Calling for the rebuilding of the Twin Towers brought Donald Trump more criticism than congratulations yesterday.

The star of reality television and of real estate and casino development told reporters and curious onlookers at a packed news conference in the lobby of the Trump Tower that he wanted to build “a taller, stronger, more beautiful version of the Twin Towers.”

Family members and civic groups panned the idea, saying he was three years too late to intervene in the rebuilding of ground zero. They also said the timing of the press conference, on the eve of the season finale of his NBC show “The Apprentice,” smacked of a publicity stunt.

“It is offensive that Mr. Trump is getting involved at this late stage in the process,” Tom Rogers, whose daughter Jean was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, said. “We have heard calls for rebuilding the Twin Towers for a long time. This is not a new idea, and the fact Trump is jumping on top of it now seems opportunistic.”

At his mixed-use tower on Fifth Avenue, Mr. Trump presented a large model of the plan for the rebuilt towers, designed by a structural engineer, Ken Gardner, and an architect, Herbert Belton.

The plan, which was completed two months after the Freedom Tower design by Daniel Libeskind was chosen by Governor Pataki and other officials, would extend the Twin Towers to 115 floors. Modern features to enhance security would also be implemented, such as a double external skin and columns to reinforce the buildings’ strength.

Mr. Trump’s efforts come a week after the Mr. Libeskind 1,776-foot Freedom Tower went back to the drawing board after the New York City Police Department raised security concerns. A redesign of the building, which is being overseen by another architect, David Childs, is to be released next month. Mr. Trump denied that his effort to change the ground zero plan, which he called “the worst pile of crap architecture I’ve ever seen in my life,” was a ruse to attract publicity. He said that while he will put an architectural model of the proposed rebuilt Twin Towers on the stage during the live broadcast of “The Apprentice” this evening, he has no plans to place his name on the buildings’ facades.

“The Freedom Tower should not be allowed. It is not appropriate for Manhattan, it is not appropriate for the U.S., and it is not appropriate for freedom,” Mr. Trump said.

“If we rebuild the World Trade Center in the form of a skeleton – the Freedom Tower – the terrorists win. It’s that bad from an architectural standpoint,” he added.

Mr. Trump “might have played a constructive role three years ago, but so much has happened since then,” the head of the civic group Regional Plan Association, Robert Yaro, said.

“Decisions have been made about transportation, the cultural buildings, and all these other moving parts – and most of them are moving ahead,” Mr. Yaro said. Forgoing the Freedom Tower in favor of rebuilding the Twin Towers would throw the entire process off-kilter, Mr. Yaro said.

The proposal to rebuild the Twin Towers never gained much popularity when it was being decided what should be built at the World Trade Center site, because the buildings were never well liked, experts said.

When the Twin Towers were destroyed, “the vast majority of people said we can design a place that is much more vibrant with more street life than a windswept, barren plaza and overbearing office tower,” a senior fellow at the nonprofit think tank Fiscal Policy Institute, David Kallick, said.

“Tens of thousands of people have weighed in on the plans, and overwhelmingly they said they didn’t want a super-block, or monolithic buildings cut off from the rest of the city,” Mr. Yaro said.

It was not all negative for Mr. Trump, who did attract a few supporters yesterday.

“I very rarely agree with Donald Trump on things, but in this case I do,” a former mayor, Edward Koch, told The New York Sun. “I have always believed we should rebuild both towers from the original plan – not a story taller – and upgrade them for security purposes.”

Mr. Koch said that while he supports the idea of rebuilding the Twin Towers, he doubts the proposal will gain much momentum.

“I believe we are stuck with what we have,” he said, “and I’m sorry about that.”