<P> The World Trade Center site, formerly referred to as "Ground Zero" or "the Pile" immediately after the September 11 attacks, is a 14.6 - acre (5.9 ha) area in Lower Manhattan in New York City . The previous World Trade Center complex stood on the site until it was destroyed in the September 11 attacks . The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), Silverstein Properties, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) oversee the reconstruction of the site according to a master plan by Studio Daniel Libeskind . The site is bounded by Vesey Street to the north, the West Side Highway to the west, Liberty Street to the south, and Church Street to the east . The Port Authority owns the site's land (except for 7 World Trade Center). Developer Larry Silverstein holds the lease to retail and office space in four of the site's buildings . </P> <P> While the PANYNJ is often identified as the owner of the WTC site, the ownership situation is complex . The Port Authority indeed owns a "significant" internal portion of the site of 16 acres (6.5 ha) but has acknowledged "ambiguities over ownership of miscellaneous strips of property at the World Trade Center site" going back to the 1960s . It is unclear who owns 2.5 acres (1.0 ha) of the site, being land where streets had been before the World Trade Center was built . </P>

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