As the nation wipes its tears and digs out from piles of rubble, thoughts turn to what should rise on the 16 acres that were a workday home to seven office buildings, a hotel, stores and more than 40,000 people.

Some New Yorkers defiantly want the Twin Towers rebuilt exactly as they were; others insist the site should be turned into a memorial park; and still others envision a grand, brand-new architectural complex.

Sam LeFrak, the developer who kicked off Battery Park City with the Gateway Plaza residential buildings, doesn’t think the towers should be rebuilt where and as they were. He’d like the site used for a memorial park.

“It was a mistake from the very first day,” he said, “because there were too many people in one place.” LeFrak thinks a smaller trade center should be built near the downtown piers.

Former Mayor Ed Koch wants the WTC to rise again. “I think they should rebuild according to the original plans,” he said. An open memorial on the 16-acre site would be “very foolish,” he said, because it would “destroy the Wall Street area.”

“You can have a memorial between the two buildings by having some of the structure of the old buildings,” he said.

State Sen. Roy Goodman (R-Manhattan) will introduce a bill establishing a commission to develop “an appropriate memorial” to those who lost their lives in the attacks, but he doesn’t want it to cover the site.

“We should rebuild and replace [the WTC] with a high-tech office building that will be a symbol of the regenerative capacity of our free, democratic society,” he said.

Larry A. Silverstein, chairman of Silverstein Properties, which just this past July leased the Twin Towers for 99 years, believes it would be “the tragedy of tragedies not to rebuild,” but not necessarily as high. He also thinks there should be a memorial on the site.

David Rockefeller, the man behind the original project, also wants a new complex. “The sooner we can replace it with something else,” the better, because the rubble heap now on the site “isn’t the kind of memorial we want to perpetuate,” he said.

Port Authority Vice Chairman Charles Gargano wants to rebuild to “demonstrate that we will not let anyone be the winners, but that all New Yorkers are winners.”

Guy Tozzoli, former director of the PA’s world-trade department and now president of the World Trade Centers Association, wants another trade center on the site.

“It doesn’t have to be the tallest in the world,” he said. “But we need a world trade center and a place to do business.”