Governor Pataki stood before hundreds of business and civic leaders in Lower Manhattan in April 2003 and pledged that the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site would be completed by the start of 2008.

No more. After haggling, redesign, warnings by the Police Department about the building’s susceptibility to terrorist attacks, and more redesign, the governor stood again in Lower Manhattan yesterday to unveil a revised plan for the Freedom Tower. Now the tower isn’t expected to be ready for occupancy until 2010.

Other than its height of 1,776 feet, the new structure will bear little resemblance to the original tower designed collaboratively by the World Trade Center site planner, Daniel Libeskind, and a noted architect with the firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill, David Childs, who works for the site’s developer Larry Silverstein.

It will be located 90 feet, rather than 25 feet, from West Street. The 400-foot cable structure in the original structure, meant to echo the Brooklyn Bridge, has disappeared. While there is still a spire at the top, it will now be centered over the tower, rather than resting asymmetrically in an attempt to evoke the torch of the Statue of Liberty. The new, more safety-conscious skyscraper will also have a 200-foot-high base, built with the densest concrete money can buy, and shielded by a wall of reflective metal, which Mr. Childs said would create a “great mural of light.”

The officials and architects who gathered at the old National City Bank Building on Wall Street yesterday morning said the major revisions had made the scheme better than the original.

“A few months back, we received a setback, and we were required for appropriate security concerns to rethink the design of the soaring element of this massive site plan, the Freedom Tower,” Mr. Pataki said. “But as Mayor Bloomberg said, New Yorkers aren’t daunted by challenges. We just roll up our sleeves, go to work, look at what has to be done, and then do it.”

The governor said he isn’t an architecture critic but the design looks better to him. He also said it’s safer: “There’s no question it’s going to be built to the highest standards of any high-rise ever in the United States of America. I think it will be very safe. In fact, if one of those giant corporations that Larry lures to the Freedom Tower occupies the top floors and wants to hire one of my kids, I’d be honored to have them working there.”

Mr. Silverstein said the tower, which will be built to the same standards as American embassies, “is ready to proceed” with the blessings of the New York City Police Department and the Port Authority. He said construction would start in early 2006. Steel will be visible above ground in 2007.

Mr. Silverstein said a number of private corporations had expressed interest in renting space at the new tower, but he would not name names. So far, no one has signed a lease to move into 7 World Trade Center, the first building to be rebuilt after the attacks of September 11, 2001.