why do they have those 2 strip of unglassedness?

up! Thanks to skyscraperpage and NYguy

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/532/54407wtc_reflecting.jpg

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/532/54407wtc_4-25-05.jpg

http://ck37.image.pbase.com/image/42570893/large.jpg

why do they have those 2 strip of unglassedness?

that's for some fress-air by the construction.

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/532/54407wtc_reflecting.jpg

the reflect of the air is so beautiful! :eek2:

it indeed is!

Update on a gray cloudy day, May 8...

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3223/2404Mets_Good_Seats_033.jpg

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3223/2404Mets_Good_Seats_034.jpg

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3223/2404Mets_Good_Seats_035.jpg

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3223/2404Mets_Good_Seats_040.jpg

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3223/2404Mets_Good_Seats_044.jpg

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3223/2404Mets_Good_Seats_043.jpg

from SSP

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/532/54407wtc_so_close_to_done.jpg

Another one from SSP.

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/532/5440looking_down_church_street.jpg

Looking good. I always expected this one to be slim, but it's pretty bulky from some angles and especially in the skyline.

Here's another update of the new 7 WTC.

Originally posted by gripja from SSP.
http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/532/54407wtc_and_lower_west_side_from_up_high.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/22/business/22prop.html
A Hot 2005 for Offices So Far

By JOHN HOLUSHA
Published: June 22, 2005

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/22/business/prop.184.1.jpg
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Downtown is an exception to the boom, and its problems may worsen when this building, 7 World Trade Center, is finished early next year and adds 1.7 million square feet to the market.

The demand by investors seeking to acquire office space in Manhattan remains intense, especially for properties in Midtown.

With the first half of the year almost over, the dollar value of sales of commercial property is on a pace for the best year ever, exceeding even the record level of 2004, when $15.1 billion worth of buildings changed hands. A majority of commercial property in Manhattan is office space.

"A banner year used to be in the $10 billion range," said Scott Latham, an executive director of Cushman & Wakefield, a brokerage and services company. "Last year, we were 50 percent above that."

The company estimates that $12.67 billion of property was sold through mid-June. If current trends continue, 2005 will far exceed last year's total.

Office rents in Midtown Manhattan have recovered almost to the peak levels of early 2001, providing some rationale for the lofty sales prices.

In recent years, real estate executives have talked about the incongruity of the exceptionally high sales prices for office buildings and the soft rental rates for space within such buildings. Leasing income would seem to be the fundamental economic underpinning for purchases.

"The leasing market started to turn in November 2003, and 2004 was a very strong year," said John Powers, co-chairman for the tristate region at CB Richard Ellis. "For the year to date, we are still ahead of the five-year average" of square feet leased, he said.

Although the pace of office leasing has slowed in recent weeks, some brokers describe this as a period of adjustment after the hot market of last year and the first quarter of this one. "The market is pausing to digest," said Mitchell S. Steir, the chief executive of Studley, a brokerage company that mostly represents tenants. "It is the rational follow-up to a period of peak activity."

Real estate executives say low interest rates and an increased appetite for real estate among institutional investors like pension funds are driving the demand for commercial and residential properties in crucial markets like Manhattan and Washington.

"Ten years ago, real estate was a stepchild for institutional investors, who were mostly interested in stock and bonds," said Paul E. Pariser, a founder of Taconic Investment Partners, which owns, among other properties, 111 Eighth Avenue, which covers the block between 15th and 16th Streets.

"Now funds that allocated 3 percent to real estate have moved to 8 percent, and those that were at 5 percent have moved to 12 percent," Mr. Pariser said. "Those are big dollars. When you add three percentage points at a $100 billion institution, that's $3 billion."

Peter Hauspurg, the chairman of Eastern Consolidated Properties, a sales brokerage firm, said: "There is a tremendous amount of capital chasing real estate assets. History says that we are three years overdue for a correction in pricing, but there is no sign of it."

Indeed, in April, a group of pension funds and Tishman Speyer Properties agreed to pay $1.72 billion for the MetLife Building, the 2.8-million-square-foot tower that rises above Grand Central Terminal. It is said to be the highest price ever paid for a single building.

Even though institutions have become an important factor in real estate investing, many executives say private investors with access to cheap debt still dominate in Manhattan. "Last year, 68 percent of the sales volume went to private investors," Mr. Latham said.

Part of the reason, he said, is that private investors are willing to take on more debt to make a purchase than are institutions, which tend to have stricter rules about financing acquisitions. "A private investor can finance 80 percent of a deal, compared to 60 to 65 percent for institutions," Mr. Latham said.

At the Toy Center, the connected buildings at 200 Fifth Avenue and 1107 Broadway that have housed offices and showrooms for toy manufacturers, the competition to acquire the property was fierce.

"When we went to sell the Toy Center, we had over 20 real bids, which is a remarkable number by historic criteria," said Anthony E. Malkin, president of W&M Properties, a large investor.

Mr. Malkin said most of the bidders were individuals based in New York. "This market is being driven by entrepreneurial capital with access to high levels of debt," he said.

The Toy Center was sold for $355 million to the Chetrit Group. There has been speculation that the buildings, which face Madison Square Park, will be converted into residential condominiums, but Chetrit has declined to disclose its intentions.

Leasing brokers say that in Midtown, concessions packages - periods of free rent and contributions toward interior construction - shrank as the vacancy rate dropped to 10.3 percent in May from 12.3 percent a year earlier, increasing the effective rent.

According to a Studley study, the average effective rent in Midtown by the end of last year was $66.27 a square foot, which was still 11 percent below the high of $74.54 set in early 2001. The effective rent as calculated by Studley includes operating expenses, real estate taxes and the cost of electrical power, making it higher than the nominal base rent.

Barry M. Gosin, the chief executive of Newmark & Company Real Estate, said, "The market is being pulled up from the top," with some prospective tenants willing to pay very high prices for space that meets their needs. "Financial institutions like hedge funds have set the bar very high in prime buildings in the Plaza District," an area north of Grand Central. Because these companies were willing to pay high rents for the space they wanted, other landlords lifted their asking prices as well.

But if the Midtown leasing market is finally recovering from the slump after the Sept. 11 attacks, the downtown market is not. The vacancy rate there was 16.3 percent in May, compared with 15.2 percent a year earlier, according to CB Richard Ellis.

The rebuilding of 7 World Trade Center is expected to be completed early next year, but no tenants have yet signed up for its 1.7 million square feet.

"Downtown is basically stagnant, although the conversion of office buildings to residential use will eventually be good for the area," Mr. Gosin said. He noted that the gap between the Midtown rental rates and those downtown has widened, as few office tenants have taken space downtown. "The difference used to be something like $15 to $20 a square foot," he said. "Now, it is more like $30 a square foot."

Some real estate executives said the decision by the investment banking company Goldman Sachs, the only firm that had committed to building a new office tower near Ground Zero, to suspend its plans was discouraging other tenants from looking for space downtown. "Unfortunately for the city, the impact of Goldman will be far-reaching," Mr. Steir of Studley said.

Can you find it?

http://www.pbase.com/image/44947231/large.jpg

Picture found at pbase take on June 17.

i thought 7 wtc was gonna be taller then the tallest WFC, i guess i was wrong heh

new 7 wtc is actually taller than the tallest wfc building, 3 wfc, by just 1 meter (new 7: 226m, 3 wfc: 225m). it just looks shorter because it's farther away from the hudson river than 3 wfc.

the fact that the downtown office market's totally stagnant right now is why i'm opposed to the idea of a new business district in the west side. why speed up the death of downtown as a commercial zone and make it a virtual extension of the residential soho and tribeca?

btw savethewtc, new 7 actually looks almost like bloomberg in that pic...

downtown business center is stagnent mostly because of the september 11 attacks, but also because its so crowded, its at a point where you can barely walk the streets, and also the streets down there are just so narrow and so not well planned, but theres nothing you can do about 17 century planning

New York Times
June 27, 2005

Built to Be Noticed, and to Return the Favor

By GLENN COLLINS

For three years now, 7 World Trade Center - the last tower to fall on Sept. 11, 2001, and the first to be reborn at ground zero - has meant a crucial question for its developer, Larry A. Silverstein.

Could he build a skyscraper atop a monumental concrete Con Edison substation - arguably the ugliest pedestal at any Manhattan building - and adorn it with a facade so arresting that tenants would clamor to rent office space there?

The answer is emerging these days at the northern edge of the trade center void. A shimmering, sharp-edged parallelogram sheathed in glass is being married to the brutalist 78-foot-tall substation with what looks like a sculptural installation: a kinetic, interactive stainless-steel wall.

Architects have said that this screen, intended to be a source of reflected color and light, may serve as the prototype for the cladding of a new, sturdier base at the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower that will be built next door. That skyscraper's security redesign is expected to be unveiled on Wednesday.

At 7 World Trade Center, the high-tech wall must also serve as a porous ventilator for hidden vaults of three-story transformers that need to breathe. Mr. Silverstein said there was "a whole set of design challenges that David had to solve," referring to David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects of 7 World Trade Center.

To Mr. Childs, it was essential not to slap "some external piece of art" onto the 52-story tower, he said, "but something integral, that was designed from the start."

Mr. Childs sought the expertise of James Carpenter, whose Manhattan firm, James Carpenter Design Associates, also helped to create the glass cable-wall system at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle, and is currently working on an extension to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

To observers, Mr. Childs hoped, it would seem that light was not only captured by the building, but also emanated from it. So the architects ordered 13.6-foot-long white glass sheets, low-iron panes that minimize the conventional greenish hue of glass, for the upper floors. These could be extended in one piece from the ceiling of each of the building's 42 tenant floors down past the spandrels, the horizontal panels at the base of each floor slab.

The spandrels themselves are curved, made of folded textured steel that reflects the light not only from the sky, but also from blue steel window sills at each floor. This configuration scatters light upward within the tower's glass skin, "embedding the sky in the glass surface," as Mr. Carpenter put it.

The resulting glass wall was so atypical - with a portion of the bottom of each floor's glass panes exposed to grimy air - that the architectural team had to design a twisty squeegee that could be deployed from movable maintenance scaffolding. Then a cleaning worker had to demonstrate to Mr. Silverstein that the squeegee could actually clean the exposed inner portions of the panes.

But how to match this airy glass tower to its stolid base, which comprises not only the seven-story substation - which feeds electricity to a million users in Manhattan - but also three floors of the building's mechanical systems?

"The answer was to link the upper and lower buildings together by light," said Mr. Carpenter, a 2004 MacArthur fellow who trained as an architect and sculptor, and has made the characteristics of light a focus of his designs. "We envisioned the whole building as prismatic - as a parallelogram prism."

So on the lower floors, the architects hoped to restate the design of the top of the building, using nothing more than a curtain wall, an independently supported outer screen. Hard hats are now installing 15-foot-tall, 5-foot-wide panels of elegantly machined and polished triangular steel prism bars in two rows set 6.5 inches apart. Each section weighs 1,500 pounds.

During the day, the 130,000 prisms are intended to make the wall an active surface. The prism sections are set off by 15 degrees, so they can reflect the sky in different directions. As pedestrians walk past the building, they are expected to experience kinetic reflections.

"The wall will create a moiré effect that moves by you, as if you are walking past stretched silk," Mr. Childs said.

But at dusk, 220,000 blue and white light-emitting diodes, which give off little heat and are easy to maintain, will illuminate the prismed wall from within. The lights will subtly reflect off the prisms out onto the street.

When the wall is activated, its evening glow will change in a sequence from tranquil, patterned fields of blue and white to more active modes: at times, the wall will follow passers-by - or at least, 12 motion-sensing cameras will. The sensors are randomly programmed to follow pedestrians on the sidewalks, creating multistory, moving columns of blue light on a white background as people pass the building. Sometimes two pedestrians heading in different directions will each be highlighted.

These days, the building's upper pylon seems to change dramatically during shifting light and weather conditions. At "Seven," as the tower is called by those who are toiling on its construction, the intensity of the glass skin's light-scattering effect is greatest in the early morning and late afternoon.

Mr. Carpenter said he hopes that 7 World Trade Center can be "not just a mirrored building," but will explore "the boundary between transparent and reflective."

The 741-foot-tall building will have 1.7 million square feet of office space, beginning at the building's 11th floor. By the end of August the tower - scheduled to be completed early next year - will have a finished floor to show to prospective tenants. Column-free, and nearly 10 feet in height, the office floors provide unobstructed views. The building's massive central core limits the floor plates to 40,000 square feet, but addresses security concerns by protecting elevators, stairways and sprinkler pipes behind two feet of concrete.

The bulky base of 7 World Trade Center enhances its safety, security experts say, since its occupied floors start well above possible blast effects from a truck bomb. The New York Police Department has insisted that the Freedom Tower, also being designed by Mr. Childs, incorporate a similar security core, as well as a hardened concrete base to protect tenants.

Mr. Carpenter and his chief assistant, Richard Kress, designed the lower reflective wall to cover only the north and south facades of 7 World Trade Center - which is bounded by Vesey, Barclay and Washington Streets - since the facade nearly abuts the monumental Verizon building.

The lobby will be dominated by a floor-to-ceiling, 14-by-70-foot wall of acid-etched translucent glass illuminated by whitish light-emitting diodes, created by Mr. Carpenter and the artist Jenny Holzer. She will program the wall to display moving text appropriate to the site, poetry that will evoke the history of New York.

The building has cost Mr. Silverstein of Silverstein Properties $700 million, "very significantly more than I ever expected to spend," he said. An important component of that expense - Mr. Silverstein would not say how much - has been to create the building's fancy curtain wall.

Space in the building is being offered for $50 to $60 per square foot, $15 higher than other space downtown, brokers say, though the tower's sales force says tax breaks and energy savings will make it more competitive. Though Mr. Silverstein is thus far tenantless, he said, "There are expressions of interest."

Mr. Silverstein has already put behind him the loss of the twin towers and his peripatetic quest for insurance settlements, but the effort to prettify 7 World Trade Center "has been the greatest challenge to date," he said. However, looking ahead to the re-unveiling of the Freedom Tower, he added: "It will pale in comparison to the challenges to come."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/27/nyregion/trade.184.1.450.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/27/nyregion/27trade1.enlarge.jpg

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by Zoe on WNY:

http://img114.echo.cx/img114/2040/img27576rb.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

http://img114.echo.cx/img114/2473/img27582lv.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

http://img114.echo.cx/img114/9497/img27595eu.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

http://img114.echo.cx/img114/5200/img27609bu.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

Can you find it?

http://www.pbase.com/image/44947231/large.jpg

Picture found at pbase take on June 17.
Barely :bash:

Just go left from the WFC and it's there. ;)

NY Newsday

Wanted: 7 WTC tenants

BY PRADNYA JOSHI
STAFF WRITER

July 3, 2005

Attention real-estate shoppers: There's a great new sale for office space going on at Ground Zero, thanks to new city and state incentives.

And experts say those new financial lures that state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver shepherded through could be just the jump-start his downtown Manhattan district needs to help lift Ground Zero out of the political morass that has caused one delay after another.

All in all, the new state incentives, developer Larry Silverstein's agreement to match them, and other energy and efficiency savings could equal as much as a $20 per-square-foot discount on the new 7 World Trade Center and other Ground Zero buildings once they are completed. To date, Silverstein has not signed any tenants to 7 WTC, which is scheduled for completion early next year.

With Silverstein asking at least $50 a square foot in rent for 7 World Trade Center, the new breaks add up to real money for companies thinking about relocating to downtown.

"It's really changed the economics of coming to lower Manhattan versus midtown," said Richard Kennedy, senior director at the Cushman & Wakefield's Wall Street office.

Silverstein's exclusive brokerage firm said the incentives as well as the near-completion date are getting clients interested.

"This is one of the most efficient, safest and newest buildings in the country if not the world - and it's one of the best economic values," said Steve Siegel, chairman of CB Richard Ellis' global brokerage services. He added his brokers have talked to law firms, investment banks and even cosmetics firms.

Silverstein said at a news conference last week announcing the new Freedom Tower design that his phone "has been ringing off the hook" since the incentives were offered, which will be paid for by the city and state. Silverstein said it's too soon to sign up tenants for Freedom Tower because that building is not expected to open until 2010, but he expects that he can secure them for the $750-million 7 World Trade Center quickly with the incentives.

Still, real-estate brokers acknowledge that it's been an uphill battle to get businesses to come back to Ground Zero.

Companies may be leery about setting up shop overlooking the construction pit at Ground Zero; the transportation connections to downtown, particularly for suburban commuters, still aren't as extensive as in midtown; and the downtown real-estate market still has a glut of office space available.

Ground Zero is competing with nearly 12 million square feet of vacant office space elsewhere in downtown, of which 5 million square feet is large blocks of space that a large company may want, said M. Myers Mermel, founder of TenantWise Inc., a firm that advises businesses on real-estate transactions.

In addition, Mermel said another 4.3 million square feet of space downtown is not officially on the market but sits empty and could be available for rent.

Despite those drawbacks, Silverstein Properties says 7 World Trade Center has many assets: "green" building codes that will cut the electric costs for tenants; natural light and special design materials to make office workers happy and productive; and sweeping views of the harbor and the city that many of the crowded midtown office towers can't offer.

Furthermore, with an address at 250 Greenwich St., Silverstein is also marketing the building's proximity to trendy TriBeCa with its shops and restaurants.

Brokers say one reason tenants have been keeping away has been Silverstein's asking price. According to Colliers ABR, downtown rents averaged $33.92 a square foot last month for the top-quality office space, which meant Silverstein was asking more than $17 above market prices.

That extra rent is "not outrageous for a new product but sits in the context of a lot of new vacancy" downtown, said one real-estate broker who asked not to be named.

Siegel of CB Richard Ellis acknowledged that the downtown glut hasn't helped but the firm also has only recently ramped up its marketing of the building.

More pics of the base...

http://testofwill.blogspot.com/2005/07/7-world-trades-base.html

Link found by Derek2k3.

Found at pbase dated...

July 2, 2005...

http://www.pbase.com/terraxplorer/image/45668558/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/terraxplorer/image/45668494/large.jpg

July 3...

http://www.pbase.com/terraxplorer/image/45974493/large.jpg

July 9, in the skyline:

http://www.pbase.com/terraxplorer/image/45974728/large.jpg

July 14 from pbase...another skyline shot:

http://www.pbase.com/alidasphotos/image/46305499/original.jpg

I can't see the last photo :(

NYC in 14 days :)

EDIT: I can see it now :)

Awesome picture man. savethewtc is the greatest photo hunter! I bow down to you..... if there was a smily that bowed down.... for now I shall merely drool at your amazing photo :drool:

I can't see the last photo :(

NYC in 14 days :)

EDIT: I can see it now :)

Awesome picture man. savethewtc is the greatest photo hunter! I bow down to you..... if there was a smily that bowed down.... for now I shall merely drool at your amazing photo :drool:

Have fun in the city! Thanks for the compliment, here's the smiley you wanted...:master:, lol. The building is looking great, it's complimenting the WFC nicely.

I'm staying in the Millenium Hilton this weekend ...I'll grab a bunch of photos. :)

Cool DMAG, look forward to seeing them.

Tribeca Trib

7 World Views

by Barry Owens
Photos: Carl Glassman

Camouflaged in the color of blue sky, an unmanned balloon was launched last month on a simple mission: to capture with its dangling camera the view from 1,400 feet above the future site of the Freedom Tower. The idea was to show potential tenants how much of the world they would see out of their office windows if only they would sign on the dotted line.

Similarly, a film crew donned hard hats and rode a construction hoist to the top of 7 World Trade Center to check light levels and find prime locations for a planned shoot with the building's developer, Larry Silverstein, and Gov. George Pataki. The pair were part of the cast in a promotional video unveiling the redesigned Freedom Tower and extolling the virtues of occupying office space so very high above Lower Manhattan.

The views are certainly extraordinary, but so far they have not been enough to lure tenants to either address. Late last month, however, word came from Albany that the state will provide rent subsidies of $5 per-square foot for the first 750,000 square feet leased at the World Trade Center site and $3.80 per square foot at 7 WTC-currently leasing at $50 per square foot. The incentives will be matched by Silverstein.


While the 33rd floor of 7 WTC has been set aside for Silverstein himself, the remaining 51 floors are empty. Not a single other tenant has signed a lease.

"I can tell you, happily, that the phones haven't stopped ringing" since the incentives were announced, Silverstein said at a news conference on June 29.

There is 1.7 million square feet of office space in the building, most of it filled only with sunlight. The windows are floor to ceiling, and made of iron-free glass that minimizes tint and provides almost crystal clear views.

Even on a hazy day, as the Trib discovered on a recent visit, the 741-foot-tall building affords a view to be found nowhere else Downtown.

To the west there is Battery Park City. The World Financial Center, seen in its entirety, looks much like the scale model it once was on an architect's desk. To the east, the Financial District unfolds. The crown of the Woolworth Building on Broadway is level with the upper floors where it remains a strange presence in the space, as prominent as a pyramid.

Only the ridge of towers in Midtown prevents one from seeing as far north as Central Park. And of course there are panoramic views of the harbor, the Statue of Liberty and as much of Brooklyn and New Jersey as you care to take in.

But it is the more immediate view to the south that may speak to one reason the building has thus far failed to find tenants: The footprints of the World Trade Center towers are visible from every floor.

http://www.tribecatrib.com/photos/news/july05/wtc-worker-strolls.jpg
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http://www.tribecatrib.com/photos/news/july05/wtc-verizon-cap.gif

New York Post
July 25, 2005

Building at WTC Is Glad to Take American Express

By LEONARD GREENE

The first building to rise at the new World Trade Center site has landed its first tenant.

After months of struggling to find tenants for the 52-story 7 World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein is in the final stages of negotiations with American Express Financial Advisors for a 15-year lease for about 20,000 square feet.

The state Legislature greased the wheels last month by passing an incentive package that eliminated commercial-rent tax for World Trade Center tenants and created a state rent subsidy for No. 7 that Silverstein must match.

Silverstein's failure to deliver until now had generated criticism of his asking price of $50 per square foot for the 1.7 million-square-foot property.

Furthermore, brokers interpreted the slow leasing pace as a sign that the entire downtown market was weak.

Since the Legislature acted, prospective tenants have been lining up, officials said.

"This is terrific news," Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat who represents lower Manhattan, told Crain's, the business magazine.

A spokesman for Silverstein declined to comment on the negotiations.

American Express Financial Advisors is an insurance annuity and investment-management division that is being spun off from its parent company in a deal slated to be completed in September.

The building — with staircases protected by 2-foot-thick walls and a security system that reads computer chips carried by employees and visitors — will be ready for occupancy next year.

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc.

good news^

http://www.tribecatrib.com/photos/news/july05/7wtc-base.jpg
i never knew the base was clad in steel like that. maybe that will match up with the new freedom tower

the views from 7 are amazing, and it's what, like half of the new FT?

well, looks like american express finally decided to return to 7 wtc. they actually occupied a couple floors in the original 7 all the way to the attacks.

^It IS right next to their HQ. It's the perfect expansion space.

Found at pbase, dated Aug 22 05:

http://i.pbase.com/v3/26/411626/2/48080136.050822003LP.jpg

Some more recent shots of the new 7 WTC.

Originally post on Wired NY by greenie
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b195/nova_cain/downtown/24.jpg
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b195/nova_cain/downtown/23.jpg
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b195/nova_cain/downtown/9619042a.jpg

http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/article.cms?article_id=23570&arc=n
Chinese firm eyes big site for NY center

City pushes for downtown location such as 7 WTC, but midtown could win

By Julie Satow
Published on August 29, 2005

One of China's largest real estate companies is seeking up to 1 million square feet of office space in Manhattan to create a center for Chinese companies establishing operations in the United States.

Beijing Ventone Real Estate gave formal approval earlier this month to seek suitable office space in the city, according to New York businesspeople who have been working with the company. It would lease the space, and then sublease offices to Chinese companies that want a headquarters in the West. Ventone would provide those companies with support services such as conference facilities and translators.

Ventone is considering both midtown and downtown for the new venture, but city leaders are pushing hard for a downtown location.

"We are hopeful that they'll go to 7 World Trade Center," says Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City. A meager 20,000 square feet of the 1.7 million-square-foot World Trade Center tower is leased, not including an office for the developer and World Trade Center leaseholder, Larry Silverstein.

City officials agree that a downtown location is best. The plan "dovetails nicely with what we are trying to accomplish downtown," says Josh Sirefman, assistant to Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff. "Ventone's preference is for lower Manhattan, from what I understand." A number of Chinese companies were located at the original World Trade Center.

Still, space abounds in midtown, which could pose competition for the site. Blocks include 1 million square feet at the Bank of America tower at 1 Bryant Park and 700,000 square feet up for grabs at The New York Times Building at West 41st Street and Eighth Avenue. But because it lacks the incentives available downtown and has higher rents, midtown would be far more expensive.

New government policy

Ventone could not be reached, and its broker, Peter Riguardi of Jones Lang LaSalle, didn't return calls for comment.

Last fall, China decided to encourage Chinese businesses to invest overseas. The most recent indication of the impact of this is Chinese computer giant Lenovo's acquisition of IBM Corp.'s personal computer division for $1.75 billion. Lenovo has since opened an office in New York.

68 Chinese firms in New York

According to Laura Aubuchon, a senior vice president at the city's Economic Development Corp., 68 China-based firms have offices in New York. Of China's 32 largest companies--with $500 million or more in annual sales revenue--13 have a presence in the city.

The Chinese government has agreed to allow Ventone to create an off-shore company, but the plan to establish a business center is still wending its way through the complicated governmental approval process, Ms. Wylde says.

One of China's largest private developers, Ventone earned $108 million last year. One of its most recent developments is the $300 million "Central Park" in Beijing. It boasts 1,800 residential units and 2,000 parking spaces within the 1 million-square-foot project.

©2005 Crain Communications Inc.

having 1 million SF get rented out to a large chinese business would be the best thing that could ever happen to 7WTC, Asian businesses tend to grow damn quickly. :)

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/wtc/nyc-bz7wtc0829,0,6803371.story?coll=nyc-swapbox1
7 WTC almost complete, awaits tenants

BY PRADNYA JOSHI
STAFF WRITER

August 29, 2005

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192527.jpg
Exterior photo of 7 World Trade Center in lower Manhattan
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192525.jpg
Exit stairs of 7 World Trade Center are 20 percent wider. The tube under the hand rail is an emergency lighting system which runs throughout both staircases. Photo taken on August 25, 2005 in lower Manhattan.
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192524.jpg
Reinforced concrete walls inside 7 World Trade Center, protect the building core for the full height of the building, including exit stairs, elevators and building lobby. The fireproofing material used to protect the steel structure is more than 5 times as durable as required by building codes. Photo taken on August 25, 2005 lower Manhattan.
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192523.jpg
Frank Hussey of Tishman Construction, shows the width of the newly designed reinforced concrete walls of 7 World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Photo taken on August 25, 2005.
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192522.jpg
Exterior photo of 7 World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on August 25, 2005.
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192521.jpg
Reinforced concrete walls inside 7 World Trade Center, protect the building core for the full height of the building, including exit stairs, elevators and building lobby. The fireproofing material used to protect the steel structure is more than 5 times as durable as required by building codes. Photo taken on August 25, 2005 lower Manhattan.
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192520.jpg
Men working in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on August 25, 2005.
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-08/19192516.jpg
The beam that connects the core and the reinforced concrete walls inside 7 World Trade Center. Photo taken on August 25, 2005 lower Manhattan.
(Newsday photo / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

The sweeping view of the Manhattan skyline from the 52nd floor of 7 World Trade Center looking north could easily be a scene from a Ken Burns documentary.

With a breathtaking vantage point, tenants will hardly notice the reinforced core, the environmentally friendly water usage and cutting-edge art featured in the lobby.

Although many other plans for downtown development remain in flux, Silverstein Properties' 7 World Trade Center is just about done. The $700 million building is about 90 percent complete and will be ready for tenants to move in around March 2006.

At its peak, nearly 1,000 people worked on erecting the building and now about 400 people on any given day labor on the 741-foot tower.

"We get a little extra productivity on the job," said Jack Klein, vice president of construction at Silverstein. "It's more of a privilege to work here."

Already, the Consolidated Edison substation taking up the first four floors is up and running and feeding power to much of lower Manhattan. Currently, workers are installing the 29 elevators, commissioning the mechanical systems that will control the building and installing amenities for a park such as fountain and other greenery that will greet people entering on Greenwich Street.

President Larry Silverstein is aware that many naysayers still hound him about one critical issue: the lack of committed tenants for the building. But this building is being built "on spec," or without an anchor tenant. Such a move can be financially risky, but Silverstein built the original 7 WTC on spec in 1987 and was able to fill it up. In addition, new city and state incentives passed this summer have spurred interest, said Steve Siegel, chairman of global brokerage of CB Richard Ellis, the exclusive real-estate agency for the building.

So far, Ameriprise Financial, a subsidiary that is separating from American Express Co., is rumored to be close to signing a deal for about 20,000 square feet. That still leaves most of the 1.7 million square feet available. CBRE is slated to open a sales and marketing office next month at the base of the building, making it easier to show off the building to prospective tenants. Silverstein also hopes that with an address at 250 Greenwich St., the building's connection to trendy TriBeCa will attract tenants.

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.

September 9, 2005:

http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/9816/7wtc5vy.jpg

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/8818/wfc2large1wk.jpg

yay! they're finally installing those missing windows!

the glass between the fortress base and the office floors of the building look too transparent though. u can still see the columns very clearly, and it just doesn't make for a good transition between the steel base and the glass tower.

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?&aid=53366&search_result=1&stid=203
Developer Larry Silverstein Gives NY1 A Tour Of 7 World Trade Center

September 07, 2005

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/images/live/86/171704.jpg

Four years after the collapse of the World Trade Center, the site's developer says he's more excited than ever about rebuilding. In the following report, NY1's Amanda Farinacci takes a tour of the site's first building with leaseholder Larry Silverstein.

If you look closely at the facade of 7 World Trade Center, you can make out the address subtly inscribed on the side. But there's nothing subtle about the amount of work that went into the building - the first to go up on the World Trade Center site.

Developer Larry Silverstein is out to make sure it leaves an impression.

“The finishing phases of a building really require the greatest amount of attention. It's really where you have to watch, and watch carefully,” says the developer.

A curtain of steel hides the Con Ed substation already up and running on the first four floors. Motion-sensitive lights will shine behind the façade and appear to be "following" people as they pass the building.

Inside, workers put finishing touches on the building's 29 elevators, which don't require the touch of a button to get to your destination. Upstairs on the 38th floor is where Silverstein will make his home.

“The view, as you can see, is quite spectacular. Isn't that something?” he says.

On the north side of the building is a breathtaking view of the city. On the south, Silverstein can keep an eye on the site he's responsible for rebuilding, especially the Freedom Tower.

NYPD security concerns surrounding its construction meant the entire plan had to be scrapped, pushing construction of the iconic building back two years.

“The standards established for us by the NYPD, which essentially are foreign embassy standards for a building built in the middle of some foreign country, not necessarily a friendly country either, but nevertheless, the building will be extraordinary,” says Silverstein.

The developer says he tries to avoid getting involved in site politics. He says he's fought enough of his own wars over funding the $8 billion site.

He insists he's not nervous the 52-story tower has no tenants yet, because he's expecting his first one to sign a deal soon. He says his role is very clear.

“I still have the ground lease responsibility, the obligation to pay the ground rent, the obligation to rebuild these buildings,” says Silverstein. “That's my job and I'll get that done.”

The building will open in March of next year, and Silverstein says tenants or not, it's going to be one of the most coveted addresses in New York City.

- Amanda Farinacci

Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Copyright © 2005 NY1 News. All rights reserved.

Nice shots BigMac, like the skyline one, displays how it blends in with the rest of the skyline, even with it transparent - blue color and somewhat bulkness. Doesn't look bad at all hanging with the World Financial Center. Great ability to adapt with the sky too. Eager to see how the crown is lit up at night and the base should be lit up too judging from the rendering, no?

yeah, transparency was the number one thing i worried about this tower when it started construction. the renderings seemed to show a colorless, transparent, and cold building that does not relate to the other more interesting buildings around it.

but i don't really see the building as transparent anymore. i like the rich, cheery blue color that it displays during sunny days that gives the skyline a new color to it, just like what the original 7 did with its brown facade. the building still looks too moody on overcast days though...

Another recent shot of the new 7 WTC.

Originally posted by TowersNYC in the Construction Updates Fourm
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/nyctowers/uno/DSC00641.jpg

great building this one, awesome photos guys!

In Germany was a Travelshow 14 days ago in new york

you can see the world financial center and the complete new world trade center no. 7 !

here are a screenshort :

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v395/dennis18wo/snapshot.jpg

and here are the link to the video (please click left) :

http://s54.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0U5A6JYKW078X07O1KAITWCXG

i have cut the music in the background -

i find the building great :-)

If you look carefully at this recent shot, you will see the number seven imprinted on the lower left hand side of the base.

Originally posted by LeCom on SSP
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/9002/pict02667wtcucsep05base403030s.jpg

man thats an ugly pedestal at the bottom, dont know why there caling 7 wtc, 7 was part of the old wtc complex it should be called (freedom tower 7).

I'm sure the Freedom Tower will officially be 1WTC

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3871/pict00207wtcucsep05tothenorthw.th.jpg (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict00207wtcucsep05tothenorthw.jpg) http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8027/pict00297wtcucsep05wfcsmall3gm.th.jpg (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict00297wtcucsep05wfcsmall3gm.jpg) http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/3540/pict02397wtcucsep05tothenorthe.th.jpg (http://img10.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict02397wtcucsep05tothenorthe.jpg)
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http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/6461/pict02657wtclookinguplampposts.th.jpg (http://img10.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict02657wtclookinguplampposts.jpg)
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http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/3916/pict02677wtclookinguptothewest.th.jpg (http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict02677wtclookinguptothewest.jpg)
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/668/pict02697wtcfacadesmall0vo.th.jpg (http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict02697wtcfacadesmall0vo.jpg)

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3871/pict00207wtcucsep05tothenorthw.jpg

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http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/3916/pict02677wtclookinguptothewest.jpg

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/668/pict02697wtcfacadesmall0vo.jpg

Excluding the base, 7WTC looks great.

Does anyone know what the deal is with those two lines on the face of the building? I know those columns of windows were the last to be placed, but why is there the silver outline?

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8027/pict00297wtcucsep05wfcsmall3gm.jpg

Amazing shots LeCom, some of the best I've ever seen of the tower. The facade and everything looks so different.

NYMantle, I think at those spots are where the vents are.

New York Post
October 26, 2005

SILVERSTEIN WOOS FIRST BIG TENANT FOR 7 WTC

By LOIS WEISS and TOM TOPOUSIS

Amid blistering criticism from Mayor Bloomberg over the slow pace of construction at Ground Zero, developer Larry Silverstein is about to sign a deal to bring a major tenant to his nearly complete tower at 7 World Trade Center.

The New York Academy of Sciences is negotiating a lease for 40,000 square feet of space in the ultra-modern tower that sits on the north side of Vesey Street, overlooking the pit at Ground Zero.

Sources said the scientific academy has a "term sheet" for a 10-year lease for the full 40th floor in the new building, set to open next year.

An academy spokesperson said the group has not seen a lease but is talking with Silverstein about it.

The academy was founded downtown in 1817 and would "like to bring down thousands of young scientists to our conferences."

The academy would be only the second major tenant lined up for the glass-walled skyscraper, with 1.7 million square feet of space.

A lease for 20,000 square feet with an American Express spin-off, Ameriprise Financial, is expected to be signed soon.

As the leaseholder for the World Trade Center site, Silverstein is under pressure to find tenants and show there is a market for office space at Ground Zero, which is slated to host five more office buildings.

Silverstein has so far filled only a small fraction of 7 World Trade Center and has yet to line up any prospects for the Freedom Tower, prompting Bloomberg to push for his removal and call for more residential development.

"It is worrisome that he hasn't rented 7 [WTC] yet. We've given him the incentives he said he needed and still, as far as I know, no tenants — 20,000 square feet out a 1.7 million," Bloomberg told The Post's editorial board this week.

A spokesman for Silverstein declined to comment on the talks.

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc.

Does anyone know what the deal is with those two lines on the face of the building? I know those columns of windows were the last to be placed, but why is there the silver outline?

i believe it's because those windows and their metal linings haven't been exposed to the weather and the dust particles in the air enough yet compared to the other earlier installed windows, so those windows look cleaner and their metal linings look shinier. wait a month or so, and the lines will gradually disappear.

https://extranet.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2005/11/413981.jpg

http://www.nypost.com/realestate/comm/58514.htm
7 WTC SEEKS $50 PER FOOT

By STEVE CUOZZO
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 29, 2005 -- Realty Check

A stroll the other day through Planet Earth's most closely watched new office building, 7 World Trade Center, did not stumble onto any tenants signing leases.

But, accompanied by CB Richard Ellis superbroker Stephen B. Siegel, I got a first-hand feel for what may pass through the minds of companies kicking the tires.

First, an update on talks between developer Larry Silverstein and China's Vantone Real Estate Co., the Beijing-based outfit reported to be interested in 200,000 square feet.

Vantone reportedly offered $40 a square foot. Silverstein wants $50 a foot, but, as at many buildings, that's an average, and the rent rises the higher the floor.

"The problem is, they only want the top of the building, even though Silverstein came back to them with a Chinese menu of options for lower floors," an insider joked

Vantone's broker, Jones Lang LaSalle honcho Peter Riguardi, said only that the company was "very serious," but would not comment on the talks. Siegel couldn't be reached.

Possibly no new office tower has ever caused so much excitement and anxiety as 7 WTC, which is seen as a bellwether for Lower Manhattan.

Silverstein is putting the finishing touches on the 52-story tower to replace the bulkier original that fell on 9/11. David Childs designed a sleek parallelogram sheathed in translucent curtain-wall glass that looks blue in sunlight, thanks to hidden spandrels that reflect light onto floor-to-ceiling windows.

Inside, it's crammed with security features, state-of-the-art systems and a slick lobby where an installation by artist Jenny Holzer will convey I Love New York-type messages on electronic zippers.

Although it's always stood to reason that 7 WTC might take time to lease up in a slow market, the 1.6 million square feet it added to the downtown inventory has given market-watchers conniptions.

So has Silverstein's $50 "ask," compared with rents between $25 and $40 downtown.

But the newest other buildings nearby, such as the World Financial Center towers, are at least 20 years old. Only a tenant can determine whether 7 WTC's spanking newness justifies the price difference. Some of the issues:

* About that $50: For larger tenants, the cost over a 10-year lease will be as little as $39, thanks to various city and state incentives for downtown.

At least some of the same incentives can be had at other addresses. But the question is whether to compare 7 WTC's pricing to the rest of downtown or to Midtown, where new space is being offered from $60 to $100 and up.

* New vs. almost new: Many 7 WTC amenities can't be beat, including enhanced fireproofing of structural steel, safety features above code, super-efficient elevators and state-of-the-art climate control and telecom systems.

But the systems at other addresses, including the World Financial Center, One New York Plaza and 55 Water St., suffice for their big financial tenants, even if they're not as cutting edge.

* Rare contiguous space: Downtown has more available blocks of 100,000 square feet and up than Midtown, but the number of availabilities overall is shrinking. If the trend continues, the longer it takes to lease 7 WTC, the more rent Silverstein might actually fetch when demand exceeds supply.

* Proximity to shopping: The WFC towers in Battery Park City offer an easy indoor stroll to the Winter Garden, shops and restaurants, while 7 WTC stands isolated.

But some people think it's the WFC that's remote from the rest of downtown, while 7 WTC is an easy stroll to the heart of TriBeCa's dining district.

* Views: Thanks to its center-core design, 7 WTC's 40,000-square-foot floors are mostly column-free. Floor-to-ceiling windows afford grand harbor and skyline views.

The south side of 7 WTC overlooks Ground Zero. The Freedom Tower will only partially block 7 WTC's views at its southwest corner.

The new Goldman Sachs headquarters in Battery Park City, for which ground is to be broken tomorrow, will interrupt the view from 7 WTC's western windows.

* Fiterman Hall must go! The burned-out college building, damaged on 9/11, looks even worse from 7 WTC's high floors than from the street.

http://static.flickr.com/34/70283599_99692fc0a7.jpg
(darrellsilver (http://flickr.com/photos/darrellsilver/70283599/))

AMAZING photo! :eek2: From up where is this photo taken?

Anthony at Wired NY created a wallpaper from the pic:

http://forumf1u.f2o.org/wallwtc7thumb.jpg

(1024x768 (http://forumf1u.f2o.org/wallwtc71024.jpg))
(1280x768 Widescreen (http://forumf1u.f2o.org/wallwtc71280.jpg))

Wall St. Journal
12/14/05

Lots of Tension, Few Tenants; As 7 WTC's Opening Nears, Political Pressure Mounts On Trade Center Developer

SEVEN WORLD Trade Center, Manhattan's most modern office tower, will likely be very quiet when it opens in March. Despite two years of sales pitches for the 52-story steel-and-glass box that overlooks the dusty pit where the Twin Towers stood, no major tenants have taken space in the skyscraper.

That bodes ill for its builder, Larry Silverstein, who is fighting tenaciously to erect five more office buildings, including the iconic Freedom Tower, next door.

Owing to the 99-year lease he signed on the World Trade Center six weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Silverstein has the right to rebuild the site. And while he won't rebuild the Twin Towers, he does want to replace most of the destroyed office space. Trouble is, if he can't rent the space in 7 World Trade Center, how, critics ask, can he expect to fill almost six times that much?

Besides the lack of prospective tenants, Mr. Silverstein has had several setbacks and is engaged in an increasingly tense struggle with politicians and government agencies who could derail the plans of the 74-year-old real-estate veteran. Even his longtime financial backer may be open to a deal that would allow their partnership to be removed from at least part of the rebuilding process.

Mr. Silverstein's latest bad news came this week, when he failed to reach agreement with New York City on a timetable for the project and on how much Mr. Silverstein can request as a developer's fee. That pact was necessary for the city to approve $3.5 billion in tax-exempt bonds to help pay for the rebuilding of the Trade Center site. The two sides are still talking, but Mr. Silverstein says the lack of a deal will only delay rebuilding.

More than four years have passed since 9/11, and little has been rebuilt on the site except a temporary commuter rail station and 7 World Trade Center. The lack of progress has led to finger-pointing between Mr. Silverstein and the city, New York State and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Trade Center site and serves as Mr. Silverstein's landlord. Political leaders are becoming more involved in the rebuilding. This is the last year in office for New York Gov. George E. Pataki, and he is concerned about his legacy, while New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, fresh off a re- election romp, is no longer focused on building a football stadium for the New York Jets or bringing the Olympics to the city.

Last week, for the first time, Gov. Pataki, long a Silverstein booster, indicated that diminishing the developer's role could help the rebuilding go faster. "The best way to do it might be to have more involvement by the Port Authority, more involvement by perhaps other private-sector investors," he said at a news conference. Port Authority Chairman Anthony R. Coscia and Mayor Bloomberg, who has asserted his influence through control of the approval of the tax- exempt bonds, also have suggested a reduced role for Mr. Silverstein.

The developer rejects such a move out of hand. But his main financial partner, Lloyd Goldman, who normally takes a backseat to Mr. Silverstein in public, says the door is open to a deal that would reduce their role. "We're not looking for a deal to be made. We're not soliciting offers. We're looking to live up to our contract," he says. "If there is a deal that makes sense, we would evaluate and accept."

Mr. Goldman, 47 years old, is the money behind the brash public face of Mr. Silverstein. When the two bid on the Twin Towers in 2001, it was Mr. Goldman's $80 million that led the $125 million initial payment. Mr. Silverstein put about $14 million in the deal. When the Port Authority awarded Mr. Silverstein's team the lease, he and Mr. Goldman established a 10-year agreement whereby Mr. Silverstein would operate the project through 2011.

Next year will be pivotal for Mr. Silverstein. In addition to needing to find tenants for 7 World Trade Center and secure the tax- exempt bonds, he plans to begin foundation work on the signature building on the site, the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower in April. He will also face an increase in the rent he has continued to pay to the Port Authority. The annual payment will rise to $138 million from $120 million a year next August and will further diminish the pool of insurance money he has to rebuild. At least $1.6 billion of the potential $4.6 billion already has been spent or allocated.

A key factor in the debate over how to rebuild is that there is little demand at the moment for five new office towers. While Midtown Manhattan's real-estate market is thriving, downtown remains sluggish, with many office buildings being converted to condominiums. The Port Authority, city and state say what downtown really needs is shopping, plus a hotel and possibly some housing.

The Port Authority has increased pressure on Mr. Silverstein in recent months by unveiling plans for a 550,000-square-foot mall that would be sprinkled through the five buildings Mr. Silverstein wants to build and a $2.2 billion train station the Port Authority is building with federal aid. Mr. Coscia, the Port Authority chairman, has called for Mr. Silverstein to cede a portion of the development back to the Port Authority in hopes that it, or another private developer, could build it faster than Mr. Silverstein.

Mr. Silverstein rejects that argument and says he is building as fast as he can. He says he is waiting for the Port Authority to excavate the eastern part of the site and build a so-called bathtub, which serves the dual purpose of foundation for the building and bulwark against water seeping in from the Hudson River nearby. Because that seven-acre quadrant didn't have skyscrapers before 9/11, its foundations are relatively shallow. Now that the plan calls for three 700-foot-plus tall towers there, and an underground mall, workers must dig 70 to 80 feet to bedrock so the buildings can have a solid base. On the way down, they will remove pieces of an old rail tunnel that existed before the World Trade Center was built in the 1960s.

It will take two years to dig the bathtub and require close to 2,000 trucks a day to haul out the earth and supply workers and equipment. The Port Authority says that the bathtub will be ready in mid-2008 and that plans for the area need to be drawn up now, not when it is complete.

The timetable for rebuilding the overall site is long, and some say optimistic. The Freedom Tower won't open until 2011. The retail mall and towers on the eastern flank won't be complete until 2012, and the final tower in 2013 or later. A memorial will begin construction next year and be completed in 2009. The cost for the entire rebuilding is unknown, but estimates range from $9 billion to $13 billion. While Mr. Silverstein probably has enough insurance money to build the Freedom Tower and possibly a second tower, he will need to attract tenants to the other buildings in order to take advantage of financing available through the government-backed bonds.

Even Mr. Silverstein acknowledges he may not be around when the project is complete. "If you are asking me to think 10 years ahead, I can't. I'm almost 75. I don't know what's going to happen 10 years, 15 years from now."

While Mr. Silverstein maintains a mission-like vigor for his task, he is now talking openly about the frustrations of rebuilding. At one point in an interview, he asked, "What do I have to show for the last five years of my life? Not very much." Mr. Silverstein dwells on the fact that he will have spent the last 10 years of his working life on the Trade Center, a project he says "has this disastrous effect on everything around us."

The copper-haired developer's most pressing struggle is to fill the almost-empty 7 World Trade Center. In September 2003, he listed the tower's 42 rentable floors and invited 20 of the city's top real- estate brokers to dine on his yacht, the Silver Shalis, where he championed the project's architecture and security.

Early discussions were promising, but there were no takers. Local brokers say that Mr. Silverstein's high rents keep companies from closing deals. "When Larry decides to set the price where the market is, then it will rent," says Barry Gosin, chief executive of real- estate brokerage firm Newmark & Co. Real Estate Inc. "It's probably the nicest building on the market. But it's still downtown."

There are prospects. Robert Joffe, partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, says his law firm is considering, among other options, moving its headquarters there from Midtown. Beijing Vantone Real Estate Co., a Chinese real-estate company, is negotiating to rent five floors near the top. So far, just two small tenants have indicated their intention to take space there. Ameriprise Financial Inc., formerly part of American Express, will take half a floor, and the nonprofit New York Academy of Sciences will take a floor. Neither, though, have signed a lease.

Mr. Silverstein's lack of tenants has made some real-estate executives, including Mr. Gosin, skeptical that lower Manhattan needs five new office towers. "There's just not enough demand for office space," he says.

From the "Second WTC Tower" thread:

NY Newsday
December 15, 2005

Silverstein has already rebuilt a 52-story tower overlooking ground zero to replace Seven World Trade Center, a third building that had collapsed on Sept. 11. Until Thursday, he had no signed tenants for either Seven or for the Freedom Tower. But the New York Academy of Science signed a 15-year lease to rent the 40th floor of Seven World Trade, Silverstein said. The space will include a 300-person conference center, and Silverstein said more leases would soon follow.

http://www.globest.com/news/435_435/newyork/141181-1.html
Academy of Sciences Inks First 7 WTC Lease

By Barbara Jarvie
Last updated: December 16, 2005 08:59am

http://www.globest.com/newspics/7wtc.jpg
7 WTC

NEW YORK CITY-By Manhattan standards, it's not the bigest lease ever signed, but its implications are huge. The New York Academy of Sciences has become the first tenant to take space at 7 World Trade Center, the last building to fall on Sept. 11 and the first to rise again. The academy, which signed a 15-year, 40,000-sf lease for the entire 40th floor, will return to its Lower Manhattan roots when it moves into the space next September. The site is one block from where it was founded in 1817.

(The lease deal was not the only news coming from Silverstein and Ground Zero. Read more.)

New York Academy of Sciences president Ellis Rubinstein tells GlobeSt.com that the firm looked at as many as 30 potential sites before choosing 7 WTC. “We got an excellent deal,” he said, adding that it is approximately $3 million less than what they would have paid at the next choice, 1 Madison Ave. The space will also include a conferencing center in the space that will host major international conferences.

Rubinstein said the academy had no qualms about the security of the site. “The building is spectacular and over code. I think the city will keep it extremely safe.”

Over the summer, a $3.80-per-sf incentive for the first 750,000 sf leased at 7 World Trade was put in place as part of a plan to lure tenants to the WTC area. Developer Larry Silverstein have to match the incentives. “These incentives make all the difference in the world,” said Silverstein during a press conference. “There will be more (leases) to follow.” According to a source, asking rents at the site range from $50 per sf to $55 per sf, depending upon the floor number. When coupled with incentives, the rents are brought down into the $40s.

The 52-story office is bound by Greenwich, Vesey, Washington and Barclay streets. Tishman Construction Corp., which built the original 7 World Trade Center for Silverstein, is contractor for the project. Earlier this year, the New York City Industrial Development Agency approved $475 million of New York Liberty Bonds to be used for the reconstruction and permanent financing of 7 WTC, which is being constructed on a 58,000-sf site. Tenant floors begin at the 11th floor above grade. The untenanted first 10 floors largely are given over to a series of huge bays housing transformers for a Con Edison substation.

The academy was represented by the CB Richard Ellis team of Mary Ann Tighe, Tim Sheehan and Ken Meyerson. The law offices of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson served as the Academy’s legal advisor , while Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom assisted Silverstein Properties. CBRE’s Steve Siegel, chairman, global brokerage and exclusive leasing agent for the building, represented Silverstein Properties. “It is fitting for this leading-edge, future focused organization to make its new home in the newest and most technologically advanced property on the Downtown skyline," says Tighe, chief executive officer of the New York Tri-State region.

AMAZING photo! :eek2: From up where is this photo taken?
my guess is that it's taken from a building about 2 blocks north of woolworth.

http://www.globalphotos.org/newyork/20050927/IMG_4071.jpg

http://www.globalphotos.org/newyork/20050927/IMG_4072.jpg

can anybody shot photos tonight from world trade center 7 and world financial center in the firework tonight , please ?

greetz from germany

http://www.nypost.com/business/59860.htm
AMERIPRISE RENTS 7 WTC

January 5, 2006 -- Developer Larry Silverstein leased about 20,000 square feet of 7 World Trade Center to Ameriprise Financial Inc., the second tenant for a building that began offering space two years ago.

Ameriprise, a Minneapolis-based securities broker spun off by American Express Co. in September, will lease half of the building's 39th floor, Ameriprise and Silverstein Properties Inc. said. Terms weren't disclosed. Bloomberg

An ariel shot of 7 WTC.

http://static.flickr.com/22/91542346_46419e2138_b.jpg

Great picture Tal. 7WTC really stands out in the area (in a good way), and in a sense introduces the architecture of Lower Manhattan to the 21st Century.

Found this one on Wikipedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/WTC7_alone.jpg

for some reason, new 7 looked like one of the xyz buildings in that aerial, except greyer.

man, that 3 floors worth of glass above the steel base really break the solid feel of the building. why can't they be reflective!?

So when are the tenants supposed to move in the building?

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_143/designerbringlight.html
Volume 18 • Issue 38 | February 3 - 9, 2006

Designer brings light to Downtown projects

By Ronda Kaysen

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_143/james.gif


Downtown Express photo by Ramin Talaie

Architect James Carpenter in his Tribeca studio with a model of his art design for the Museum of Jewish Heritage which will open in April. His lighting design for the base of 7 World Trade Center will also soon be visible.

Whoever said a six-story Con Edison substation couldn’t be pretty? The boxy structure that makes up the base of 7 World Trade Center will come to life next month, dazzling passersby with shimmering light emanating from within and cascading in from the outside. Yes, that’s right, a mammoth substation will be something other than an eyesore.

Architect and sculptor James Carpenter has transformed the clunky base of the David Childs-designed glass tower into an airy wonder of light that will bring color to the streetscape.

“The results are going to be spectacular,” developer Larry Silverstein, who owns 7 W.T.C., told Downtown Express in a telephone interview.

The 10 transformers housed inside the tower need air to breathe, and so 7’s base is a porous series of prism-shaped slats set at varying angles, letting natural light in that bounces off interior prisms and returns to the street. At night, L.E.D. lighting mounted inside the structure will bounce off the prisms and out onto the street. Sensory cameras will pick up movement off the street and periodically reflect it as well. The result will be a moving stream of light and color that shifts throughout the day and a permeable building that hides the transformers from the naked eye.

“We needed to come up with a way of balancing daylight with artificial light,” said Carpenter, sitting inside James Carpenter Design Associates’ Hudson St. studio. The light display will be visible along the northern and southern facades of the building. The south faces Vesey St. and the Trade Center site. The north side faces Barclay St. The light will not dominate the street, said Carpenter. “It’s a very subtle light. It’s very quiet.”

Nearby residents hope Carpenter’s project will bring life back to the dreary corner of Barclay and Greenwich Sts. “I’m dying to see it. From the prototype, it looks like it’ll be fabulous,” said Community Board 1 assistant district manager Judy Duffy. “I love 7, it’s a really pretty building.”

Duffy added that she hoped it would set a precedent for the Freedom Tower, which will have a 200-ft. tall reinforced concrete base. Silverstein said it was too soon to tell what would come of the Freedom Tower base. “We haven’t gotten to that yet,” he said. Carpenter said he had not been tapped for any other Trade Center projects.

A 2004 Macarthur Foundation “genius award” recipient, Carpenter trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and specializes in light. Light plays a key role in the entire 52-story 7 W.T.C. building. Carpenter, who has worked with Childs’ architecture firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill since 1979, helped Childs design the tower’s skin to play with light from the sky. The surface of the glass structure absorbs light and at different angles it appears to fade into the sky itself.

Carpenter also designed the lobby’s interior wall, which features a permanent scrolling creation by artist Jenny Holzer. In various fonts and colors, a litany of American literature will march across the security wall, visible from the street.

“You’ll be able to feast your eyes upon American classic literature all of which will be wholesome stuff: motherhood, apple pie, the American Dream, all good stuff,” said Silverstein.

Carpenter, a Tribeca resident, started his business in 1978 on West St., across from what was then the elevated West Side Highway. He spent eight years in Soho, and then relocated to Hudson and Beach Sts., where he has been ever since. “This is our home until we drop,” he said. He is at work on two other Downtown projects to bring light and color to a neighborhood with narrow, crowded streets often darkened by looming office towers.

Carpenter, who worked on the Time Warner building in Columbus Circle and has been tapped for Moynihan Station, is teaming with architect Grimshaw to bring light into the new Fulton Transit Center. Light from the above-grade glass dome will reflect down into the subterranean levels, bringing daylight into the subterranean levels of the Lower Manhattan subway.

“How do you make people aware of their surroundings?” said Carpenter, adding that although the transit center was scaled back last year, it will still be infused with light.

Over on the western edge of Lower Manhattan, Carpenter is designing a purely aesthetic project—a permanent installation at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Another light project designed with L.E.D. light and an overlay of glass, the project is designed to play off the natural light of the New York Harbor. Several cameras will replay images of the harbor through the L.E.D., creating a dissonant effect. When the L.E.D. is filtered through glass, a live image of the harbor becomes clear to the viewer. “You have this opportunity to see the harbor and this way of looking at it and interpreting it,” said Carpenter. “It’s really about trying to make people more aware of the unique conditions of light.”

The project will open in April and be placed on the bridge that connects the original 1997 museum with the addition, which was completed in 2003. The only permanent Andrew Goldsworthy installation in the city, Garden of Stones, lies directly beneath the bridge.

The Carpenter project is “bringing the harbor into the museum,” said Ivy Barsky, deputy director of the museum. “His work is so poetic and beautiful and it’s such an interesting blending of light and space and time. It’s kind of cool that the visitor is going to be in between the core exhibition and the temporary exhibition and have time to be aware of his or her surroundings of the water and the air and the sky.”

Ronda@DowntownExpress.com

very nice pictures!

Curbed
February 21, 2006

7WTC Scrolls, Freedom Tower Holds

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_02_abcs.jpg

Behold! Down at the World Trade Center site, blogger A Test of Will (http://testofwill.blogspot.com/) snaps the above photo of a huge scrolling sign in the lobby of Larry Silverstein's 7 World Trade Center. (Suggested scrolling text: RENT NOW... SOMEONE... PLEASE....).

We kid. Because it's really not fair to make fun of 7 World Trade given that the thing is, you know, actually built. That's not the case for Larry Silverstein's Freedom Tower, of course, which is—get this—not going to be finished by 2008. Stunned? God knows we are. The NYT tossed around a 2011 date this past weekend just for sport, as like the Whole Foods opening date at Avalon Chrystie Place, this one is what you want it to be. The Freedom Tower will be ready when you are ready for it. Zen, baby. Soak it up.

Copyright © 2006 Curbed

^^ and the ESB was built in a year - god help the WTC

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/nyregion/06wall.html
At Ground Zero, Accord Brings a Work of Art

By GLENN COLLINS
Published: March 6, 2006

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/03/06/nyregion/06wall.583.jpg
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

In the lobby of 7 World Trade Center: David M. Childs, left, the architect; Larry A. Silverstein, the developer, with his wife, Klara; and Jenny Holzer, the artist of the wall of words.

Cultural negotiations at ground zero between the artist Jenny Holzer and the developer Larry A. Silverstein have ended not just in an agreement, but in a work of art.

The initial disagreements might seem puny compared with the disputes between Mr. Silverstein and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, between Mr. Bloomberg and Senator Charles E. Schumer, and between Gov. George E. Pataki and various other stakeholders at the site.

But the accord is a rare and public sign of progress in this very disputatious neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. Already, thousands of moving, ghostly-white words of text have been programmed by Ms. Holzer evoking the history of New York; they will scroll across a glowing, 65-foot-wide, 14-foot-high wall in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center. Though the artwork resides in the lobby, it is already visible several blocks away. It is the ornament of the first skyscraper to have been built at ground zero, rising from the rubble of the first 7 World Trade Center.

The artwork — a continuing stream of poetry and prose written by dozens of different authors, from Elizabeth Bishop and Allen Ginsberg to Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman — will move along a screen made of acid-etched, diffused, translucent glass illuminated by whitish light.

It will take at least eight hours for the entire text to scroll by, Ms. Holzer said. The piece will dominate the lobby of the 52-story building, a shimmering, sharp-edged parallelogram sheathed in glass at the intersection of Greenwich and Barclay Streets at the northern edge of ground zero.

Though the $700 million building is not scheduled to open until mid-May, the artwork is already being tweaked. The letters appear in a five-foot-high band of text about two-thirds of the way up the high-tech wall, which was created, with Ms. Holzer, by James Carpenter, a Manhattan designer.

Under the high slabs of glass, white light-emitting diodes are threaded on 14-foot-tall metal ribbons. The laminated, structurally fortified wall is also a security amenity, screening the public from the private precincts of the building, and acting as a blast shield in case of terrorist attack.

As with so much related to the World Trade Center site, the lobby art for Building 7 did not come into being without initial struggle. Mr. Silverstein thought a competition among glass artists might yield a grand centerpiece for the lobby, but David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects of 7 World Trade Center, had another idea.

He wanted Ms. Holzer, the 55-year-old art star whose enigmatic light projects — which often feature words that savage government and capitalism — have been displayed from the Guggenheim Museum in New York to the Reichstag in Berlin.

"The building is all about light and transparency," Mr. Childs said. "I thought the wall would be a prime opportunity to do something on a grand scale."

Mr. Silverstein was concerned that the location at ground zero imposed restraints. "Sometimes the message of artists is a downer," he said. "Down here, after 9/11, we need positive stuff. Good stuff, as opposed to the miseries of 9/11. I didn't know how we could work together." Mr. Silverstein added, "I decided not to do it because I felt that I'd have difficulties with her word program." He agreed only after prodding by Mr. Childs and an agreement from Ms. Holzer to remove text he found objectionable.

"I was taken aback at the gravity of the project," Ms. Holzer said. "I didn't want to make bad or insensitive art."

Mr. Silverstein asked his wife of 49 years, Klara, to work with Ms. Holzer. Theirs was an on-again, off-again collaboration for more than a year. Mrs. Silverstein reviewed Ms. Holzer's poetry selections and felt that several "were too graphic; I felt that they would bring back images that people might want to forget," she said. She worried that many of those who would pass through the lobby had personally experienced Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the rejected works was a poem, "Photographs of Sept. 11th," by the 1996 Nobel Laureate, Wislawa Szymborska; it focused on those who jumped from the World Trade Center. Ms. Holzer's texts became the poetry of compromise, and the project avoided the fate of famous disastrous collaborations like that of the artist Diego Rivera and John D. Rockefeller Jr. that resulted in the 1936 obliteration of the artist's anticapitalist mural in the lobby of the RCA Building.

"A lot of artists would have huffed and gone off," Mr. Childs said. "But Jenny didn't."

The Holzer-Silverstein collaboration was an odd fit. "He is very energetic and positive," she said, "and I'm energetic and always think the sky is falling."

There was little desk-pounding, but Mr. Silverstein said, "Conflict is part of the creative endeavor." Ms. Holzer has by no means finished with Mr. Silverstein's wall, and friction between artist and patron could resurface. After a while, she would like to refresh it with new text. "I hope to feed it again," Ms. Holzer said. "It would be nice to keep it alive."

New York Times
March 8, 2006

MANHATTAN: A TOP RATING FOR TRADE CENTER TOWER

The United States Green Building Council, a nonprofit group that promotes energy efficiency in construction and design, today will designate 7 World Trade Center, a 52-story skyscraper at ground zero, as the first office tower in New York City to be certified as "green." The building, at Greenwich and Barclay Streets, developed by Silverstein Properties, is scheduled to open in May. The council cited the use of such design strategies as energy-conserving ultraclear glass, the recycling of rainwater to cool the tower, and construction from recycled materials.

GLENN COLLINS (NYT)

Is the Podium Light Wall working on Seven WTC yet? If it is, does anyone have a picture?

The Podium Light Wall is located on the South and North facades of Seven World Trade Center. It's the city's newest art piece. As people wander on the pavement below, a strip of blue light gracefully follows them. This strip of blue light is 7 floors tall and is visible from Freedom Park.

^^ Yeah, the lights have been up for a couple weeks. It was kind of trippy seeing them for the first time because I was drunk and thought I was buggin'. It's an ill addition to the tower though. It makes the fortress base a little friendlier.

The base for 7 WTC really WASN'T for security at the time.

It mainly was built to hide the huge transformers that it houses.

From the cam, it looks like they just put trees and a garden in front of 7WTC.

I think there is supposed to be a small fountain there also.

yep, on the small triangular block to the east of the new 7 WTC, there'll be a small plaza with trees and a fountain with the plaza ground covered with brown granite tiles similar to the granite used to clad the original 7 WTC.

Whatever happened to that red sculptured thing?

I thought that would be remade and put back in front of the new building.

i don't know about the 3-bladed red propeller sculpture. it was pretty much destroyed when debris from the north tower broke the pedestrian bridge it was standing on. who knows, it might be restored, but hey, if pataki don't give a hoot about rebuilding the destroyed Twins for all posterity to see, it can pretty much be assumed that the same can be said for this destroyed sculpure, which was obviously much less significant than the Twins.

I read somewhere that that sculpture was going to be rebuilt, repainted red exactly as it was and put back in front of the new Building #7.

http://www.tropolism.com/2006/04/tropolism_7wtc.php Some nice pics there.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NY_ATTACKS_REDEVELOPMENT_BAOL-?SITE=NYNYD&SECTION=MIDEAST&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
May 23, 4:33 PM EDT

7 World Trade Center opens; 1st rebuilt skyscraper since Sept. 11

By AMY WESTFELDT
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- The first destroyed skyscraper to be rebuilt since Sept. 11 opened Tuesday, with few tenants but state-of-the-art features that developers say will be part of all the new office towers to rise at the World Trade Center site.

Developer Larry Silverstein officially opened the 52-story 7 World Trade Center for business by unveiling a bright red sculpture called "Balloon Flower" outside his building and hosting a concert featuring Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega.

"We've come a very long way," said Silverstein, who built the first 7 World Trade nearly 20 years ago and has struggled to rebuild destroyed office space at the 16-acre site for more than four years. "What you're looking at today is just the beginning."

The building was the third to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001, after the twin towers. Like the trade center, it is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and leased by Silverstein.

The shimmering glass tower was redesigned by David Childs, the same architect who designed the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, intended as the symbolic replacement to the trade center. Silverstein, in an elaborate renegotiation of his 99-year lease to the towers, agreed last month to shift control of the Freedom Tower and another building to the Port Authority, while retaining control of three other buildings at ground zero.

Including 7, the trade center site lost well over 10 million square feet of office space on Sept. 11. But new tenants haven't been clamoring to return. Silverstein has rented less than a fifth of 7 World Trade's 1.7 million square feet. He moved in his development company's offices this week, while three architects who are designing the towers planned for ground zero will set up shop on another floor.

Ameriprise Financial Inc., a spinoff of American Express, and the New York Academy of Sciences plan to move in by fall. A Chinese developer, Beijing Vantone Real Estate Co. Ltd., signed a tentative agreement to rent the top five floors. Officials said Tuesday's opening is a sign of downtown's resurgence.

"It's going to be filled and it's going to be filled soon," said Kenneth Ringler, the Port Authority's executive director.

Following recommendations to make high-rises safer and sturdier after the terrorist attacks, the skyscraper adheres to "a set of standards unique to any high-rise office building in America," Silverstein said.

The building is narrower and lets in more sunlight than its original version. An artist installed a glass screen in the lobby with oversized, moving text that tells New York stories. It is the first commercial tower in New York to be certified as green because it uses less electricity and high-efficiency cooling and heating systems. And it has adopted newer safety standards, with wider stairwells and 2-foot-thick concrete walls.

Residents gathered on benches around the new sculpture, by artist Jeff Koons, and said they were more than ready for progress.

"We're just slowly waiting," said Sabrina Raza-Wiese, 38, who sat on a bench with her two young children. "It's going to be a long time."

---

On the Net:

7 World Trade Center: http://www.wtc.com/inner-page.aspx?id11

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

I read somewhere that that sculpture was going to be rebuilt, repainted red exactly as it was and put back in front of the new Building #7.

That piece, WTC Stabile by Alexander Calder, doesn't look like it can be salvaged.

http://www.ifar.org/911photos/pub10.jpg

There is a new sculpture there now. replacing that one.

It's called Balloon Flowers and it's been painted red also, like the former sculpture was.

"Balloon Flower (Red)" by Jeff Koons:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/23/nyregion/23cnd-koons.395.jpg

that sculpture looks more like a clump of cherrys to me. it's also a richer shade of red than the reddish-orange propeller sculpture.

this little piece of triangle urban oasis is decent, but the fountain's rather weak in terms of design and looks. it'd look better if that half-destroyed Fiterman Hall is not looming right behind it.

finally new 7's open. they already finished cladding the fins of the building by the time i visited it nearly a year ago in mid june. can't believe they took so long to get the final stuffs done.

Yeah, the tower was on the news yesterday and this morning.

And yes, they seriously need to do something about Fiterman Hall which is now a rusted rotting disgusting pile of junk!!

This tower is very beautifull. How many meters of heigth? 200?

A congratulations for all new york city and peoples; from Valencia, Spain.

new 7WTC's 226m in height, with 49 floors, while its predecessor's 174m/47 floors.

And I don't think this tower used any masonary in its construction, whereas it looks like the former tower did.

new 7WTC's 226m in height, with 49 floors, while its predecessor's 174m/47 floors.

Thanks.

Great looking aerial view on pg 16. Is the top of the building sloped?

No. It's a flat design.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/nyregion/20moodys.html
7 World Trade Center Gets a Major Tenant

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: June 20, 2006

The developer Larry A. Silverstein has named a major tenant for 7 World Trade Center, the first skyscraper built in Lower Manhattan since the 9/11 attack, according to two real estate executives who have been briefed on the deal.

Moody's Investors Service, the financial rating agency, signed a letter of intent on Friday to occupy 15 floors in the 52-story tower, which officially opened in May. Moody's, the executives said, plans to sell its cramped 55-year-old headquarters a few blocks away at 99 Church Street.

The move bodes well for both Mr. Silverstein and the downtown real estate market, which has suffered a high vacancy rate since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Developers usually find a deal with an anchor tenant before beginning construction. But Mr. Silverstein built the $700 million glass and stainless steel tower largely with insurance money and tax-free Liberty bonds, so he could afford to wait for the right tenant.

Until the deal with Moody's, Mr. Silverstein had been able to attract only a handful of tenants for eight floors. He also held out for a premium rent downtown.

But in recent months, real estate brokers say, skyrocketing rents in Midtown and a dearth of large blocks of space are prompting tenants to look downtown, where rents are 30 percent less than in Midtown.

Moody's decision to move into 600,000 square feet at 7 World Trade Center reflects a growing confidence in Lower Manhattan, the brokers said.

Howard J. Rubenstein, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, said he was unable to reach the developer last night for comment.

Aside from getting a more modern headquarters, Moody's would also reap a long list of tax breaks, rent rebates and other incentives offered by state and city officials to reduce the rent by as much as 10 dollars per square foot annually.

The original tower at 7 World Trade Center was destroyed in the attack on Sept 11. Mr. Silverstein began rebuilding the tower, which sits at the corner of Vesey and Greenwich Streets, in 2002.

Ameriprise Financial has leased half a floor in the building and the New York Academy of Sciences has taken an entire floor, as has Silverstein Properties. Mr. Silverstein also has a tentative deal with Vantone Real Estate, a Chinese company, for the top four floors.

Across Vesey Street, work is beginning on the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower, the first of five buildings at the trade center site, and Goldman Sachs is building a million-square-foot headquarters on West Street.

Thanks Daquan13!

You're welcome!

A new video about the opening of 7WTC has been added to www.wtc.com

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/7_world_trade_bags_big_tenant_regionalnews_steve_cuozzo.htm
7 WORLD TRADE BAGS BIG TENANT

By STEVE CUOZZO
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 11, 2006 -- Developer Larry Silverstein has officially landed his first big tenant for new 7 World Trade Center - Moody's Financial Services, which signed a lease for 600,000 square feet late Friday night, sources told The Post.

The largest new lease downtown since the terrorist attack means the gleaming new tower overlooking Ground Zero has now rented out about half its space only four months after it opened. Silverstein was widely criticized for putting up the tower without pre-signed tenants by those who feared it would stand empty and glut the downtown real-estate market.

Several earlier leases, including one to the law firm Darby & Darby, amounted to 200,000 square feet. But the much bigger Moody's lease was the one Silverstein needed to prove 7 WTC's appeal to big-space users.

Silverstein also fended off attacks by Mayor Bloomberg, who accused him of charging too high a rent. Silverstein was asking $50 a square foot at 7 WTC, but Bloomberg said he should lower it to $35, the rate for older buildings downtown.

steve.cuozzo@nypost.com

sorry if they've already been posted...

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/5964/7wtcyc3.jpg

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/9529/7wtc2wo7.jpg

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/6821/7wtc3dj6.jpg

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/7967/7wtc4bn5.jpg

I just noticed a few days ago that new 7 has a strong resemblence to the Swissotel in Chicago. Check it out here (http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=116818). The top looks almost identical!

It most certainly does!!

Same shape as well. It would almost be very easy for someone to get confused and think that 7 WTC is in Chicago!!

will there be a 6WTC?

Don't know, unless it will be the museum.

And the other towers will be named according to the numbers they are at on Greenwich Street, which I think is bullcrap!

I like the proyect.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/482298p-405908c.html
Landlord Larry gets big tenant for 7 WTC

BY PAUL D. COLFORD
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

After a slow start, the first office tower to rise at Ground Zero is now more than half-leased.

An Amsterdam-based banking firm has agreed to rent three and a half floors in the new 7 World Trade Center - boosting the total space under contract to more than 1 million square feet, developer Larry Silverstein announced yesterday.

"This building has shown that downtown can and will successfully be revitalized as the business center," Silverstein said.

Silverstein's 15-year deal with ABN AMRO Inc. is his second-largest tenant agreement in the tower and means more than 60% of its office space is spoken for.

Only 18% was leased when Silverstein opened the 52-story building in May, prompting some to wonder if it would be a white elephant.

The developer's own firm, Silverstein Properties, moved to the 38th floor in May.

ABN AMRO plans to relocate 500 employees to the building from three midtown offices late next year or in early 2008.

A Con Edison substation occupies the first 10 floors, supplying electricity to lower Manhattan.

Under an agreement with the Port Authority renegotiated this year, Silverstein is now building the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower for the agency.

He will also develop three other office towers - of 61, 71 and 78 stories - within the 16-acre WTC site by 2012.

Originally published on December 22, 2006

Hi

Can somebody make Pictures (from Brooklyn ore other Nice Place) from the Manhattan Skyline With 7 WTC on New Years Eve with fireworks?

ore a Little Movie?

Please, post here ore sending Over d.baender@gmx.de

I would see it so gladly times :-)))

HAPPY NEW YEAR to ALL :) :)

Greetz from Germany

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/realestate/commercial/13sqft.html?ref=yourmoney
An Open, Sunlit Space at 7 World Trade Center

By CLAIRE WILSON
Published: May 13, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/13/realestate/13sqft.1.600.jpg
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
At far left, James G. Phillips, left, and Luc Massaux of TPG Architecture in the offices of Mansueto Ventures, which the two designed.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/12/realestate/13sqft.2.L.jpg
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

The open workspace aims to let in as much natural light as possible.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/12/realestate/13sqft.3.L.jpg
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

A small meeting area.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/12/realestate/13sqft.4.L.jpg
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

A cafeteria, with a conference room in the background.

WHEN Mansueto Ventures bought the magazines Inc. and Fast Company from the German publisher Gruner & Jahr two years ago, it immediately began polishing the two titles. The paper quality was improved, staff changes were made and the editorial content was sharpened, according to Mansueto, the new owner. The company also wanted its new offices in New York to project the same retooled image, by emphasizing that the magazines were no longer part of a huge global stable of mainstream publications on subjects ranging from politics to parenting to decorating.

“We wanted our new space to reflect our new ownership,” said John Koten, the chief executive of Mansueto Ventures. “We wanted something that could communicate that we are a more nimble company and no longer part of a big bureaucracy.” Mansueto Ventures is owned by Joe Mansueto, who also founded Morningstar Inc., the investment research firm. Mr. Mansueto paid $32.5 million for the two magazines.

On April 2, the publishing company and its staff of 190 moved into 40,000 square feet on the 29th floor of 7 World Trade Center. Mansueto had previously been in 39,000 square feet on a floor it had shared with the Meredith Corporation, a publisher of books and magazines like More and Family Circle, at 375 Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street.

Besides the developer, Silverstein Properties, and the offices of its team of architects from various firms that will be designing the buildings at Nos. 2, 3 and 4 World Trade Center, Mansueto is only the third tenant to move into 7 World Trade Center, which is part of the first phase of construction to be completed around the former site of the twin towers.

The company’s general manager, Kristine Kern, looked at 50 spaces around Manhattan before settling on the downtown site. The new space, according to Mr. Koten, fits in perfectly with the message the company sends its 1.44 million subscribers, the majority of them high-earning male managers and entrepreneurs.

“We are taking the advice we give to our readers, to be ahead of the trend, be pioneering and go where other people are afraid to go,” he said.

James G. Phillips, principal in the New York-based firm TPG Architecture, and Luc Massaux, TPG’s studio design director, designed the space, whose parallelogram shape is dictated by the unusual street pattern in the financial district. The center core construction of the tower, at the foot of Greenwich Street between Barclay and Vesey Streets, is column-free, making the raw floor a blank canvas for architect and tenant. Obtuse and acute angles set it apart from office towers with square or rectangular footprints, Mr. Phillips said.

“It makes the floor plan more dynamic,” he said.

Sweeping 360-degree vistas of New York dominate the space, whose exterior walls are all glass. “The mandate was to do nothing to interfere” with the view, Mr. Phillips said. “Just bring it inside.” Partitions were kept to a minimum to preserve the views and natural light. Seven conference rooms and 35 individual offices around the periphery have glass walls, with sliding glass doors framed with galvanized aluminum. Workstations for interns, which are away from the windows and around the inner core of the building, are equipped with stools to permit the most light and good views.

Mr. Koten wanted to use as few materials as possible and wanted to conserve resources when configuring the new headquarters. Seven World Trade Center is the first New York City office tower to receive a gold rating for environmental sustainability from the United States Green Building Council.

In the Mansueto offices, there is no dry wall, for example, and ceiling tiles are used only in the private offices and conference rooms. Ceilings are raw in the rest of the space and finished only with textured fireproofing materials, while most of the floor is bare concrete coated with an epoxy finish.

There are four communal copying and printing rooms on the floor, eliminating about 40 individual printers that staff members had previously used. That move cut down significantly on the use of ink and toner, according to Ms. Kern, the general manager.

Fewer partitions also create a sense of openness that was critical to the strategy behind the design. According to Mr. Phillips, the layout was meant to engender interaction among staff members. The space is divided into sections for three divisions: one for each of the two magazines and the third for corporate offices. Pale maple work cubicles designed by the Italian company Unifor at the center of each section were given less space in favor of communal areas. Those include conference rooms in a range of sizes — from the principal one that seats 28 to one with a high, colorful Parsons-style table and four aluminum stools.

Further economizing on individual space, employees’ personal gear will be relegated to the 200 high-school-style lockers soon to be installed inside space in the unfinished building core.

“Tremendous emphasis was placed on the sharing of knowledge, rather than on personal territory,” said Mr. Phillips, whose current projects include the New York headquarters for the music publisher EMI and the retail component of the Plaza Hotel. The company also designed the studio for NBC’s “Today” show.

The offices will also feature a high-tech innovation in publishing. Computer monitors show images of page layouts that change as the editors revise them. There are 40 screens on each wall. A third display of eight monitors is to be used as needed for different Web sites, including those of Fast Company and Inc.

As in most modern office renovations, the entire floor has WiFi access so staff members with laptops can move to impromptu meetings in casual seating areas scattered around the offices or in the conference rooms.

The cafeteria is the most popular gathering spot, near the elevators. Also serving as a reception area, it is marked off by a large carpeted circle with modern tables and chairs and a serpentine bench. A cool white marble bar, a wall paneled in dark wood and a wall of banquettes upholstered in deep olive fabric create an unusual counterpoint to the corner conference room, which hangs like a sleek glass box over ground zero and the first few beams of the Freedom Tower.

The space is ultramodern but somewhat retro, Mr. Koten said. It is the feel of the newsrooms in which he started his career and which has been lost since publishing went desktop, the “sense that something was being manufactured here, and that people were creating something,” he said.

Beautiful shot via pbase...

http://k41.pbase.com/o4/95/303895/1/61633486.dksYfmpQ.7wtc.jpg

Stunning...

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1113/536407664_71e83bc743_o.jpg

source: nschaden flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nschaden/)

NY POST

Larry Silverstein's 7 World Trade Center is nearly 72 percent leased.

Four companies have signed for a total 30,000 square feet - Scout Real Estate, IVC Corp., Kostelanetz & Fink, and WhenTech.

In addition, NCR Corp. and Silverstein have a term sheet for the 35th floor, or 40,000 square feet.

Scottsdale Insurance and another firm have term sheets for half the 33rd floor, where rents are in the low $70s per foot.

The bottom pic shows the true massiveness of this tower by the extremely long base!

New 7WTC surely looks a lot nicer ( and of course more modern ) than the old 7WTC.

I want to know that projects have on new constructions of buildings, already of in case impressive, in the precious city of New York, and also gustaria to know me if they are going to construct to gigantic other emporio in the place where sometimes it was the WTC and their twin towers

Hello; I am not sure if someone has allready posted those pics. So I will do it by my own. .... btw it's a really great looking place.

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/2849/0102096220800jt0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/4699/0102096221100lo2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

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http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/6027/0102096224700bp9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

great new renders, never seen them before

First time for me, also. Very Phenominal!!:banana:

Love the renderings of those high lobby ceilings in the new towers!! Reminiscent of the ones that were inside the Twins.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12122007/business/jay_z_wraps_hotel_partnership_in_chelsea_755673.htm?page=2
Meanwhile, Omnicom's Arnell Group - led by brand guru Peter Arnell - has a lease out with Silverstein Properties for 40,000 feet comprising the entire 37th floor of the 52 story 7 World Trade Center.

Anybody saw the Vertical City edition on 7 World Trade (on Ten HD)? It was stunning. I've seen tens of pictures of 7 WTC before, but seeing it filmed in HD really gives you a great sense of the building's beauty. Never thought of it as ugly at all, but that documentary changed my view of the new 7 for the better. I must say I fell in love with 7 World Trade that moment on.:D

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_249/moodys.html
Volume 20, Number 37 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | Feb. 8 - 14 , 2008

Moody’s rebuilds damaged ‘Credit’ at 7 W.T.C.

By Julie Shapiro

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_249/damage.gif
Photo by Joe Woolhead/courtesy of Silverstein Properties

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Photo by Pete Davies

Whenever Joseph Svehlak walked past 99 Church St., the old headquarters of Moody’s Corporation, he liked to look at the large metal sculpture above the doorway. Called “Credit,” the rectangular piece featured symbols of agriculture and industry in harmony.

“It was the focal point of the entrance to the building,” Svehlak said. “It symbolized what Moody’s was about.”

Svehlak always pointed out the sculpture when he gave tours of Lower Manhattan, but in mid-January, he noticed Credit was gone. The entire Moody’s building is being demolished to make way for Silverstein Properties’ high-rise Four Seasons hotel. Svehlak wondered, “What happened to Credit?”

It turns out that Moody’s decided not to bring the plaque along to its new headquarters in 7 World Trade Center, but instead created a smaller replica. The replica, a shinier gold color than the weathered original, is hanging in Moody’s offices, which are not open to the public.

The original Credit is now long gone, removed and recycled by Waldorf Demolition, a Silverstein spokesperson said.

Svehlak, a preservationist, was sad to hear the news.

“Redevelopment is good for the economy, but wasn’t there a way that the wonderful grand plaque could have been reused in the new building instead of being destroyed?” Svehlak asked. “It’s another blow to Downtown.”

The metal sculpture, which Svehlak estimates as a 10 or 12-foot square, featured a rifle-bearing frontiersman and a muscular industrial worker holding hands, with trees, fields, a farmhouse and skyscrapers in the background. Beneath the image is a quote from Daniel Webster on the importance of credit. In an 1834 Senate speech, Webster called credit “the vital air of the system of modern commerce.”

A Moody’s representative did not know who created Credit, but said he thought the piece dated to the building’s 1951 construction. He also did not say why Moody’s made a replica rather than moving the original.

The lobbies all seem to follow the same stunning trend that has been started by the one at 7 WTC!

Just have to say....New Jack City.....I like your Avatar :-)
and to keep on thread.....I have been inside 7 WTC lobby...nice! and I like the blue lighting at night.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/business/14larry.html?scp=18&sq=may+14+2008&st=nyt
The Optimistic (and Long) View of Larry A. Silverstein

By TERRY PRISTIN
Published: May 14, 2008

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/14/business/14larry.600.jpg
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Larry A. Silverstein

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dbox/Silverstein Properties

By 2012, the developer Mr. Silverstein will control the downtown Manhattan skyline, as the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site is completed.

Larry A. Silverstein, the New York developer, is used to being second-guessed.

“There’s no shortage of people who are always trying to tell you what you should do when it’s not their money that’s at stake, and not their property,” he said last week.

Mr. Silverstein completed the first 7 World Trade Center in early 1987, not long after the brokerage firm Drexel Burnham Lambert had run into trouble and abandoned plans to lease all 42 floors of the tower. Later that year, the stock market crashed.

As office vacancies reached their highest level in a decade, Mr. Silverstein allowed his new building to remain nearly empty rather than reduce his asking rent of $37 a square foot annually. Brokers said at the time that he could fill the building in a flash if he would lower the rent to $34. But Mr. Silverstein refused to budge. “I have the staying power and the ability to do what I need to do,” he told The New York Times in April 1988.

Two decades later, Mr. Silverstein has a new 7 World Trade Center. He finished building the luminous 52-story tower in 2006, less than five years after its predecessor was destroyed in the 2001 terrorist attack. But two years later, just as the real estate market is bracing for a significant loss of financial services jobs, no leases have been signed for the top 10 floors. The penthouse is used instead for movie shoots, fashion shows and receptions for civic groups, though Mr. Silverstein draws the line at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Once again, real estate professionals are puzzled by Mr. Silverstein’s refusal to compromise on his annual asking rent, which now ranges from $75 to $85 a square foot for the top floor. Last summer, the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton came close to making a deal, but Mr. Silverstein would not shave a couple of dollars off the rent.

“Our client would have loved to have moved there,” said Cleary’s broker, Barry M. Gosin, chief executive of Newmark Knight Frank.

Mr. Silverstein, who will turn 77 this month, smiled when he was reminded of the 1988 parallel. “History repeats itself, doesn’t it?” he said in an interview in his office on the 38th floor of 7 World Trade Center.

The energetic Mr. Silverstein has other reasons to smile these days. At a time when many developers around the country are being forced to pull in their reins because of the credit squeeze, Mr. Silverstein has only to look out his floor-to-ceiling windows to see a new real estate empire in the making. His private company, Silverstein Properties, has $9 billion worth of projects in the works.

To the south, the Freedom Tower, which Mr. Silverstein is developing for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is rising. Work is finally under way 80 feet below street level on the foundations for two of the three towers at ground zero that Silverstein Properties will control: 3 World Trade Center, with 71 stories, and 4 World Trade Center, with 61 stories.

This summer, the Port Authority is expected to finish building the slurry wall that will allow the digging of a foundation for Mr. Silverstein’s third office building, Tower 2, with 78 stories.

After years of delay — much of it a result of often acrimonious wrangling between government officials and Mr. Silverstein, who signed a long-term lease for the World Trade Center just six weeks before it was destroyed — some 800 construction workers are now employed at the site. Many of them also participated in the rescue efforts at ground zero.

Looking east, Mr. Silverstein can monitor the demolition of 99 Church Street, a 13-story office building a block from City Hall Park that will be succeeded by an 80-story limestone tower, designed by Robert A. M. Stern, with a 175-room Four Seasons hotel and 143 condominiums.

Mr. Silverstein’s financial partner in that project is the California State Teachers Retirement System — also his partner in the recent purchase of two Midtown Manhattan office buildings; one, 1177 Avenue of the Americas, between 45th and 46th Streets, cost more than $1 billion.

Mr. Silverstein acknowledged that the team was also interested in the Midtown buildings that Harry B. Macklowe surrendered to his lenders after defaulting on billions of dollars in short-term debt.

Like Mr. Macklowe, Mr. Silverstein is a famously tough negotiator. But he is also known for his unusually optimistic personality. Within days of the terrorist attacks, he pledged that the World Trade Center would be rebuilt. The cushion on his office sofa that bears a paraphrase of a Thomas Jefferson adage: “Steer your ship with hope, leaving fear astern” Though Lower Manhattan has blossomed as a residential community, growing to more than 50,000 residents, it has nearly 30,000 fewer jobs than it had before the Sept. 11 attack. Office vacancy downtown was 6.7 percent last month, compared with 6 percent in April 2007, according to the brokerage firm of CB Richard Ellis.

Predicting that the current downturn will not last long, Mr. Silverstein said leases throughout Manhattan amounting to 60 million square feet will expire within the next four years, just when his buildings are ready to accept tenants. He is already trying to persuade Merrill Lynch to move out of its offices at the World Financial Center.

Some real estate specialists wonder if Lower Manhattan will be able to attract so many new tenants at once. “I don’t see why all the buildings are being finished at the same time,” said the developer Douglas Durst, who is active in Midtown. “That seems to me a tactical mistake.”

Others say they share Mr. Silverstein’s optimism. “The Lower Manhattan of tomorrow is really a very very different place than the Lower Manhattan of 10 years ago,” said Carl Weisbrod, the president of Trinity Real Estate, which owns commercial buildings just north of downtown. “I think Larry is totally right in betting on the future.”

Interest in 7 World Trade Center remains high, said Stephen B. Siegel, the global chairman of CB Richard Ellis, which is representing the building.

Two decades ago, the tax breaks and favorable financing Mr. Silverstein received for 7 World Trade Center eliminated pressure to fill up the building quickly.

The new $700 million parallelogram-shaped 7 World Trade Center was financed with insurance proceeds and $475 million worth of triple-tax-exempt Liberty Bonds. The building has a mix of tenants, including Moody’s Investors Services; Mansueto Ventures, a magazine publisher; and the New York Academy of Sciences. The cash flow more than covers the debt service, Mr. Siegel said.

“He’s very confident in his product, and he holds out for his number,” Mr. Siegel said. Lowering the rent by $2 a square foot would reduce his annual income by $10 million and would lower the value of the building by as much as $20 million, based on a current capitalization rate of 5 percent, he said. (That figure is a ratio of the building’s net operating income relative to the sales price.)

Mr. Silverstein said he was taking the long view to protect a family-owned asset. “When you get to be in your 70s, you look at things like this through a different lens,” he said. “It’s better to take your time and do it right.”

Very NICE cany wait to go back to nyc

Any new pics of the area?

I managed to get inside this great skyscraper yesterday, I was on the 42nd floor, amazing views in all four directions. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me (my gf broke it), but I did take pics on my cellphone (but I lost the cable that connects it to computer). So just take my word for it: it's amazing :D

I've only been to the lobby :D

I've never been there. But I want to go. It looks like fun. Maybe I can go once they are done with the tower.

Well this is typical.

As an architect I can tell you this design is still in process and these new renderings the result of an "all nighter" because someone at the top was getting antsy to see something and shop it around.

Obviously the facade details are pretty well settled but the base and lobby as rendered are just vague ideas drawn up for a powerpoint presentation to prove the building will eventually be a reality. You can see how quickly and cheaply they were done.

As for that stark "style" of lobby, the rendering is so poor you really can't get a grasp of the mood created. But a simplistic, dark stone, cavernous lobby like they have alluded to can be quite stunning when done right. The most recent example is Bear-Stearns, absolutely powerful. Done in all polished black granite-floors/walls and with a high, matt black ceiling, like a night sky. Throw in a long row of 20ft tall glowing blue tubes as they have (similar to lava lamps) and the effect is quite striking, very Manhattan.

;)

But I'm tired of the box, and I'm tired of the status quo that continues to bank roll them even with the *new* glitzy facades. It's better than the original 7WTC for sure but as the recently completed CIBC tower on 42nd has proved- a box is just a box no matter how much you try to make the skin "pop".
f u

Sorry for my bed English but i wish to write.
NYC is very intresting city but NYC have so many problems. I see that NYC have not a chief arhitector. The disstantion beetwin bildings is not right. The heights are not interconnected. In results NYC have airing and sunlight problems. The worst of all this problems is impossible to do.

Sorry for my bed English but i wish to write.
NYC is very intresting city but NYC have so many problems. I see that NYC have not a chief arhitector. The disstantion beetwin bildings is not right. The heights are not interconnected. In results NYC have airing and sunlight problems. The worst of all this problems is impossible to do.

NYC actually has character. It is not manufactured like the major cities in China, Dubai, etc... It is not supposed to be planned by a prince or king or central planner. It thrives on the market demands and the ingenuity of the private firms that make the projects possible. The beauty that you are failing to see in NYC is the fact that it is unique and has the most dense diverse cityscape in the world.

NYC actually has character. It is not manufactured like the major cities in China, Dubai, etc... It is not supposed to be planned by a prince or king or central planner. It thrives on the market demands and the ingenuity of the private firms that make the projects possible. The beauty that you are failing to see in NYC is the fact that it is unique and has the most dense diverse cityscape in the world.

I am full agree with you, but my opinion that nowdays a few special lows and the post of chief-arhitector (planner) would be better for NYC .

I am full agree with you, but my opinion that nowdays a few special lows and the post of chief-arhitector (planner) would be better for NYC .

No. I don't want NYC to look like a planned city in China or Moscow's new skyline.

No. I don't want NYC to look like a planned city in China or Moscow's new skyline.

I understand you, but skyline is not a problem. Problem is a sunlight rate, airchange rate and deficiency of parkplace.

Sorry for my bed English but i wish to write.
NYC is very intresting city but NYC have so many problems. I see that NYC have not a chief arhitector. The disstantion beetwin bildings is not right. The heights are not interconnected. In results NYC have airing and sunlight problems. The worst of all this problems is impossible to do.


http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/Manhattan-skyline-poster.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/185/456059459_1aaebc754e_o.jpg

manhattan is an old city it used to have a lot more open spaces, these pictures are from the 1930's! Being confined to an island and only having a certain amount of space along with being the business hub of the world its going to get crowded eventually. Dont forget manhattan is an enormous island and the only real places with light issues are around wall street in downtown and around rockefeller center and times square in midtown. The Empire State Building is surrounded by very small buildings and there arent that many light issues there. Sometimes though things like that have to suffer when it means there can be an extraordinary amount of offices grouped together making train stops and walking a lot easier and convenient.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/185/456059459_1aaebc754e_o.jpg


WoW! What a view! I wish I could see it in color. Is there a high-resolution version?

that picture is awesome, really beautiful.

I understand you, but skyline is not a problem. Problem is a sunlight rate, airchange rate and deficiency of parkplace.

That's what you get when you do not have the government in strict control, which is fine!

Some of my shots from 7 WTC, made on a rusty, old phone in 2008.
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3274/image009t.jpg

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/7384/image110t.jpg

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8291/image114r.jpg

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/9274/image115q.jpg

October 12, 2010

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/4324/dsc0626ro.jpg

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/889/dsc0630h.jpg

CC: Myself

I am full agree with you, but my opinion that nowdays a few special lows and the post of chief-arhitector (planner) would be better for NYC .

I bet if kim jong il offered you some almond kool aid you would chug it. Also this probally flew over your head like the concord over a kiss concert.

An excellent picture of the office space. Love the mix...

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5065/5766035241_045f0c195a_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahfru/5766035241/)
Staggeringly wonderful time (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahfru/5766035241/) by sarahfru (http://www.flickr.com/people/sarahfru/), on Flickr

http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/Manhattan-skyline-poster.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/185/456059459_1aaebc754e_o.jpg

manhattan is an old city it used to have a lot more open spaces, these pictures are from the 1930's! Being confined to an island and only having a certain amount of space along with being the business hub of the world its going to get crowded eventually. Dont forget manhattan is an enormous island and the only real places with light issues are around wall street in downtown and around rockefeller center and times square in midtown. The Empire State Building is surrounded by very small buildings and there arent that many light issues there. Sometimes though things like that have to suffer when it means there can be an extraordinary amount of offices grouped together making train stops and walking a lot easier and convenient.

Nostalgia at its finest.

As antigas torres do WTC tinha um enorme charme apesar de antigas !! Fica na nossa memoria lembranças boas e bonitas das torres !!

This is knida off topic but is about the new WTC. I notice that there is 7WTC already built and named. Then in the rest of the rebuilding effort, the numbers before the name only goes up to 5WTC, leaving 6 World Trade Center out completely. Did they relize this before?

There is no 6WTC

I guess they ran out of buildings then?

picture is very nice .

Epic shots by regis boileau (http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesouthernroute/)

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6081/6061602546_6d4873c7af_b.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6072/6082432104_487f65060c_b.jpg

I'm from switzerland and although I've never been in New York: I feel like I'm a New Yorker too. Love it!!!

This building is nice. But I also liked its brown predecessor. ^^

This building is nice. But I also liked its brown predecessor. ^^

Me too. I almost like the old 7 WTC better actually.