way, shape or form. Egos clashed, politicians jockeyed to make themselves the hero of a rebuilt World Trade Center, and in the meantime, after one groundbreaking ceremony after another, several years had passed and Ground Zero was still, at the time of the making of this documentary anyway, a hole in the ground.

16 Acres plays well with the idea of 9/11, this horrible event that brought people together, as this political Holy Grail that politicians at all levels of government tried to break a piece off of. The try to cast villains, like Larry Silverstein, the real estate magnate that leased the Center six weeks before the terrorist attacks and was the first to push for redevelopment. But as much as you want to make the corporate titan the bad guy, especially when he was talking about reconstruction no less than a week after 9/11, it turns out that Silverstein might be the only person involved in this thing with honest intentions. Silverstein’s success in rebuilding World Trade Center 7 quickly deepens doubts further about the progress of the main development, which only makes people like then New York Governor George Pataki and then New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg even more entrenched against him.

But aside from the classic political gamesmanship, the documentary is an antithesis to that supposed spirit of national unity. Who was right and who was wrong is a matter of opinion, but while Hankin paints a vivid picture of a construction gong show, it’s somewhat uplifting to know that all those government and private industry fingers found a way to work together. As the movie points out, the reconstruction of the World Trade Center happened in a very New York way. Everyone went for the throat of everyone else, but in the end, they all came together for the common good. Let Sinatra sing about that!