NEW YORK — About 40 surviving workers from the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center are planning to open a new restaurant, with windows facing lower Manhattan.
"It's going to be a family again, coming together," says Fekkak Mamdouh, a head waiter from Casablanca, Morocco.
Seventy-three Windows workers died on Sept. 11, 2001. The rest lost their jobs, and in a slow economy, only about half have found employment since then.
Now 43 of about 300 surviving workers have formed a cooperative for their culinary venture, with each owning part of the high-end restaurant.
They're negotiating for a historic building in TriBeCa, the trendy lower Manhattan neighborhood just north of ground zero.
With the possible name Windows on TriBeCa, it is to open next spring. The menu will likely include familiar American fare like steak and fries, plus "the flavors of our countries, the specialties," said Mamdouh.
Windows on the World is a tough act to follow. Boasting one of the nation's finest wine cellars, on the 106th floor it was a prime venue for celebrations like weddings, engagements and graduations.
After the terrorist attacks, the Windows workers and others from food businesses and corporate cafeterias at the World Trade Center formed a nonprofit organization called The Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York.
The 43 future staffers of the new restaurant are now running a catering business that is helping them finance the venture. More of the estimated $3 million investment will come from an October fund-raiser featuring Don Pintabona, founding chef of actor Robert De Niro's Tribeca Grill, and chefs Waldy Malouf and Steven Hill.
Another likely investor is an Italian restaurant workers' cooperative that wants to make the TriBeCa restaurant a model of employee-owned business. The one major cooperative restaurant in the United States is the Casa Nueva in Athens, Ohio.
"You are working in your own place, you are not working for somebody. It's a dream everyone has," says Mamdouh.