Why No One Wants This New York Skyscraper

Of all the construction sites in the world, few have generated more contentious debates than New York's World Trade Center. You'll probably recognize the One World Trade Center located here; It's now an iconic

skyscraper

rising alongside the footprints of the original Twin Towers, but what you may not be aware of is that it's actually part of a much larger development of

skyscraper

s around the 9/11 memorial site, but look at

this

giant space right here, it's like something is missing. If you look at the latest rendering of the site, you'll see another shiny one. New skyscraper that's supposed to be here, but go to Google Maps or even walk here and you'll see that there are just some colorful murals on some steel sheds in front of the Oculus.

Now

this

isn't just a fancy art exhibit, it's actually The Unfinished. the foundations of a huge new skyscraper called Two World Trade Center and right around here is another empty site where a residential tower called Five World Trade Center is supposed to be located. Developers once thought all of these buildings would be finished by 2020. Yes, here we are. 2022, the remaining buildings are just renders and there are two gaping holes in what is possibly one of the most important regeneration projects in the world and, most intriguing of all, when you're trying to figure out why you hit a brick wall, we want to rebuild a World Trade Center while the world drinks, but better a little higher a lot louder just better After the attacks of September 11, 2001, people moved away from the center and so did businesses.

The only way to stop this Exodus was to show the people that they were going. rebuild and we did the New York City skyline is a graveyard for broken projects projects that never happen development is not a very clean sport it is a blood sport it becomes messy the Trade Center has taken and it is unbearable a lot of time alone there is there There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen and when it comes to the World Trade Center the best way to put it in simple terms, we'll tell you the story of the battle to finish the new World Trade Center in New York, but that story reveals a lot about how politics monetary and design determine the future of this city if there is one thing that New York is known for it is its skyscrapers every year, it feels like there is another one under construction around the block, these impressive structures have practically come to define this. city, its evolution now stands as a historical record of our engineering progress, how exactly do you build a skyscraper well?

We specialize in that on this channel and we could have covered the process of digging a hole, laying down some steel beams and building a super tool frame just a few times before it becomes a really exciting and important step and don't worry, let's go I'm going to go into it in a lot of detail, but now I'm talking about all the things that happen long before there is a lot of things that need to happen to get to the point of putting that first shovel in the ground and especially in New York City to help you. to try to understand it.

We have divided it into four main stages, stage one, location developers and acquisition. First they have to choose where they want to build their skyscraper, all sorts of things like the value of the land, sidewalk traffic zoning laws, and the need for a skyscraper in the area. All the data focuses on where these towers are built. Now some people know more about skyscrapers than the founder of b1m, but just to make sure he was right, I called Professor Jason Barr. He's a guy who studies the economics of these buildings. There is a lot of desire to be in groups where there are many companies in general and where their employees will be. you want to work, you know it tends to evolve in Manhattan, you know downtown was aging and Midtown was a popular district for many years and companies started coming back to the World Trade Center area, now some of them are moving to Hudson Yards, So many of the Hot Pockets can change based simply on where new space is opening up, developers need to acquire the lots they are considering which usually means buying from the current owners and according to Jason this stage can take years or even decades to complete once. developers have land to build on are ready to move to stage two design now most skyscrapers fall into one of two main categories residential filled with apartments or even a hotel or commercial used for offices and retail some skyscrapers have uses Some have observation decks and sky pools, but you already have a general idea, so if you have acquired a fairly large lot in a good location, the next step would be to start preparing the plans, hire an architect, the architect works with engineers to ensure that the building can be built in the third stage, the financing comes of course, sometimes there is also a bit of this upfront before the land acquisition takes place, but the developers usually need a good idea of ​​where the building will be and what it will look like before you can raise funds.

Now New York is expensive If you thought renting an apartment or buying property here was expensive, building a skyscraper is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Building an average commercial tower here costs around 6,000 US dollars per square meter, that's five thousand. dollars in Chicago and a little over three thousand in Tokyo, so developers need a lot of their own cash or a loan to pay construction costs. Then, of course, there is the last stage of the construction process of these massive structures. Now I love skyscraper engineering. So let's get into it, putting all this in simple terms, the process begins by digging into the earth and bedrock to create the foundation of the building.

These will usually be formed by concrete pillars called pilings which will support the superstructure of the skyscraper above and the design varies depending on the design and weight of the building then depends on the superstructure which is usually formed of reinforced concrete or steel around of a concrete core or, in some cases, a combination of both steel frames tends to be the most common approach in New York City, typically workers. A concrete core is built in the center that houses the building's stairway services and elevator shafts, then the frame is built steadily around the core as it rises and concrete floors are placed throughout. of the beams, finally, the building is covered with concrete, aluminum or glass and then fitted out internally.

With mechanical and electrical services, a particular quirk of New York City is that, unlike almost anywhere else on Earth, the steel structure rises before the concrete core. It all goes back to those iconic black and white images and the steelworker unions who like to have a clear operation. areas as far away as possible from other business sectors, that's a very simple overview of the four-step process, but not all skyscraper projects managed to overcome all obstacles, some get stuck at certain stages and never come to fruition. New York has completed more of these buildings than almost any other city in the world, with the exception of Hong Kong, today home to iconic legends such as the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, and a World Trade Center building that we would all instinctively think of when we hear the word skyscraper.

Lower Manhattan is where New York is located. The city's first skyscraper was built and, over the years, it was transformed into a high-rise financial center before the World Trade Center was built here. The city center was, of course, home to the Twin Towers. They were the tallest buildings in the world when they were first built in 1973 and want to find the city's Skyline. Back then they were owned by the Port Authority of the City of New York and New Jersey, a quasi-independent government agency that maintains certain infrastructure in the two states. The agency built the towers in hopes of spurring development in the neighborhoods but it had the opposite effect - vacancy rates rose while real estate values ​​sank.

It wasn't until the economic boom of the 1990s that more people started. to use them over the years the Port Authority was under pressure to sell the World Trade Center which was Never supposed to be in the real estate business in July 2001, American businessman Larry Silverstein signed a 99-year lease on the towers and other properties owned by the authorities for 3.2 billion US dollars and then came one of the darkest days of the United States, only we have unconfirmed reports. This morning a plane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers, no doubt there was a big explosion and a lot of black smoke shot out of that building, oh my God, oh God, there's another one after 9/11.

The world began to debate what would become of the Ground Zero sites and what could ever fill the painful void now left on the city's skyline if the Twin Towers were restored or if an entirely new structure took their place if the site was immemorial or whether the city would replace the significant amount of commercial office space that had been lost, some believed nothing should be built just weeks after the Silverstein attack sparked a legal battle that stymied any construction movement for nearly the next six years. When he signed the leadership for the Twin Towers in 2001 he had to take out a $3.5 billion insurance policy for the buildings, but he and his lawyers argued that the attack occurred as two separate events and that the policy should, therefore, pay double the amount Silverstein received $7.1 billion, but in the end only $4.6 billion was awarded, which went toward rent payments to the port authority and possible future projects, while the debate over how to rebuild the site continued to rage. and the second stage of creating a skyscraper to design it was causing some delay after Initially a competition was held with more than 2,000 submissions in late 2002, the city chose this master plan design by Studio leadskint.

The initial idea included a 1,776-foot spindle-shaped structure called Freedom Tower. The building's height would nod to the year of American independence and it stood alongside four other skyscrapers descending in a semicircle that slanted toward the memorial site at the time developer Silverstein thought it could be built in 2020. The attacks were brought to design their own skyscrapers within the framework of liebeskin's overall master plan and It's fair to say that that caused a bit of friction, particularly with the Freedom Tower being designed by David Childs of Skidmore Owings and Meryl's parties fought over balancing the desire for commercial space with the very real longing for grim symbolism.

Some wanted a strong building where others wanted an elegant one, the results were a kind of compromise that ended up becoming an icon, although largely due to its height and visual location, today there are a total of four commercial skyscrapers planned for the site given this. It was now one of the most important and iconic construction sites in American history. Almost everyone

wants

to put their stamp on how the site should look and that design stage took longer than expected. Finally, the site slowly took shape. A new Memorial and a moving underground museum were built. Four World Trade Centers were built, opening in 2013, followed by the Freedom Tower (later renamed One World Trade Center in 2014) and three World Trade Centers (the last edition in 2018).

Now the money to develop the entire site came from a handful of different sources for each building. including a combination of Silverstein's insurance proceeds, the U.S. federal government and liberty bonds, a federal tax exemption program, but one of the four skyscrapers hasn't really gotten beyond the drawing boards and , while there has been a lot of disagreement and architectural debate about what should really seem like the biggest delay might actually have to do with money, so who exactly is paying for all these skyscrapers to be built and how products like this really Do they pass stage three of the process?

Well, it depends. One option that some have is through the Government. financing, but that is not very common in New York; It is usually reserved for special projects or homes. One World Trade Center is one of those special developments that relied heavily on money from the US federal government for its construction. The final cost of that building notably symbolic and physically robust building cost almost 4 billion US dollars. One of the most expensive skyscrapersever built in the U.S. Typically developers looking to build a skyscraper turn to their own money or, more commonly, build a business case and borrow from lenders to cover their construction costs.

These lenders can be entities such as banks. Frankly, those lenders want to be sure they'll get their money back, and one way a big new development like the two World Trade Centers can build confidence is by securing what are known as anchor tenants early. Construction entertainments are typically large companies that rent a substantial amount of space and typically pre-lease this space before the shovel even hits the ground, so if an anchored tenant, a large law firm, a big media company signs big lease. For example, 200,000 square feet of space, which could be 20 percent of the building, for example, signals to all stakeholders involved that there is demand and interest in the building.

Anchor tenants are looking at what a building has to offer, things like amenities and location had a big impact early on, as anchoring means these businesses can generally expect to pay less rent. The big anchor tenant may even help transform surrounding neighborhoods When Vice and Etsy decided to move their offices to Brooklyn, the borough exploded in popularity, but Finding the right company to sign a multimillion-dollar lease can be a tough sell and that's what that has been happening at two World Trade Centers. Silverstein has not been able to convince any company to move its offices to the new building, which he has passed by several times. radical redesigns and is still not part of this city's Hawaii Skyline in 2005 Architecture firm fosteronePartners received the rights to design the next project and revealed ideas for a 387-meter structure of four interconnected columns that created a tilted diamond.

At its summit, the lower levels will be built as commercial banking floors in an attempt to attract financial anchor tenants for a site just off Wall Street that made a lot of sense now that the idea of ​​two World Trade Centers even reached the final stages of the project. process, workers began building and began laying the foundation with the idea of ​​finishing everything in 2011. The project began without an anchor tenant and instead relied on freedom bonds that were available at the time they did not get very far Rumors began to circulate that Silverstein was struggling to find the tenants needed to make the structure financially viable after 9/11 in the inner-city estate. began to change it was no longer filled with just financial companies and Wall Street bankers, but media and technology companies began to move into Condon asked the company that owns Vogue and GQ even signed a 25-year lease for the a whopping 21 floors of a World Trade Center.

Meanwhile, the original financial institutions were looking elsewhere and banks were no longer attracted to the plan without an anchor tenant. The developers abandoned Foster's design and his partners. Construction stopped here in 2012, living alone behind the foundation that also contained the mechanical systems for Oculus which is the transportation hub right behind me, but rather than give up on the building, Silverstein came up with another plan. In 2015, he reportedly turned to a foreign Visa program to try to get some funding from China and then in 2015, he brought in a new group of younger architects to redesign the tower and returned to stage two, enter Bjork Ingalls, the The architect's design took things in a complete new direction and lit up social media.

Gone were the banking training floors and attempts emerged to attract more media and technology companies with cutting-edge workspaces and studios. The building became a series of stacked boxes descending in a staggered formation, each tailored to the activities of a different company. It would have Greenville Terraces and would rise 408 meters above Manhattan. Media executives from the 21st Century Fox and the news corporations signed an initial agreement and planned to move during 2020 once their Midtown leases had expired. They even offered them millions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits so they could move downtown more easily. Things for two World Trade Center were looking abroad.

But not long after some major problems began to arise, the team was trying to build the foundation for a different earlier version of the skyscraper. Many lots would need to be reconfigured in 2016, the deal finalized with the media companies fell through, Silverstein developers suddenly said. No longer sure which design to choose with the back and forth movements between Bjork Ingalls and Foster, all of which caused the development of two World Trade Centers to stall once again for years, the project remained in limbo and Silverstein focused on signing other leases at the site. Then, in January 2020, it emerged that Silverstein would return to the deal with Foster and his partners.

Yes, the developer decided to stick with the original architects after all, but given the history and amount of time that had passed, Silverstein made it clear. He wouldn't go back to the old Foster design, instead coming up with something more contemporary, but that was early 2020 and we all know what happened that year. Let's start here with the outbreak of a mysterious virus. In China, the stars are like a virus tonight, New York State's 19 million residents will be under a stay-at-home order. Yeah, so it's not an ideal time to convince people to support a new office building, so that's what brought us to today.

The developers have not done so. We have been able to recruit for a design and that has made it difficult to get tenants to sign up, but what is not so clear is what is happening now and as we have discovered through our research, it is actually quite a job It's hard to try to figure out what's really going on in you. of the most iconic construction sites in the world, we tried to contact several people involved or knowledgeable about two World Trade Centers, but we hit many dead ends, people did not respond or directed us to other sources that I also did not seek comments The properties Silverstein's did not respond to our repeated requests for comment.

What we do know is that Silverstein has confirmed to the media on several occasions that he is confident this structure will eventually increase, but that's as far as most journalists go. but it wasn't total silence, we heard from a couple of the city's real estate experts who gave us some insight into what they thought might be happening and how that compares to the rest of New York. I mean my understanding about two worlds. Trade Center is that you know they want to build it when it's financially viable because at the end of the day you know you have to be able to break even and cover your construction costs and a lot of that is really because there are so many people invested. in what is built and you also do not want to know how to saturate the market all at the same time in one place, with such intensity that the financing market for the construction of new development towers from scratch is a great challenge if you are building offices directly in the capital markets.

They were frozen during the pandemic but have come back now that interest rates have gone up again, when interest rates go up building becomes much more expensive so you will see that interest rates will affect the construction rate in New York and other places. now interest rates are high, we are talking about an office market that again, as I said, there are many questions about it. Do workers already need that type of center? Does it take a million square feet? As of today, there is still no official news about it. what the latest two-World Trade Center design will look like, but that didn't stop some renders from leaking in early 2022.

Instead of those four diamond-shaped columns, the design has vertical sections that alternate in height from around 411 meters each. The section is divided by metal fins and those Greenfield terraces that seem to be the current trend in almost all skyscrapers remain. If this design is confirmed, Foster and his partners will have significantly altered their original 2006 proposal. Enough, 16 years have passed. but what happens if Silverstein can't get an anchor tenant with this new design? There are other ways that you can maybe cut and divide the building and instead of looking for one giant tenant to start with, you get 10 smaller tenants that fill the space.

The same space, maybe this is almost like a food court, a situation where you know a Tummy Hub or a Tech Hub or a Media Hub and it's branded and marketing that way, generally, it's built in a site with such a heavy weight and The well-known past has proven difficult. The gap in the master plan shows how important it is to find the right tenants to fill a commercial skyscraper. The wrong design won't bring the right tenants to work there and that can make anything impossible. To take off now that downtown Manhattan is evolving, it's a question of who it can appeal to and when this video is made possible by Masterworks.

The struggles of the two World Trade Centers have probably not been helped by the huge losses that have hit Wall Street this year. $13 trillion was wiped out in the worst six-month period the stock market has ever seen - that's more than the GDP of Japan, Germany and the UK combined - but it's not just big companies that feel the pain . Everyday investors are at best, a typical stock. A heavy portfolio is expected to stabilize this year according to Goldman Sachs. A study found that 1,810 ultra-high net worth people are already investing outside the stock market and in alternative investments like art, even a New York Times report says that when stock markets sink, people look for investing in art Many have outperformed the S P 500 over the past 26 years by more than double, so it makes sense that Masterworks is seeing more demand than ever.

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It plays a very different role in our lives than when this building was first built all those years ago. One thing is clear. New York City is falling behind, rents are piling up in New York. This problem is not exactly new. Housing is in constant demand. High-rise residential construction has been the dominant form of high-rise construction over the past 20, 25 and 30 years. Office markets tend to follow these types of longer cycles, there will be a boom in office construction and then too much space will be diverted. For a while, one of the many new residential skyscrapers planned to be built is actually here in the World Trade Center complex, and if you look at the schematic again you will see that this building 2 has not yet been built along with some office spaces .

The 900-foot-tall World Trade Center would contain about 1,200 new apartments and would have a pedestrian bridge connecting it to the elevated Liberty Park. Right now, about 25 of the units are reserved for affordable housing and because housing is so needed in New York right now it's a little further along in the process than two World Trade Centers. The plan for the affordable units falls within a requirement of the city's mandatory inclusionary housing program. It says a new development in rezoning neighborhoods must use 20 to 30 percent of its floor area for affordable properties and that could mean changing a building from manufacturing to residential, it could mean you were only allowed to build one building four-story here and now you can build a 40-story building here, whatever that is, if To do that, you have to set aside a portion for income-restricted housing, where it's reserved for people who make less than a certain amount of money and Rents are set at a certain rate and can only increase by a certain percentage each year, but some activists are fighting for it. the skyscraper is 100% affordable, in fact the most affordable housing structurehigh in the world.

They argue that it should be home to families and survivors affected by the events of 9/11. The only way that would happen is if someone bought it and took it. I owned the building and ran that building at a loss, I mean, because you know if you're going to spend two to three billion dollars on that structure, you're going to have to find a way to generate the revenue to pay for it. Many elected officials now say there is value in adding more affordable units to an area, but they also recognize that subsidizing construction costs might not be the best use of their already limited resources.

In recent months, the state government has taken several steps toward construction and financing affordable housing developments across New York, but they are much smaller and don't face the same hurdles or attention as five World Trade Centers. You know there is a real difference between them. You know a process for determining what you want to do with the World Trade Center. in a process to see if you want to build an apartment building in College Point, one affects the neighborhood and the other really affects, you know, not just the entire city but the region and possibly even beyond that with so much history and linked tragedy.

Because of this, the World Trade Center is one of the most unique and challenging construction sites on the planet. Both the second and fifth World Trade Centers face immense challenges just to put a shovel in the ground, but while their problems may be particularly extreme, it's not unique throughout this city, new high-rise tower projects face the same challenges: finding the right companies to buy space in a changing economy, building apartments that provide the housing people really need, and securing the money to make it all happen. I'm in New York City. The horizon is a graveyard for failed projects, projects that never happen.

One of the most vivid examples is the redevelopment that Jared Kushner and Charlie Kushner's Company wanted to do with 666 Fifth Avenue. They had brought in a Chinese partner called anbang at the time and they wanted to do this five billion dollar redevelopment of that skyscraper that never got done, the Sony building that's at 550 Madison Avenue, a beautiful Phillip Johnson design building. The initial plan during the condo boom was to convert it into luxury condos as well, and instead a Saudi group came in and bought it. and just continue to run it as offices; At the end of the day, all commercial and residential skyscraper developers want to make a profit, but without consensus, design or financing structures they will be stuck in those early stages of development, even skyscrapers that already exist. are having to adapt to changes brought about by the pandemic vacancies in city centers have not returned to pre-pandemic levels with many older buildings empty cities are looking for alternatives to fill the space for which these older buildings in the midtown Manhattan are best suited to convert into apartments if you have an older office building and many of them are built and are kind of what we call a wedding cake where you have a larger base and then kind of a slender tower, although those Slender towers create perfect apartment designs. may be at the extreme end of the scale, the World Trade Center in New York shows many of the challenges and sensitivities that construction projects face today and especially our skyscrapers these buildings define our cities and reflect the state of our societies for us there are Products of the struggles that made them take off and the forces that shaped them the result is a record of our history preserved in concrete and steel, any structure that emerges from these sites will become part of New York's history.

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