who owns the land where the twin towers stood
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.