NEWSDAY

Time Warner Center Nearing Completion
High-end residences a key component of major project

By Mary Reinholz
October 3, 2003

On a clear day in Manhattan, subway riders emerging from the Columbus Circle station may be momentarily blinded by the sunlight shimmering off two glass-sheathed towers. Tourists pass by and snap photographs of the nearly completed 750-foot-high monoliths, shaped like parallelograms. They soar over the edge of Central Park South and the circle where the iconic statue of Christopher Columbus also rises above this busy transportation hub.

The twin 80-story skyscrapers of the Time Warner Center, which broke ground in 2000, will open in stages -- starting later this month -- on a site where master builder Robert Moses' New York Coliseum once stood. At more than $1.8 billion, they constitute New York City's first major building project to be completed since the World Trade Center towers fell.

The complex comprises Time Warner's world headquarters and New York studios for CNN, as well as 201 condominium units (including 10 penthouses), a seven-tier arcade for six restaurants and a collection of upscale retailers, a luxury hotel and a jazz performing arts facility.

With 2.8 million square feet, the project will become "the Rockefeller Center of the 21st century," predicts Stephen M. Ross, chairman and chief executive of The Related Companies, one of the center's development partners, who include William L. Mack, co-founder of Apollo Real Estate Advisors.

"We're giving people a place to shop on the West Side," Ross said, adding that Whole Foods Market, the center's largest retail tenant, "will be a major attraction. There's a health club that the community can join. There are tremendous economic opportunities for the city."

Still, the center has been the target of litigation and community complaints over the effect of construction at the site, which covers 2 1/2 city blocks.

Ethel Sheffer, an urban planner and former chairwoman of the Tri-Board Task Force on Columbus Circle, a group composed of Community Boards 4, 5 and 7, said her group approved of the site plans and overall design by renowned architect David M. Childs, consulting design partner at the Manhattan office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. But the task force has objected to several aspects of the project, which was approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, as well as city and state agencies and officials.

"It's much too big," Sheffer said. "But the key issues are the renovation and planning for the circle, so that it's really a place that is a public asset and a respectful entry to Central Park and not just a place for cars."

Others have questioned whether the new behemoth might be vulnerable to another terrorist attack or blackout -- an issue Ross largely discounts.

"We did a lot of things" after 9/11, he said during an interview in a penthouse in the south tower at West 58th Street, dubbed the One Central Park Club. "We strengthened the steel so there is no way the building will collapse. Every elevator has backup generators so there's no way anyone will be stuck, which seems to be on everyone's mind."

All the security technology is built in, Ross added. "Anywhere in the building, you can plug in the wall and you can telecast [voice and pictures] to any place in the building," he said. "There's high-speed Internet. It's state of the art."

Among the new residents will be British financier David Martinez, who recently plunked down $45 million to join 1 1/3 units in the south tower for a penthouse on the 76th and 77th floors that commands spectacular views of the park and skyline through 25-foot-high walls of glass. Others are singer Ricky Martin and interior decorator/author Lady Henrietta Spencer Churchill, a granddaughter of Winston Churchill who reportedly paid $8.5 million for a three-bedroom apartment she designed herself in the north tower.

The twin edifices also provide enough elbow room -- 193,000 square feet -- for Class A, or top-of-the-line rental office space, another 865,000 square feet of office space for 1,700 Time Warner employees, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, a 100,000- square-foot performing arts complex that former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani imposed as a requirement on several major development teams that vied to get the treasured 3.4-acre property from the MTA. Designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects and billed as the first facility ever devoted to the art form, Jazz encompasses a 1,100-seat theater, a 600-seat performance atrium, recording studios, classrooms and a 140-seat jazz club, Dizzy's Club Coca Cola, named after the legendary trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie.

Damaged by a fire in April, Jazz will nevertheless open on schedule in the fall of 2004, said David Worsley, a vice president with Columbus Centre LLC, Related's development wing.

In a few weeks, New Yorkers will be able to see how two major components in the development come together: the 249-room Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which Ross said will open Oct. 29; and the residential condos, which could be ready for occupancy around the same time. The hotel spans 19 floors in the north tower and will offer 24-hour food service to guests and condo residents in both towers as well as access to its health club, pool, banquet facilities and ballroom. Real estate agents handling the condo sales say that nearly 60 percent of the condos have been sold for a total close to almost $600 million.

For example, broker Dolly Lenz, executive vice president and managing director of Insignia Douglas Elliman, which in March was purchased by Long Island Prudential Realty, says she has closed more than $160 million in condo sales at the towers and has contracts out -- "but not signed" -- for $25 million more. Among Lenz's 19 buyers, six have primary residences on Long Island and six others have homes in the Hamptons.

"They want the light and the height and cutting- edge design of the building," she said. "They want the services like dog walking, any kind of hair or body treatment, mud treatment -- all the spa treatments that the entire complex can enjoy."

Eva Mohr, senior vice president of Sotheby's International Realty, said she closed on a $30-million Time Warner condo shortly after Sept. 11. "There's fabulous security," she said. "You can't walk in off the street."

There's also a waiting lounge for chauffeurs so that they don't have to hang out on the street, she said, referring to one of three below-ground garages with valet service for 549 cars. "This is a lifestyle. You buy much more than a doorman opening the door. You buy access to every amenity imaginable."

Susan M. de Franca, a senior vice president at Related, said prices for the condos initially started at $1.8 million for a two-bedroom 1,300-square-foot apartment overlooking the Hudson River and ranged to more than $35 million for a full-floor 8,400- square-foot penthouse. But, "We've have had five price increases since August of 2001."

The locations of the condos in the 80-story buildings depend on whom you talk to.

"There are different methods for calculating the floors" for marketing purposes, said de Franca. "The higher the floor, the greater the status symbol."

Such quibbles over status tend to rankle residents on the ground, including those in the Clinton community, for whom the Time Warner building project has been a nightmare of noise, traffic congestion and dirt.

"There was a long period of time where they were blasting away for the foundation before the building ever went up because Manhattan is built on rock, and it seemed they were blasting forever," recalls Simone Sindin, a former chairwoman of Community Board 4.

Hardhats began razing the coliseum in 1999; groundbreaking for the buildings took place in November 2000, eventually bringing as many as 2,300 workers to the site early many mornings and often at night.

"The neighborhood has changed, and it's been difficult living here because of the endless pollution and noise," said Sindin, who is also president of Coliseum Park Apartments, a co-op that includes her building on West 60th Street next to the north tower.

"I'm simply amazed that no one has been killed by a car," Sindin added, alluding to snarled traffic and closed pedestrian walkways that have resulted as well from the city's $20-million landscaping makeover of Columbus Circle.

However, two construction workers have been killed in accidents. And the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has 38 open cases in which various construction companies have been cited for violations at the site, as well as fines "in the thousands of dollars" for the center's major contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, said Sid Dinsay, a spokesman for the city's building department. At the same time Dinsay described the project's overall record for safety as "pretty good," considering its size and complexity.

Redevelopment of site occupied by the Coliseum -- which had become extraneous after the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was built -- has taken almost two decades, largely because of objections by West Side community groups. Related was the second company tapped by the MTA to develop the property.

The first plan was put forth by Boston Properties, a real estate firm run by Mortimer Zuckerman, who also owns the New York Daily News. Zuckerman proposed building a 925-foot-high monolith in 1985, but those plans were beaten back in part by litigation and community protests, including one staged by the Municipal Arts Society in which demonstrators showed up with black umbrellas to show how such a high rise would cast shadows on Central Park.

Then came the stock market crash of 1987. Zuckerman scaled down the design for his proposal, but abandoned it in the mid-1990s.

Related and Apollo Real Estate bought the land from the MTA in 1998 for more than $346 million, plus other costs that brought the total purchase price to "over $400 million," Ross said. GMAC Commercial Mortgage provided a $1.3-billion construction loan.

Ross credits Time Warner's decision to sign on as a major tenant as a key factor in his team getting selected by the MTA and getting approval from state and city agencies. Another factor was architect Childs' design of the center, particularly the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex, which was essential to Giuliani's approval.

"It was the way we had Jazz at Lincoln Center on the fifth floor and featured it in some of the best space in the building, making it our signature," Ross said.

The developers were not subject to city's Uniform Land Use Review Process because the site was on state land. And Ross acknowledged filing the project as an "alteration" of the coliseum, rather than new construction. Critics say Ross' team was able to speed up city reviews by filing the project as an alteration of an existing structure, but Ross but said that didn't speed up the project because the zoning was already in place and "we were ready to go."

Some West Side activists, who have fought development for nearly 20 years, continue to criticize the Time Warner Center, even as it nears completion.

"The thing is too big and it's environmentally unsound," said Olive Freud, vice president of the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, a group that unsuccessfully sued Ross in federal court, saying the center violated provisions of the Clean Air Act. "The real horror is the traffic and the size of the building. We were against the tearing down of the coliseum," she said.

City Council member Gayle A. Brewer, whose district includes Columbus Circle, said at least six other construction projects are now adding to congestion in the neighborhood. Her office has received numerous complaints about issues such as weekend and night work at the Time Warner development, she said, noting that a subcommittee of the tri-board task force, set up public meetings to address community issues, as well as a hotline and Web site to contact construction managers about problems like double-parked delivery trucks.

Brewer also said she is working "night and day" to get jobs at the site for lower-income residents in the community. Joshua S. Bocian, Brewer's director of constituent services, told a recent public meeting that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel had 200 job openings.

Such jobs should be offered first to local residents, Brewer said, especially "after all they have suffered, between the noise and the traffic and the dirt."

http://www.newsday.com/media/photo/2003-10/9630962.jpg

http://www.newsday.com/media/photo/2003-10/9629887.jpg

Nice! They looked awsome when I saw them for the first time, when they still were u/c! :okay:

I didnt know it has more than 70 floors! :eek:

Originally posted by RafflesCity

I didnt know it has more than 70 floors! :eek:

It really has only 55 but they say it's 80 stories as a way of marketing in real estate.

Just like when Trump said Trump World Tower had 90 stories but really has 72.

It's being called the "Trump Math." ;)

Thats what I call dodgy math;)

here from the park:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-10/434045/2003_0911sscN10005.JPG

PS: this is my first image posting so I don't know if it works

"Some West Side activists, who have fought development for nearly 20 years, continue to criticize the Time Warner Center, even as it nears completion.

"The thing is too big and it's environmentally unsound," said Olive Freud, vice president of the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, a group that unsuccessfully sued Ross in federal court, saying the center violated provisions of the Clean Air Act. "The real horror is the traffic and the size of the building. We were against the tearing down of the coliseum," she said."

Let me guess, these NIMBY's were against the tearing down of a lousy 24-floor building built by the authoritarian Robert Moses that quicky outlived its usefulness as a convention center and as an office building once the Javits Center opened. No wonder the politicians aren't listening much to the public regarding the rebuilding of the WTC. :wallbash: Something needs to be done about these low-rise utopian wackos before they call for the demolition of the ESB and Rockefeller Center.

http://www.tvaerials.net/images/timewarnerrs.jpg

Heres a pic I took about three weeks ago :)

Great pictures, thanks for those!

I wish the crowns were a different color than the facade's color, it would have looked much better.

That is a brilliant picture of a massive set of new Twin Towers. It's a good thing that S.O.M. and AOL Time Warner got fed up and drew the line when these low-rise NIMBY's I mentioned before called for the plans to be scuttled altogether.

Originally posted by Agglomeration

That is a brilliant picture of a massive set of new Twin Towers. It's a good thing that S.O.M. and AOL Time Warner got fed up and drew the line when these low-rise NIMBY's I mentioned before called for the plans to be scuttled altogether.

Actually the site was owned by the NYC Transit Authority. It was the city government with the TA that pushed this through past the objections of the NIMBYs. SOM and TimeWarner then built to a size that they were told to as allowed by zoning and various agreements.

Well, the fact that the city government and the Transit Authority actually had to come to the aid of SOM and Time Warner to help sweep aside these low-rise fanatics and help dig the foundations of the AOL Time Warner Twin Towers, allowing them to go up to the maximum of what city zoning allows... It just goes to show all of us how ideologically driven these NIMBY's are.

As for the AOL-TWC Twin Towers themselves, the glass exterior is largely complete save a few glitches. I'm sure the whole complx will be fully open by next spring. Do you know which section will open first?

Here are two pics that were posted at WNY by ZippyTheChimp:

http://www.pbase.com/image/22399015.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22399097.jpg

Notice how it looks different depending on the weather.

Incredible, how it doesn't even look real...amazing.

From WNY:

http://www.pbase.com/image/22459567.jpg

Gorgeous buildings! They are behemoths! I only wish they were a bit taller but I wish that for all new buildings. Sadly, I don't see them much, only when I am heading to Jersey on the GWB.

taken Nov 6:
http://home.1asphost.com/savethewtc/3tmktwc2.jpg
http://home.1asphost.com/savethewtc/3tmktwc1.jpg
where's the other one? :)

Thanks for the update 3tmk, they look like they will be done on the exterior by the end of the month.

BTW-I edited it and uploaded the pics to an account of mine so they can show.

thanks Savethewtc, I think I figured my mistake, its not gonna hapeen next time. thanks again for the other pics

actually I saw Columbus Circle under reparations, is it part of the Tower's deal with the city, or is it Hearst Tower's deal to renovate the subway station, or just the city doing something nice?

Originally posted by 3tmk

actually I saw Columbus Circle under reparations, is it part of the Tower's deal with the city, or is it Hearst Tower's deal to renovate the subway station, or just the city doing something nice?

The city's been trying to redevelop Columbus Circle for years now and finally the Time Warner Center was approved and built.

I think it's a combination of both the city trying to do something nice and part of the TWC's deal with the city, if you get what I mean?

Here's the views from the Time Warner Center from:

http://www.rion.nu/v5/archive/000414.php#comments

http://www.rion.nu/v5/post/110903/IMG_8650lg.jpg

http://www.rion.nu/v5/post/110903/IMG_8651lg.jpg

http://www.rion.nu/v5/post/110903/IMG_8652lg.jpg

Also, here's a long piece about the Time Warner Center by architecture critic Paul Goldberger.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK
by PAUL GOLDBERGER

A behemoth rises up in Columbus Circle.
Issue of 2003-11-17
Posted 2003-11-10
The New Yorker

The new Time Warner Center, at the southwest corner of Central Park, isn’t a bad piece of urban design. The base of the building reflects the curve of Columbus Circle in a sumptuous, even graceful arc, and it gives the circle a monumentality that it never had before. If you don’t look up, you could like this building. Columbus Circle is one of New York’s few true roundabouts, and almost every building put on it has ignored the architectural potential that the shape holds. Edward Durell Stone’s sweet but hapless marble museum at 2 Columbus Circle made a gentle nod to the curving street, but you hardly noticed it when the monolithic New York Coliseum loomed on the site that the Time Warner Center now occupies. The tall glass stick that is the Trump International Hotel doesn’t help much, either.

It may be going overboard to say that the curved base of the Time Warner Center is reminiscent of John Nash’s glorious façades on Regent Street in London. A better comparison, perhaps, would be to a fine New York building that is often overlooked—the old Standard Oil headquarters at 26 Broadway in lower Manhattan, by Carrère & Hastings, which has a tower set atop a convex base. The façade of the base reflects the shape of Broadway as it passes Bowling Green. The tower is aligned with the straighter grid of streets to the north, and thus can be seen from a distance. For the Time Warner Center, David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (who is more famous at the moment for being at loggerheads with Daniel Libeskind over the shape of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site) designed two huge glass towers that are positioned to be seen not just from Central Park but from along the axis of Fifty-ninth Street and Central Park South. The building hunkers over Fifty-ninth Street and blocks it, but the towers have been placed on either side of the atrium, where the street would be, so that as you view the building from afar the open space of the street appears to continue. Childs added a striking sculptural fillip at the southern end of the base, which has a transparent glass skin under which you can see the steel frame.

Alas, the building itself is so big that Childs’s well-intentioned gestures mean very little. The best you can say is that they prevent it from being worse than it is, or as bad as earlier versions, which date from the nineteen-eighties. The architecture above the rounded base is dull and conventional. The towers are nicely shaped but banal, and the glass is far too dark. (Strangely, the towers look brighter from across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where the afternoon sun gives their back side a light, glistening tone that the morning sun never seems to confer on the front.) Childs did add some small glass fins that project from the tower façades and provide a bit of texture, but they are not enough to give any real panache or dignity to the place.

The Time Warner Center is a hodgepodge, a sort of Rubik’s Cube, with a luxury hotel, offices, condominium apartments, a big retail atrium, restaurants, and space for cultural events all thrown together. It is a theme-park version of a sophisticated urban building, slickly packaged to make city life seem attractive to people who aren’t accustomed to it—the sort of thing you would expect to find on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago but not in a city that is as fully defined by its street life as New York is. The condos have spectacular views, but some of the rooms are oddly shaped, which isn’t surprising, given that the towers aren’t rectangles but parallelograms, designed to align the building with the angle of Broadway.

The two-hundred-and-fifty-room Mandarin Oriental hotel was the first tenant to move in, with guests being officially accepted on November 15th. The retail space and the restaurants will open early next year, which is more or less when the two hundred condominium apartments will be finished. They are being marketed now, those in the south tower under the address of One Central Park (which sounds more chic than Columbus Circle), and those in the north tower as the Residences at the Mandarin Oriental. One unit has reportedly been sold to a London financier for forty-five million dollars.

The interiors of the hotel were designed by Brennan Beer Gorman, and six other architects—including the eminent Rafael Viñoly, who designed performance spaces for Jazz at Lincoln Center at the top of the atrium—were involved in various parts of the building. David Childs had to cope with all of them while he wrestled with the problems of making a decent piece of commercial architecture in the middle of New York City. Viñoly seems to have made the most of the building’s strong points. The firm of Elkus/Manfredi, which was put in charge of the atrium’s retail space, has turned what might have been a stunning, curving arcade into something unpleasantly close to a suburban mall, full of fussy decorative columns. The hotel interiors are conventional—lots of marble and swirling decorations that are intended to distract the eye from the spaces, which are often cramped and awkward.

The Time Warner Center has a long and tortured history. In the early nineteen-eighties, the Koch administration and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority started talking about selling off Robert Moses’s wretched old Coliseum, which was owned by the M.T.A. The Coliseum stood on one of the most prominent, and valuable, sites in New York, and city officials must not have thought too much about the fact that the more money a developer paid for the site the bigger the skyscraper he would have to build there, simply to justify the cost. Bigger was thought to be better. And, anyway, city planners of the time were enamored of the idea that new skyscrapers jump-started renewal in otherwise down-at-the-heels neighborhoods.

Thus we got, or almost got, Columbus Center, a pair of hulking towers designed by Moshe Safdie in 1985 for the developer Mortimer Zuckerman, whose firm, Boston Properties, offered the city four hundred and fifty-five million dollars for the Coliseum site, which it planned to turn into the headquarters of Salomon Brothers, an investment-banking firm that exemplified the eighties boom. Safdie’s design was widely thought to be grotesque, and it caused an outcry the likes of which New York hadn’t seen since Marcel Breuer was commissioned to design a tower to go on top of Grand Central Terminal. The Municipal Art Society argued that the Safdie building would block the light on Central Park, and hundreds of people, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, got together to hold black umbrellas along the outlines of what was purported to be the shadow it would cast. Zuckerman fired Safdie and replaced him with David Childs, who redesigned the building as an imitation of Central Park West architecture of the thirties. Childs apparently assumed that if the building seemed familiar enough, people wouldn’t mind that it was also enormous, although the protests faded only slightly. The urban theatre provided by the people with the umbrellas was memorable, but, in the long run, a suit brought by the Municipal Art Society against the city was probably more effective. The society claimed that by selling off the site to the highest bidder, and granting zoning concessions, the city was in effect selling zoning rights, which is illegal. The society won, and the project was scaled down. Then, in 1987, the stock market crashed, and Salomon Brothers withdrew. The real-estate market collapsed a couple of years later, which put plans on hold.

The Time Warner Center is Columbus Center by another name. Mort Zuckerman is gone, and David Childs is now working with Stephen Ross of the Related Companies and William Mack of Apollo Real Estate Advisers, who won a competition for the project that the Giuliani administration initiated in 1996, early in a new real-estate boom. Ross and Mack paid less for the site than Zuckerman had offered, and the building is a little smaller than the eighties versions, but it’s still too big by half. Although Childs moved from Retro Central Park West to Anywhere Corporate Glass Sleek, the basic elements of Columbus Center remain. It’s a mixed-use building with two large towers and shopping at the bottom. The most important addition, a nod to the Giuliani administration’s demand that the project have a public component, is the performance spaces for Jazz at Lincoln Center. Giuliani had wanted a hall in which opera could be performed, and one of the spaces is outfitted to accommodate elaborate sets, just in case. The jazz spaces will not open until late next year, but even now, in their half-constructed state, they look terrific.

A jazz hall with spectacular city views almost, but not quite, justifies the whole overblown venture. The center originated when the government decided to sell off a piece of public land to private developers. A really big building would pay for a lot of subway cars. But that isn’t the way to construct a city. Government should act as a referee in the game of real-estate development, and not as a player. Traditionally, it sets the rules, which is what zoning laws are. Developers are supposed to push for the maximum—after all, making money is their job—and the city is supposed to say no when a project threatens the public interest. But when the city joined forces with the M.T.A. to squeeze as much money as it could out of Columbus Circle the balance between public interests and private interests was endangered. The equilibrium of the development process was thrown out of whack. The city wasn’t regulating the feeding frenzy; it was leading it. The people who protested the sellout, who went head to head against the forces with the money, did something important. But the fact that the city pulled in the reins a bit and agreed to take a little less money and have a slightly smaller building didn’t change the story much. Money usually wins in this town.

I just read that review in this week's New Yorker. There's a great picture of the development to accompany the story. I happen to love these buildings. I think the view of them from the Southeast corner of the park reminds me so much of the WTC it's scary. I also think the cantilevered crowns are graceful.

A Towering Price Tag
The costliest U.S. building ever? The $1.8B Time Warner Center

By Justin Davidson
STAFF WRITER

November 13, 2003

Only in Manhattan could a battleship-gray colossus rise 750 feet into the sky and go largely unnoticed by the people at its feet. For two years, drivers and pedestrians have been picking their way through Columbus Circle, so preoccupied with the shifting construction barricades that they paid little attention to the cause of all the disruption: the Time Warner Center, a pair of 80-story glass towers jutting asymmetrically from a two-block base that curves like a cutlass blade. Now, suddenly, the building is there, and as the leaves thin, it will be visible from much of Central Park - just as, to the delight of investors and real estate brokers, the park is the centerpiece of the towers' wide-screen views.

The building, a ritzy vertical campus that will shelter a daily population of thousands, is opening in staggered stages. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which occupies floors 45 through 63 of the north tower, comes first - guests begin checking in on Saturday. The shopping mall will hold its ribbon-cutting early next year, and tenants gradually will move into offices and the breathtakingly expensive apartments throughout the spring. The final piece is the cultural kernel: Jazz at Lincoln Center, designed by Rafael Viñoly and inserted into the wedge between the towers, will open in the fall of 2004.

It is hard to get around the raw fact of the complex's bulk. As you approach it from the north, its sheer glass cliff hulks menacingly over Broadway, two ungainly slabs merging into a single, formidable silhouette. Upper West Siders who bemoan each new construction fence as a sign that the neighborhood is being converted into a thicket of high-rises will see this view daily, and loathe it. One Columbus Circle turns its coldest, thickest shoulder to the folks uptown.

But it has a more flattering profile, too, one that brings out the syncopated rhythms lurking in its oversized frame. Stand on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 58th Street, and the oblique angles pile up toward the clouds, jauntily linking the city's converging geometries. The building's base, a four-story shopping mall, wraps itself around Columbus Circle. The towers stand askew, lining up along the diagonal of Broadway. The gap between them continues the westward path of Central Park South, as if the street had become airborne and merged with the sky.

The Time Warner Center, at $1.8 billion the most expensive single building ever planted in American soil, was designed by New York- based David Childs of Skidmore Owings and Merrill. But behind that simple statement of fact is a 17-year history of false starts, grandiose ambitions and vertiginous risks. At various times during construction, a forklift driver died in an accident, winds battered the site, killing a worker and injuring pedestrians with flying debris, and a fire broke out inside the frame. Nothing about this project has been easy.

When the Javits Center opened in 1986, New York stopped needing its Coliseum, a stale white loaf of a building thrown down where 59th Street used to be. The city put the site up for sale and from the beginning, developers thought on an imperial scale. The architect Moshe Safdie, working for Boston Properties, proposed a thick bundle of structures, the tallest of which would have reached 925 feet high - almost 20 more stories than the current building. Critics fumed and the Municipal Arts Society deployed protesters carrying black umbrellas to show how the building's shadow would darken Central Park.

Safdie's design was yanked, the economy curdled, the site's price plummeted and Boston Properties eventually withdrew. The project did not really begin to move again until the late 1990s, when two things happened: The developer Steve Ross persuaded Time Warner that the company, nicely ensconced at Rockefeller Center, needed an urban icon to call its own; and then- mayor Rudolph Giuliani decreed that the new building would have to carve out some space for the performing arts - specifically, the first auditorium built expressly for jazz. Ross landed the deal and turned to an architect who already had floated a handful of rejected designs for the project: David Childs.

Childs had to pack a lot of uses and requirements into one big building, and he did so by paring the design down from the earlier tapering clusters he had proposed. He reduced the number of layers in his cake to three: the curved galleria, a pair of crystalline pedestals and the towers, rotated away from the street grid and twisted into rhomboids, so that the whole building seems to twirl upward.

It's ironic that Childs is now locked in battle with the Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind over the shape of the future Freedom Tower - Libeskind apparently insists on his hip origami shapes, while Childs is holding out for a more straitlaced, Brooks Brothers skyscraper. The Time Warner Center is not unconventional in spirit, but it is based on a quite Libeskind-like play of oblique and acute angles. (The resulting corners provided Ismael Leyva, who laid out the apartments, with an opportunity to set bathtubs into narrow, windowed nooks overlooking the Hudson River.) The difference is that Libeskind uses angles, tilted roofs and canted walls for their aesthetic appeal, while Childs cautiously doles out asymmetry as the solution to an urbanistic problem: How to get a massive building to fit in at a complicated intersection where it doesn't really belong.

The complex, which stands astride the border of corporate midtown and the residential Upper West Side, struggles with the balance between neighborliness and capitalist triumphalism. Childs has nestled the circular plaza in a streetwall of masonry and store windows, and the shops open onto the sidewalk as well as the atrium, which means floor traffic circulates freely between indoors and out. The powerhouse lobbies (Time Warner, Mandarin Oriental and the hyper-luxury apartments) have been discreetly relegated to the side streets.

But in fine Parisian style, the building also acts as the terminus of a grand boulevard, Central Park South, and its glass gates align with the statue of Christopher Columbus. Childs would have Columbus Circle be our Place de la Concorde. There is, to be sure, something anticlimactic about proceeding down this grand way and arriving, finally, at a kitchen aids store (Williams-Sonoma). But architecturally, the mall is merely scaffolding for the keystone: the shimmering, see- through curtain of a floating jazz club. That's how far jazz has come in its 100-year history: from flypaper honky- tonks to the sixth-story glass-covered centerpiece of a mammoth corporate headquarters. Here, jazz is not about roots, but about respectability.

The amounts of money involved in erecting this structure were enormous, and those figures trickle down to the street. It still costs only a $2 subway fare to emerge into the renovated station, but everything else here seems to have been priced in another planet's currency. An overnight stay in a suite with a park view at the Mandarin Oriental costs $1,600, and the fancier suite is $12,000 - although, for those travelers in a more austere mood, a nice little room goes for a mere $595. The penthouse apartment in the south tower was recently sold for $45 million, and while the price of sirloin at the Jean-Georges Vongerichten steakhouse in the galleria hasn't been set, it seems likely to be princely.

The only completed interiors for now are in the hotel, which is an orgy of expensive materials. At the bar, plunk your beer down on a counter of hammered nickel and leather trim, or take it to a booth of stone carved with Asian motifs. The spa's shower stalls are made translucent by sheets of what is described as "rice- paper glass." Every surface has been ruthlessly beautified.

It's not just the hotel, but the center as a whole that represents a gamble on epic luxury (not to mention the future fortunes of its troubled corporate namesake). The building is unmistakably meant to impress: It has the sleek, glazed mass of a bodybuilder-turned-movie star. But Childs has also attempted to endow it with something like quirkiness or bonhomie.

Most important skyscrapers have a signature crown; this one has a disappointing row of overlapping blades on top, which gives it the look of a high-tech razor. But Childs draws the eye around the front, rather than up to the spires. The most appealing feature is not the mast, but the "prow," an empty, transparent six-floor shaft that serves no obvious purpose, but reaches out to the virtually windowless Huntington Hartford Museum across Eighth Avenue. The prow is Childs' folly - a blank slate for a laser show, a glass billboard, a refreshing breath of ambiguity in a building crammed with purpose.

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

Why does it say at (http://www.emporis.info/en/wm/bu/?id=100370) that they are only 55 storeys?

November 16, 2003

NY Times

Yes, It's a Mall, but a Far Cry From the Food Court

By WILLIAM GRIMES

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/11/16/nyregion/rest.large.jpg

The chefs Gray Kunz, left, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten at the Time Warner towers at Columbus Circle.

Some New Yorkers will go almost anywhere for a good meal. In the East Village, they have pushed through to Avenues A, B, C and D. They have prowled the blood-spattered sidewalks of the meatpacking district for the latest brasserie, and they have found their way to converted bodegas on the Lower East Side.

In a few months, however, the city's culinary adventurers will face what may be their steepest test yet. To eat the food of some of the finest chefs working in the United States today, they will have to go to a shopping mall.

In early February, if all goes according to plan, the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park will open the doors to a cluster of dining establishments it calls, rather grandly, the Restaurant Collection.

The developers of the project, Apollo Real Estate Advisors and the Related Companies, are betting heavily that the combined star power of the chefs there will make Columbus Circle, and the $1.7 billion Time Warner towers, the city's premier dining destination.

Situated on two floors of the center's seven-floor retail atrium, the collection comprises five restaurants, each run by a brand-name chef.

The names are imposing. On the fourth floor, Thomas Keller will preside over Per Se, an East Coast version of the French Laundry, his almost mythic restaurant in the Napa Valley.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten, whose flagship restaurant, Jean Georges, is just across Columbus Circle, will run a New York version of Prime, his hugely successful steak house in Las Vegas. His neighbor will be Masa Takayama, a Japanese chef whose dinners at Ginza Sushiko in Beverly Hills ran $250 per person ($300 during blowfish season). Mr. Takayama has closed the California restaurant and will open Asayoshi in the complex, where he will be pleased to serve a $500 dinner.

One floor down, diners will find two larger, less expensive restaurants, but two instantly recognizable names. Gray Kunz, who lifted Lespinasse, in the St. Regis Hotel, to star status, will run Café Gray, a large brasserie with an Eastern European flavor. Last week, Charlie Trotter, the highly acclaimed chef and owner of Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, signed on to open a seafood restaurant.

The restaurateurs, in turn, have signed up A-list designers like Adam Tihany and David Rockwell. Four of the atrium restaurants are scheduled to open simultaneously on Feb. 5 as part of the grand opening of all the retail stores. Mr. Trotter, as the latecomer, said he planned to open in the fall. A sixth restaurant, Asiate, on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the north tower, opened this week.

When all the pieces are in place, New York will have a new restaurant district. This one just happens to be vertical, and created all at once. Whether New Yorkers will take to the idea is the unanswered question.

Kenneth A. Himmel, the president and chief executive of Related Urban Development, the retail-development division of the Related Companies, clearly believes that they will. Mr. Himmel, who developed Water Tower Place in Chicago and Copley Place in Boston, went after star chefs because he has retail space to rent and the developers have condominiums to sell, at breathtaking prices. "No one wants to go up," Mr. Himmel said, referring to retailers. "Everybody wants to be on the street. To get them to go up you have to offer a tremendous rationale for why they should be there."

Mr. Himmel stalked his restaurateurs determinedly. He offered Mr. Keller a partnership deal with Related and Apollo, guaranteeing the kind of money that would make it possible to install an enormous kitchen with a wood-burning oven and a bread bakery. (Mr. Himmel puts the cost of Per Se, Mr. Keller's restaurant, at more than $12 million. That's more than four times the cost of Rocco's on 22nd, the restaurant in the Flatiron district whose birth pangs were chronicled in the NBC reality series "The Restaurant.")

Mr. Keller was also given a powerful advisory role in selecting the other restaurants in the project, and he used it to lobby for Mr. Takayama. Mr. Vongerichten, too, was offered a partnership deal.

Stars Attract a Star

With the first two stars signed up, Mr. Himmel was in a strong position to attract others, who work under a standard landlord-tenant arrangement. Mr. Kunz said: "With these names, we have almost an insurance policy. If I'd been the sole restaurant, it wouldn't have worked."

Another insurance policy, as Mr. Himmel tells it, is the nature of the interlocking parts of the atrium, which makes the restaurants a tasty filling between two thick slices of bread. The slice on top is Jazz at Lincoln Center, whose theaters, performance spaces and recording studios, starting on the fifth floor, will guarantee nighttime traffic and well-to-do patrons.

Below, on the concourse level, Whole Foods will operate a giant food hall modeled after the food halls of London's great department stores.

To help banish the specter of mall-ness, the developers offered an alternative to the atrium escalators. They put an entrance on 60th Street, next to the Mandarin Oriental, with three express elevators nearby leading directly to the restaurants.

Some restaurateurs and industry consultants wonder whether the project will succeed. The look and tone of the atrium and public space could be irresistibly alluring or an appetite-killer. It may, in the end, boil down to how New Yorkers feel about escalators and handbag stores near their restaurants.

"I'd say expectations are high but vague," said Clark Wolf, a restaurant consultant. "I do think they have enough critical mass for people to go up and visit at least once. That pushes people over the obstacle of going to Columbus Circle and going up to the fourth floor."

In a way, the dismal economy of the last couple of years may help. Although some restaurateurs have grumbled that Time Warner, in a classic instance of bad timing, will dump high-priced tables on a market that cannot absorb them, Mr. Wolf observes that New Yorkers may be more than ready for a thrill.

"We've had some notable interesting restaurants open in the last couple of years, but nothing spectacular," he said. "This is a big deal. People are going to talk about it."

Local restaurateurs already are. It is hard to ignore a half-dozen high-end restaurants at your doorstep. Terrance Brennan, the chef and owner of Picholine, said he is taking the view that Time Warner will be good for everyone by bringing a lot of excitement and a lot of diners to the area.

"We might lose a little business in the beginning," he said, "but after that people will come back. We'll just sharpen our knives a little more."

Some restaurateurs, after sniffing around the project in its early stages, developed cold feet. "It's very upscale, but I personally just don't like to be in a mall," said Jeffrey Chodorow, whose restaurants include China Grill and Tuscan, and who recently joined forces with Alain Ducasse to open Mix in New York. "It's hard to bring people into that environment."

Stephen Hanson also balked. "I'd rather step away from that project and feel sorry for myself later if it turns out to be a runaway success," said Mr. Hanson, whose restaurants include Blue Fin and Ruby Foo's, both in the theater district. "By default they'll do good lunch business. But who is the customer at night? To the east I see Central Park, to the immediate west is housing projects. The only way you can go is south, and one thing I've learned operating restaurants in Times Square is that if you are more than two or three blocks away from the theater, you're at a disadvantage."

In dining terms, this is "The Matrix" plus "Lord of the Rings" with a couple of Disney-animated blockbusters thrown in. Opening weekend, so to speak, is more or less guaranteed to be huge.

Six Dining Styles and Milieus

The chefs involved have wisely avoided stepping on one another's toes. Diners will get six distinct dining styles and environments, although some chefs, notably Mr. Trotter, have only begun drawing up their menus. Mr. Himmel said the Trotter restaurant would be a reinterpreted oyster bar, with slight Asian touches. Mr. Trotter will say only that the place, as yet unnamed, will be a seafood restaurant with some sort of raw bar as a component. The main point, for serious diners, is that Mr. Trotter is in charge, and they won't have to fly to Chicago to eat his food.

Mr. Vongerichten said he would, essentially, do what he does at Prime in Las Vegas, bringing a French sensibility and more inventive appetizers and side dishes to a traditional steakhouse repertory of main dishes. His style is worlds apart from the brawny, he-man American steakhouse ideal.

Mr. Keller, too, does not want to change the ingredients that have routinely put the French Laundry on top of most lists of the best restaurants in the United States. "The vision is the same," he said. "If Derek Jeter were traded to another team, he'd still step up to the plate and swing the same way." Per Se will follow the French Laundry format of serving the same prix fixe tasting menu at seven dinners and three lunches a week, with each meal requiring about three hours to consume. Mr. Takayama will offer an easier entry point to the full-price Takayama experience, setting aside space for a small sake bar with its own menu.

Mr. Kunz, with an eye on Vienna, Budapest and Prague, said he had in mind a brasserie where customers could come at any time of day. He has a strategy, too. "My target is to get the secretaries upstairs, and hope their bosses will follow," he said.

Alone and apart, Asiate, a French-Japanese fusion restaurant priced somewhere between the fourth- and third-floor atrium restaurants, has a few months' head start to make an impression on the city's diners. The Mandarin Oriental has placed its faith in Noriyuki Sugie, a young Japanese chef who honed his talents at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago.

He is aiming high, and it is clear that the hotel wants its restaurant to be regarded as an equal to the glamour restaurants in the building next door. Rudy Tauscher, the Mandarin Oriental's general manager, said, "We don't want to be a destination for the views"

Unlike Mr. Sugie, Mr. Tauscher knows the neighborhood. He was the general manager at the nearby Trump International Hotel and Tower for five years. (The building houses Jean Georges.) He has a few memories that make him smile when people ask why he thinks Columbus Circle could ever be a dining destination.

"Everyone asked, how can you open a restaurant on that side of the park?" he recalled. "There's nothing there." Somehow, diners managed to find their way. "This part of the West Side will reinvent itself, and you'll see a repositioning over the next few years," Mr. Tauscher said. "This is going to be quite a lively spot."

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Originally posted by atkinson1

Why does it say at (http://www.emporis.info/en/wm/bu/?id=100370) that they are only 55 storeys?

They are really 55 stories but others advertise them as 80 stories as a real estate marketing scheme mainly to sell the upper floor apartment/condos in the tower.

Originally posted by savethewtc

Here are two pics that were posted at WNY by ZippyTheChimp:

http://www.pbase.com/image/22399015.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/22399097.jpg

Notice how it looks different depending on the weather. \\ WHOA!!!!

:omg:

^^ I think that explains this building. It is amazing. What a building should be, awsome, stunning, well rounded, tall, all inclusive. I love it. :cool:

NYC should be proud of this fine building!

:guns1:

More pictures from November 2003 from skyscrapers.com:

Time Warner Center North Tower:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230371.jpg

Mandarin Oriental Hotel entrance:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230978.jpg

Mandarin Hotel logo illuminated:

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The chandelier inside Mandarin Oriental lobby:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230981.jpg

View to Southwest:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230844.jpg

Originally posted by 3tmk

actually I saw Columbus Circle under reparations, is it part of the Tower's deal with the city, or is it Hearst Tower's deal to renovate the subway station, or just the city doing something nice?

This is what'll be built at Columbus Circle as well...

http://www.machado-silvetti.com/projects/all/columbus2/68_columbus2-1.jpg

More info:

http://www.machado-silvetti.com/projects/all/columbus2/main.html

I'm from Hong Kong and I live in Angeles, but i was lucky enuf this past summer to c the center myself. I think it looks a lot better in real life then in pictures...

Not bad. Not bad at all. Of course, it's in the ritziest part of town, so it has to be good. ;)

The Time Warner Center was featured on the cover of the Daily News today along with an article about the center.

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Daily News

Meet city's plush new megaplex
$42M for a slice of luxury living

By WILLIAM SHERMAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Photos above and below show the inside of one luxury unit in colossal new Columbus Circle development.

It's almost done. Finally.

The Time Warner Center is something to behold, inside and out, from the $42.5 million apartment to the digital fingerprint scanners in tenants' elevators, to the parallelogram of two blue glass towers looming 750 feet over Central Park.

The apartment, with its incredible to-die-for views of Manhattan (see story, opposite page) is only part of the story. After more than 17 years of dueling plans, power politics, high-wire financing and construction gambles, the massive $1.75 billion development at Columbus Circle will fully open to the public in three weeks.

It is the most ambitious and expensive building project in the city's history, rivaling Rockefeller Center and forever altering the skyline of the West Side.

"It is the biggest single building in America, and the most complex," said Stephen Ross, chairman of the Related Companies, the lead developer.

The 80-story building includes more than 50 stores, 195 condominiums, Time Warner's 864,000 square feet of broadcast facilities and corporate headquarters, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 1 million square feet of other office space, seven restaurants, a Whole Foods market and an Equinox health club.

Jazz at Lincoln Center, with its concert hall and other performance sites, occupies the fifth and sixth floors of the north tower. It will open this fall.

With all that, 73 elevators will serve the complex, which is so vast it has six addresses.

But except for the jazz center and some retailers, the center is mostly for the wealthy - in many cases, the extraordinarily wealthy.

Singer Ricky Martin bought a condo there for $7 million. The least expensive flat is a small two-bedroom affair with a tiny kitchen. It costs $2.36 million.

Like all the condos, which start on the 52nd floor, it does have magnificent views, although this lesser-priced apartment looks west, over New Jersey.

More money buys more space, and the desirable views overlooking Central Park.

A 12,000-square-foot penthouse duplex costing $42.5 million is the most expensive condo ever sold in the city. Hotel services will be available to the 66 condo owners in the north tower.

And the hotel is top-of-the-line as well. Room rates at the opulent Mandarin range from $595 to $12,595 a night for the 2,230-square-foot Presidential Suite.

That suite features a Steinway baby grand piano in the living room, a 62-inch flat panel TV with surround sound, onyx bathroom walls, antique Chinese rugs and other artifacts.

One of the center's restaurants is Thomas Keller's Per Se, offering French-inspired California cuisine.

"An average dinner check per person at Per Se will be $250 for food and wine," said Ken Himmel of the Related Companies.

Since the Coliseum was declared obsolete and the site became available in 1986, every major developer has sought to build there. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owned the land, solicited proposals and bids.

But over the next eight years, wrangling among community groups, developers, the MTA and politicians, coupled with the devastating recession of the early ‘90s, stymied various plans.

In 1996, the MTA and the city again offered the site. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the MTA insisted the developers include a cultural component, 59th St. subway station improvements and towers no taller than 750 feet. It also had to be a mixed-use project.

"Then came the real challenges," Ross said. "The financing, how to get the biggest construction loan of all time — $1.3 billion."

They got the money from General Motors Acceptance Corp., and with a design by David Childs of Skidmore, Owens and Merrill, they were off and running.

"We have a city within a city, an extraordinary stack of systems woven together that will be a magnet for that corner of Central Park, which was dead for a long time," said Childs, who was later brought in to work with Daniel Libeskind on the World Trade Center reconstruction project.

Construction on the Time Warner Center began in July 2000.

"We were doing a million dollars of construction a day, hundreds of trucks, and in the towers, we were pouring a floor of concrete every two days," said Steven Sommer, senior vice president of Bovis Lend Lease, the project's construction company.

Two men died on the job, and a four-alarm fire destroyed the Jazz Center, causing more than $8 million worth of damage. The venue had to be rebuilt.

"Two weeks after we offered the condos for sale, 9/11 happened and the sales, which started out red hot, cooled down a lot," said William Mack, founder of Apollo Real Estate Advisors, a co-developer.

Still, the project came in with no major cost overruns.

About 95% of the retail space is leased, the Mandarin is open, and most of the office space is rented. But the project is not yet a financial success.

"We sold $575 million worth of apartments, but we have $500 million left to sell. They're the larger ones, the last to go," said Ross.

Expensive, but empty nest

The apartment has no closets, no kitchen, no bathroom, not even a finished floor, yet it sold for $42.5 million, the highest price ever paid for a dwelling in New York City.

The buyer has been identified as financier David Martinez, 46, CEO and director of Fintech Advisory Ltd., a London-based firm that deals in the debt of underdeveloped nations and troubled companies.

His new home is 12,000 square feet, taking up a full floor and a third at the Time Warner Center, on the 76th floor.

The duplex features 360-degree views of Manhattan from high above Columbus Circle and was bought as "raw," or completely empty, unfinished space.

Closing costs were $2.5 million; monthly fees will be $30,000.

Martinez, who is virtually unknown amongst this city's power elite, will spend another $4 million minimum to finish his apartment, according to those familiar with the deal.

The Mexican-born financier has hired renowned interior designer Peter Marino to fit out the apartment, according to sources. The apartment features a full-floor, wraparound, glass-enclosed terrace, which is completed.

Marino declined comment on his plans. Construction work has begun on the apartment.

The Corcoran Group was the broker for the sale. "We are very proud of the deal," said Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman. She declined to comment further on Martinez but said the sale worked out to $3,541 per square foot at a time when "$3,000 is a peak number."

Martinez's company has a Manhattan office on Park Ave. He did not return calls.

Details of construction

Site: 3.5 acres

Cost of land: $345 million

Cost of construction: $1.75 billion

Cost of individual tenant finishes: $425 million

Height: 750 feet

Interior space: 2.8 million square feet

Steel used: 27,000 tons

Concrete used: 109,000 cubic yards

Windows: 900,000 square feet

Construction workers on project: 3,500

Number of elevators: 73

Number of retail stores: 50

Most expensive condo: $42.5 million, 12,000-square-foot penthouse; $30,000 monthly fee.

Cheapest condo: $2.36 million, 1,287-square-foot two-bedroom; $2,800 monthly fee.

Most expensive hotel room: $12,595 per night

Cheapest hotel room: $595 per night

Redesign and development of Columbus Circle: $25 million

Architect: David Childs, Skidmore Owings & Merrill

Developers: The Related Companies L.P., Apollo Real Esate Advisors, L.P., Time Warner Inc.

Builder: Bovis Lend Lease LMB Inc.

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NY1

Time Warner's New Columbus Circle Headquarters Opening

http://www.ny1.com/Content/images/live/57/112401.jpg

FEBRUARY 03RD, 2004

After years of planning, politicking and high price tags, Time Warner's new Columbus Circle headquarters finally opens this week. NY1's Jill Scott takes a look inside one of the biggest building projects in the city in years.

Eighty stories, 40 stores, five gourmet restaurants and two state-of-the-art broadcast centers, all under one roof.

“I think it’s the renaissance for the west side of New York,” said Ken Himmel of Related Urban Development.

The Time Warner Center is finally opening for business, and that's big business for the Upper West Side.

“It’s the gateway to the Upper West Side,” said Himmel. “It’s the connection from Lincoln Center to Carnegie Hall and Broadway. It’s a project that’s alive day and night. It’s open until 1 and 2 in the morning. It’s alive and it’s beaming to New York City.”

This $2 billion project is home to a kaleidoscope of corporate, retail and residential components. The building opens to the public on Thursday, but NY1 got a sneak peak.

The retail area known as the Shops at Columbus Circle is a seven-floor 500,000-square-foot space that includes entertainment venues, Equinox Fitness, gourmet restaurants and plenty of shopping.

From Borders and Sephora to Whole Foods and Godiva, this neighborhood will definitely enjoy some new flavor.

“I think it’s going to be tremendously convenient,” said local resident Linda Brodsky. “I think it’s really going to change this little area. This has been a blank spot in the city. I think it’s gorgeous to look at and a wonderful addition.”

But it's not all fun and games. There is also close to 2 million square feet of office space. Part of the building will serve as the headquarters of NY1's parent company, Time Warner.

“It’s a great accomplishment for the company and for the developer,” said Philip Pitruzzello, Time Warner's vice president of real estate. “This space will be incredibly useful for people. As you look around you see that there is lot’s of natural light. It will be a terrific work environment for employees and a valuable contribution to the city of New York.”

The company will house 1,600 employees over 17 floors. That includes a new state-of-the-art newsroom for CNN and CNNfn.

With the retail space and the fabulous restaurants you may never want to leave, and if you have anywhere from $2 million to $30 million, you don't have to. The building also boasts more than 200 luxurious apartments.

Aside from offering luxury, convenience and accessibility, perhaps the greatest thing this building has to offer is jobs.

“For the community and for New Yorkers, it means jobs. It's around 2,000 jobs in total including the hotel and Whole Foods and Equinox and the boutique and the restaurants,” said Councilwoman Gale Brewer.

So whether the Time Warner Center is for work or play, after eight years in the making, you could say it's about time.

-Jill Scott


Also, here's another image from the NY Times:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/02/04/nyregion/TIME.184.2.jpg
Time Warner Center at 10 Columbus Circle, 60th Street and Broadway, was designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

AFP

Time Warner opens grand new headquarters on Central Park

NEW YORK (AFP) - Media giant Time Warner opened its 1.7 billion dollar headquarters, an ambitious complex overlooking New York's Central Park and aimed at becoming a "cultural and lifestyle destination."

The Time Warner Center was inaugurated Wednesday after four years of construction in a black-tie soiree hosted by New York state governor George Pataki and other dignitaries.

"The Time Warner Center is both a showcase and a workplace," Time Warner chairman and chief executive Richard Parsons said in a statement.

"A blend of architectural elegance and hi-tech practicality, it brings together the style of the world's greatest city with the unmatched creative energies of the world's premier media and entertainment company.

"New York now has a landmark structure worthy of its status as an international capital, and Time Warner has a headquarters that reaffirms its commitment to the continuing vitality of New York."

The complex of 260,000 square meters (2.8 million square feet) includes twin towers of 55 stories on Columbus Circle.

It includes 40 luxury retail stores, five restaurants, some 200 apartments -- the most expensive of which sold for 45 million dollars -- a sports club and a jazz center affiliated with the adjacent Lincoln Center performing arts district.

William Mack, a development partner and a co-founder and managing partner of Apollo Real Estate Advisors, said, "The successful completion of this project is testament to the continued vitality of New York and to the future of the city's newest cultural and lifestyle destination.

"We are confident that the success of this project will continue to draw the attention and support of the world's business, retail and residential communities for years to come."

The headquarters of the world's biggest media-entertainment group includes office and studio space as well as production and broadcast facilities for live transmission of CNN and CNNfn.

It also includes the 251-room he Mandarin Oriental hotel, commercial office space, and a 504-car parking facility

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20040204/capt.nyr11002042253.time_warner_center_nyr110.jpg
The twin 750-foot glass-walled skyscrapers of the new Time Warner Center rise 80 stories above New York's Columbus Circle, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004. The center, which opens Feb. 5, 2004, will house Time Warner corporate headquarters, CNN studios, two theaters for Jazz at Lincoln Center, hundreds of shops and restaurants and 225 private condominium apartments as well as the 54-story hotel. This photo was taken from Trump International Hotel and Tower. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20040204/capt.nyr10102041409.time_warner_center_nyr101.jpg
The twin 750-foot glass-walled skyscrapers of the new Time Warner Center rises 80 stories above New York's Columbus Circle, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004. The center, which opens Feb. 5, 2004, will house Time Warner corporate headquarters, CNN studios, two theaters for Jazz at Lincoln Center, hundreds of shops and restaurants and 225 private condominium apartments as well as the 54-story hotel. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer). (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20040205/capt.sge.hsn58.050204210737.photo00.default-261x392.jpg
The Time Warner Center, seen from Central Park in New York City. The center which officially opened today is comprised of 2.8 million square feet and includes 350,000 sq. feet of retail, a restaurant and entertainment complex(AFP/Getty Images/Stephen Chernin)

http://www.newsday.com/media/photo/2004-02/11272801.jpg

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NY POST

TIME BLDG. SMOKIN'

By BRADEN KEIL, TATIANA DELIGIANNAKIS and BRIDGET HARRISON

February 22, 2004 -- Call it the curse of the Time Warner Building.
The latest in a long line of tribulations to plague the $1.7 billion Columbus Circle complex hit yesterday, when an electrical fire swept through the kitchen of chef Thomas Keller's Per Se restaurant, closing the swanky eatery just five days after it opened.

The sudden afternoon blaze devastated the kitchen and caused smoke and water damage in the dining area of the multimillion-dollar eatery, which already has a monthlong reservations list.

Per Se's general manger yesterday said diners were called and told to stay home, while the fire damage was still being assessed in the out-of-luck restaurant.

"We are not opening tonight and we probably won't be open tomorrow night either, said manager Laura Cunningham yesterday. "We're just looking at the damage now."

Cunningham said she wouldn't speculate if the eatery would be open next week.

Deputy Fire Chief Mark Cuccurullo said the 4:35 p.m. fire started in wiring in the walls in the floor below Per Se, which is due to house new Time Warner Inc. offices and CNN studios.

Witnesses said there was a strong smell of smoke coming from the new studios. CNN did not return calls for comment last night.

Firefighters were forced to break down Per Se's kitchen walls to examine the wiring. A firefighter broke his finger in the process. No one else was injured because only a few restaurant employees were present when the blaze sparked.

The new restaurant is located on the fourth floor of a five-story mall in the building - where construction began in 2000.

Water poured out onto the floors below and cascaded into a new Solstice eyeglass store situated directly under the restaurant.

Per Se is the sister restaurant to Keller's tony eatery, The French Laundry, in Napa Valley, Calif.

Per Se opened with a celebrity-packed Feb. 4 gala attended by such boldface names as Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Pataki, Cindy Crawford and Calvin Klein.

The fire follows another strange blaze that broke out in the new 54-story towers in April during a snowstorm.

In May 2002, tons of steel fell six stories to the sidewalk when a sling on a crane snapped. That followed a 2000 collapse of concrete building material that trapped two workers.

The worst incident came in September 2002, when a construction worker was killed when he was hit by a 12-foot board that blew off the building while he ate pizza in front of the site.

"It's almost as if there is a ghost that possessed the place. I hope that nothing else happens," said Barbara Goldberg, 36, who turned up to check out Per Se yesterday but was turned away.

Can i just say that these towers are unreal- 10/10 for sure!

cool scrapers

The Twin Towers live on as the AOL Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle... sigh. I still think they'd beat the Freedumb tower anyday.

Note: I use the name AOL-TWC; it just sounds better.

NY Post

SOUND & FURY AT TW CENTER

March 7, 2004 -- The ritzy Time Warner towers have created a new "buzz" - and it's not the word-of-mouth kind.

Some well-heeled residents at the southwest corner of Central Park claim the buzz - a constant, high-pitched hum torturing residents in the area - is due in part to the new structure.

"It's very possible the face of the Time Warner building is causing the sound to be reflected around the neighborhood," said Alan Fierstein, owner of Acoustilog, a consulting firm specializing in city noise and soundproofing.

"Without any fault of the Time Warner company, the noise level has gone from acceptable to unacceptable."

One resident, Rob, who asked that his last name not be revealed, said he's lived on 57th Street for 10 years but began hearing the noise only this year, when the 80-story twin-tower structure opened.

"Now it's all I hear," he said. "It's worse at night when the traffic is gone."

Some believe the sound is just regular street noise - perhaps amplified by the new behemoth. Others think it is created by wind coming into contact with the new building, much like a whistle that was attributed to the West 56th Street Cityspire tower 15 years ago. The owners of that building made modifications to silence the noise.

Fierstein believes the offending tone is emanating from an air-conditioning unit on top of the 1775 Broadway building, which houses Newsweek magazine. He compared the noise to "someone playing one note on a clarinet all day every day."

Fierstein measured the level of the tone in an apartment unit at 1 Columbus Circle, across the street from the building, and found the sound violated the city's noise ordinance.

Rosemary Vodner, who lives at 1 Columbus Circle, has bought a "white-noise" machine to drown out the sound.

"It will drive you crazy," she said.

When asked if anyone had complained about the noises from the unit, building management at 1775 Broadway said it was nothing The Post should be interested in and hung up the phone.

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news03070421.jpg
HUM BUGGING: Noise expert Alan Fierstein measures the "hum" that's been grating residents around the Time Warner Center. He suspects noise from an air-conditioning unit is echoing off the towers.

Various pics I found on the net:

http://cloudtravel.typepad.com/photos/time_warner_center/entrance.jpg

http://cloudtravel.typepad.com/photos/time_warner_center/sidewalk_approach.jpg

http://cloudtravel.typepad.com/photos/time_warner_center/time_warner.jpg

By John Slaughter found at skyscrapers.com:

http://www.emporis.co.uk/files/transfer/6/2004/02/247176.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0029.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0071.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0092.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0088.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0080.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0081.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0079.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0077.jpg

http://amysrobot.com/files/twc/big/DSCF0065.jpg

really nice photos :) nice.... nice i wonder if it will look better in summer

Cool! :cool:

Tribune Business News

Developer of New York City Vertical Mall Hopes to Meet Expectations

By Joan Verdon, The Record, Hackensack, N.J. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Mar. 21 - When Kenneth Himmel set out to create a shopping mall in Manhattan, his direction was clear. "I had to go up. I had no choice," he said.

He stacked the shops at the Time Warner Center around a four-story-tall atrium, and put a fifth shopping floor below ground.

Now the retail world is watching to see if New York's newest vertical mall can woo Manhattan shoppers -- who like their storefronts at street level -- to new heights.

"The trick in vertical retailing is getting people to go up," said Himmel, president and CEO of Related Urban Development, the retail partner in the $1.7 billion Time Warner complex.

"Getting people to go up" sounds simple enough, but other New York developers have struggled to make multistory malls work.

The Citicorp Center on Lexington Avenue, Manhattan Mall at Herald Square, and the retail atrium at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue all opened with much fanfare, but failed to live up to developers' lofty expectations.

Even some two-story suburban malls have trouble drawing crowds to the second level, said retail consultant Arthur Weiner. "Traditionally, the second floor is not as productive as the first floor," he said.

"Historically, it's a really hard issue," said Paco Underhill, a respected "retail anthropologist" and author of "Why We Buy" and "Call of The Mall."

"Just look at the department stores," he said. "They always have the greatest amount of traffic on the first floor."

Part of the reason, experts say, is that old-style malls were designed to compel shoppers to walk past as many stores as possible. Using the same strategy as grocers who place the milk in the back of the supermarket, mall architects put as much distance as possible between escalators and elevators.

But today's customers demand quick access to their stores. So new-style malls are designed to let shoppers take an escalator or parking deck directly to their destination store.

The four-story Palisades Center in West Nyack, N.Y., which opened in 1998, was designed to get shoppers to travel up and down. It has a five-level parking deck, exterior parking lots linked to all four levels of the mall, and eight separate "vertical transportation pods" -- escalator and elevator banks -- inside the shopping center.

"It's interesting to see how people shop our mall. They start on one side, and they zig and zag their way up and down the mall," said Palisades Center manager John Mott.

"The old approach used to be to make shoppers walk through the entire lower level of the mall, then go upstairs and walk the entire second level. And how do you know somebody's going to walk all that distance? What we have are four pretty compact rectangles that are pretty easy to walk."

Still, when Palisades Center was being designed and developed in the early 1990s, some tenants were a bit nervous about being on the third or fourth floors of a suburban mall. The solution? "We put the food court on the third floor; the restaurants and theaters, on the fourth," Mott said.

Himmel used a similar strategy at Time Warner. He's placed five upscale restaurants, headed by celebrity chefs, on the third and fourth floors, and given New Yorkers hungry for suburban-sized supermarkets a 60,000-square-foot Whole Foods store in the basement.

Himmel helped invent vertical mall retailing in 1976 by developing Chicago's Water Tower, eight floors of upscale retailing on Michigan Avenue. He's also been involved in the creation of other mixed use, retail, residential, and entertainment complexes like Boston's Copley Place and Pacific Place in Seattle.

"Very few people do this the right way," he said. "It's part art, part science. It takes a lot of time to get it right."

The secret to vertical retailing, he said, is realizing "it's all about sight lines," and letting people see that the upper floors are worth a visit. To make the Time Warner retail space work, "we had to open it up, make it open to Columbus Circle and this sweeping view of Central Park."

One side of the atrium tower is a 150-foot-high glass window that now overlooks construction machinery, but will eventually offer the city's best view of the $30 million renovation of the Columbus Circle sculpture.

The top two floors will eventually house upscale restaurants, trendy bars, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center performance space. Five of the nation's top celebrity chefs, Gray Kunz, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Masa Takayama, Charlie Trotter, and Thomas Keller, have opened or will soon open upscale restaurants there. On the fourth floor, celebrity barkeep Rande Gerber is already serving apple martinis and finger foods in his Stone Rose bar and lounge.

As each new restaurant opens, Himmel said, "people will be driven up more and more."

Weiner agreed: "That will force people up. You're not going to pull them up with Denny's."

One floor below street level, the Whole Foods store has been the center's biggest hit thus far. Whole Foods has had to place crowd control staff at the entrance, and on weekends shoppers often have to wait in line for a chance to enter. CEO John Mackey told shareholders last month that he expects the Time Warner store "will quickly become our top-volume store."

In between the basement and the top floors, Himmel and his partners have placed a mixed bag of retailers. There are suburban mall staples like Godiva Chocolates, Borders books, Sephora, J. Crew, and Williams-Sonoma interspersed with luxury tenants like Locke, a store that sells loose diamonds, and the first store of menswear designer Joseph Abboud.

"The one thing I didn't want to do was create a luxury center where there wasn't a lot of traffic and action," Himmel said. "In a luxury store, you can have 12 customers a day and make your numbers. I want 400 customers a day. It's more action, more fun, more exciting."

The center has been drawing crowds since its black-tie opening in February. On a recent Sunday, every table in the café section of Whole Foods, and in the Dean & DeLuca coffee shop at the Borders store, was filled. But at most stores, visitors appeared to be doing more browsing than buying.

Nick and Mary Ellen Rosato of East Hampton, N.Y., said they were "just killing time" at the mall before heading for an afternoon performance of "Hairspray." The mall, Mary Ellen said, is beautiful, but she probably would not make a special trip to shop there.

The stores at Time Warner should benefit from the office workers and apartment dwellers who move into the complex after the Time Warner headquarters and the luxury condominiums open, retail experts said.

"You'll have a built-in population that will arrive at the mall either by escalator or elevator," Underhill said.

"Let's face it, lots of us would love having a Whole Foods store we could ride to in an elevator."

To make the stores succeed, Weiner said, the mall needs to establish an identity, and a tenant list, that will draw repeat shoppers.

"The question will be, once everybody's had a look at it, what are they coming back for?" he said.

Emanuel Stern, president of Hartz Mountain Industries, developer of the Hartz mixed use retail and office property in the Meadowlands, was among the New Yorkers who visited the Time Warner mall after it opened. He was impressed.

"I think what they've done in terms of putting the celebrity restaurants on top of that vertical environment is very impressive," Stern said. While other vertical malls have not been successful in Manhattan, he said, "these guys have built a different mousetrap."

THE SKINNY ON THE MALL:

Name: The Shops at Columbus Circle

Location: Time Warner Center, 59th Street and Columbus Circle, New York City

Retail space: 350,000 square feet of store and restaurant space.

Top tenants: Five celebrity chef restaurants; Whole Foods (largest supermarket in the city); Williams-Sonoma, Borders, Joseph Abboud

Neighbors: Mandarin Oriental hotel, Time Warner World Headquarters, Jazz at Lincoln Center; 201 luxury condominiums

More crazy stuff happening at the TWC yesterday...

NY Times

High Winds Blow Metal Sheets Off Skyscraper

By THOMAS J. LUECK

Published: April 5, 2004

Wind gusts shot through Manhattan yesterday, sending construction material tumbling from an upper floor of the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle and posing the threat of debris falling from buildings across the city.

The winds peaked between 5:45 and 6 p.m., according to the National Weather Service, with top gusts of 34 miles per hour recorded in Central Park and 46 miles per hour at Newark Liberty International Airport. The Weather Service predicted even higher winds today.

Because of the wind-tunnel effect created by skyscrapers, the threat of damage appeared most severe in Manhattan, particularly at the huge, nearly completed Time Warner Center, where gusts have taken a toll in the past.

The police and fire officials said that about 5:30 p.m., two pieces of sheet metal, about 6 inches wide and 18 to 24 inches long, fell from a 76th-floor section that remains under construction at 58th Street and Eighth Avenue. No one was injured. But Fire Chief Jim Hodgens, who was on the scene last night, said one piece of the falling debris had "narrowly missed" a pedestrian before landing on the sidewalk in front of the shopping center at the base of the complex, which was filled with shoppers. The other piece fell to the sidewalk on the 58th Street side of the building.

Ilyse Fink, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Buildings, said two violation notices had been issued against the building. One of the violations was for failing to secure or clean up debris that had been left in the construction area on the 76th floor, and the other was for failing to safeguard the public.

The center is being built by Columbus Center L.L.C., a consortium including the Related Companies. Officials of the consortium could not be reached last night.

The project has been the site of wind-gust accidents in the past. In the worst, a piece of plywood blew off the 45th floor on Sept. 11, 2002, and struck a 36-year-old construction worker in the head. The worker, who had been eating lunch on a bench on the 58th Street side, died a short time later.

"Everything up there is secured now," Chief Hodgens said last night after the entrance to the mall was closed for an hour, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., and a section of 58th Street near the accident scene was closed to traffic.

Larry Cesnik, a market researcher who lives across 58th Street from the complex, said the near miss yesterday was a reminder of how dangerous wind gusts can be at the southwest corner of Central Park.

"Of course, I'm concerned about things falling, especially with all the wind right here," he said. "I'll look up from now, that's for sure."

A wind-related accident was averted on Fifth Avenue, the police said, when firefighters removed two pieces of plywood that had been blown by the wind and were hanging from the side of the building at 172 Fifth Avenue, at 22nd Street.

Jeff Tongue, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said gusts were likely to roar through Manhattan again today and tomorrow.

"In general, people walking at ground level should be O.K., '' he said. "It's when you get high up, the wind funnels create problems."

NY1

Construction Resumes At Time Warner Center

http://www.ny1.com/Content/images/live/60/119011.JPG

APRIL 07TH, 2004


Construction at the Time Warner Center resumed Wednesday after being halted when metal debris came crashing down onto Columbus Circle.

The Department of Buildings lifted a stop-work order at the site Tuesday after the building's management company agreed to a new set of safety guidelines, including ensuring that all windows are secure each day and that no construction material is left unsecured on exposed roof areas. There will also be a final Friday inspection to make sure everything is OK before the weekend.

A metal object from an unoccupied apartment fell from an open window when winds picked up on Sunday, narrowly missing someone walking on the street.

Time Warner, NY1’s parent company, is a primary tenant of the building.

Beautiful! Perfectly crystalline:)

Don't walk by without a hardhat. Is it just me or does anyone else always walk on the outside of the sidewalk for fear of falling debris, be it icicles, air conditioners (don't laugh, I've seen it happen), water dripping from said air conditioners in summer, suicidal people, and now we have pieces of the TWC. Scary city we live in.

It really has only 55 but they say it's 80 stories as a way of marketing in real estate.

Just like when Trump said Trump World Tower had 90 stories but really has 72.

It's being called the "Trump Math." ;)

What is the formula for Trump Math?

What is the formula for Trump Math?

It has to do with the height of the ceilings. Here's an explanation from Trump World Tower's architect, Costas Kondylis from the architect's site:

"The Trump Tower has 72 floors, many with 16 foot ceilings, owing to the fact that its height is equivalent to that of a regular 90 story building, typically built with 8 foot ceilings."

Very different:) The crowns are magnificent.

Pictures taken in April, from s.com...

Look at the sharp angles!

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/500/2404twcsharpangles.jpg

Taken April 5th, they look so fake in this pic, don't they?!

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/500/2404twcskylinelooksfake.jpg

I thought you pasted that one.^^

I saw this picture on The City Review (http://www.thecityreview.com/cps/timwarnr.html) and had a good laugh. This sign appeared on top of Trump International Hotel taunting the neighboring Time Warner Center shortly before its opening. :lol:

http://www.thecityreview.com/cps/trumpin3.jpg

I saw this picture on The City Review (http://www.thecityreview.com/cps/timwarnr.html) and had a good laugh. This sign appeared on top of Trump International Hotel taunting the neighboring Time Warner Center shortly before its opening. :lol:

http://www.thecityreview.com/cps/trumpin3.jpg

More and more, I love that man. In a plantonic and admiring sense, of course.

However, it feels good to have twin towers reappear on the skyline.

Two shots I found of them:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3177/2404twcskyline.jpg

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/3177/2404twcstreet.jpg

Nice buildings!!!

One of the best ideals of a mixed use project in the WORLD!!! (I THINK), I mean the tower themself are amazing by themself but a luxury hotel, condos, a mall and jazz center is just cool!!

Time Warner Center photos:

Bluejake (http://www.bluejake.com/archives/2004/02/22/time_warner_center.php)
cloudtravel (http://cloudtravel.typepad.com/photos/time_warner_center/)
Emporis (http://www.emporis.com/en/il/pc/?id=100025&aid=23&sro=1)
EverythingNY (http://www.everythingny.com/archives/000908.html)

TWC's ability to change color:

http://www.pbase.com/image/25890858/large.jpg

(found at pbase)

:eek:

http://www.pbase.com/image/30331653/original.jpg

Great Towers Guys!!! When where they build?

Great Towers Guys!!! When where they build?They were built between 2000 and 2004, and opened in February.

Awesome pictures! They sure do leave a good mark on the skyline:)

New York Times
June 24, 2004

BLOCKS

Amid All the Signs, Confusing a Circle for the Square

By DAVID DUNLAP

Columbus Circle isn't Times Square.

That has been the mantra of city planners during the development of the Time Warner Center. By late last week, though, with all the signage around the base of the building, it was getting harder to tell the difference between circle and square.

Besides the store logos that already fill several third- and fourth-story windows (Sephora, J. Crew, A/X Armani Exchange, Bose), and the recent appearance of giant Time Warner and CNN letters at the base of the building's glass prow on West 58th Street, an enormous new banner suddenly obscured one of the center's distinguishing architectural features: the virtually transparent cable-net glass wall framing the central atrium.

The banner, about 60 feet by 45 feet, proclaimed, "Samsung Welcomes the Olympic Flame to New York," heralding its arrival last Saturday. It is true that the banner was up for only a few days. And the image was a torch-bearing athlete, not a cellphone or television. But the only name to appear twice was Samsung.

To all intents and purposes, in other words, it was a billboard.

That is not how Kenneth A. Himmel sees it. He is the president and chief executive of Related Urban Development and the partner in the Time Warner Center project who is responsible for the retail space. Mr. Himmel said the banner reflected the unusual circumstance of New York City's pursuit of the 2012 Olympics and added that such displays would be "very infrequent."

"Is that going to be a normal policy of ours to put something like that up?" Mr. Himmel said. "The answer is no. We would do that only for very special circumstances, under a citywide event, for something the city was sponsoring."

As for those corporate displays in the upper windows of the building's base, Mr. Himmel explained that they masked the stores' back-of-the-house space: windowless areas used for offices, storage or dressing rooms. The signs also provide an identity for stores that otherwise have little or no exposure on the street.

What sets them apart from standard signs, Mr. Himmel said, is that they are recessed four feet behind the glass, making them less obtrusive. "You can argue whether you think it's subtle or not," he said, "but it certainly allows for less commercial signage because it's set back from the window significantly."

And it turns out that there may be a beacon of hope for New Yorkers who like to travel in less commercial circles.

For years, Time Warner has been trying to devise a display to fill the building's empty glass prow, an architectural feature nearly 150 feet high created by the tapering intersection of the curved facade and the straight-edged 58th Street facade. As its thinking evolved, the corporation even considered using that space, which is almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty (without her pedestal), to show some of its many brands.

Finally, it has settled on an architectural sculpture made of rectangular translucent polycarbonate panels alternating with horizontal steel bars, arrayed along a slender spine in a 12-part composition that is meant to conjure the 12 hours on a clock, the 12 months of the year and the 12 notes of the chromatic scale in Western music.

In the day, the sculpture will stand for itself. At night, the internally illuminated elements will change in hue, saturation and intensity, creating abstract imagery and patterns. The company might use the sculpture from time to time to promote special events.

Otherwise, it will be a "peaceful end point," said Philip Pitruzzello, vice president for real estate projects at Time Warner. "Something very slow will be going on. You can think of tai chi - slow, meditative motion using light."

Installation of the sculpture is to begin in late summer or early fall.

"We are very pleased that they moved in that direction," said Richard Barth, executive director of the City Planning Department. "We did not see this as a place where there should be flashing commercial signage."

But the feeling that private interests are dominating the circle was reinforced Friday when a photographer for The New York Times, Nancy Siesel, was taking pictures for this column. Although she was on the sidewalk in front of the Time Warner Center, she said two security guards, neither of whom would identify himself, insisted that she stop.

"You're not allowed to photograph the structure of the building," Ms. Siesel quoted the first guard as telling her. She showed them her press identification card, issued by the Police Department, and insisted that she was within her rights to photograph a building from the public way on assignment. But she said the second guard told her, "If you persist, I'm going to call the police." Pressed, he backed down from this threat.

Though unfamiliar with the particulars of the encounter, Mr. Himmel said, "If someone on our security force stopped a photographer from a newspaper from photographing the building, they probably overstepped."

"There should be no restrictions in terms of the public's ability to photograph the building from the outside," he said, "because it's a public space."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

The sculpture sounds like a good addition. Security is all over the center, it makes you uneasy taking pictures, especially inside.

Here's two more skyline pictures found at pbase:

http://www.pbase.com/image/30098180/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/30098173large.jpg

NY POST

TIME WARNER CENTER'S HIT TOP PRICES, BUT IT'S NOT SOLD OUT

By ANNE BECKER

July 24, 2004 -- Five months ago, 5,000 guests celebrated the opening night of the $1.7 billion Time Warner Center.

Boldface names from Governor George Pataki to showgirl Elizabeth Berkeley clinked glasses. Kevin Bacon and Calvin Klein prowled the fourth floor, where world-renowned chefs Thomas Keller and Masa Takayama offered tastings from their new restaurants.

The gossip was about a London financier who had thrown down a record $45 million for a 12,500-square-foot penthouse on the 76th and 77th floors. It was the buzzed-about real estate event of the year.

But don't worry if you missed it. While Time Warner Center might have seemed like the city's hottest destination, there's still time to move in.

"I would've thought it would be sold out by now," says Jonathan Miller of leading New York real estate appraiser Miller Samuel.

"With its location and views, I would've expected it to be sold out in a year and a half, and it's been three," he says. "This isn't inconsistent with other projects we've seen lately, but it's not fast."

Five of the units left are in the Mandarin Oriental, the 65-unit northern tower that's said to have attracted a jazzy, jet-setting group of largely foreign buyers. The remaining 20 are in One Central Park, the southern tower with 135 units overall. Available units run the gamut from a $2 million two-bedroom on the 53rd floor of One Central Park to two full-floor, 8,400-square-foot, $30 million penthouses - one in each tower.

According to The Related Group, the center's sponsor, these remaining units are nothing to worry about.

No other New York residential complex has ever sold $300 million of property in three years. And since sales kicked off in August 2001, there have been six price increases, raising prices for the units about 18 percent. And hey, Ricky Martin lives there.

"The reality ended up being better than the dream for us," says Susan DeFranca, senior vice president at Related. "It's not like we're at 85 percent [sold] because we had to slash prices to unload everything."

One factor affecting the rate of sales has been a crush of recent entrants in the super-luxury market. Trump Park Avenue and One Beacon Court (Beyonc‚'s building) have brought 255 units to the market.

Miller points out that similar buildings like 515 Park, the Chatham and 838 Fifth all sold out within a year in the late 1990s, but at 35 units, 96 units and 10 units respectively, they are all smaller.

Certainly the Time Warner Center has brought up prices in its neighborhood. Since marketing for the project began three years ago, condo prices in the Lincoln Center area have gone up 50 percent. That's compared to just 19.8 percent for Manhattan as a whole, according to Miller Samuel research.

At the same time, the Time Warner Center has taken business away from nearby buildings. "I had two apartments at 2 Central Park West, and a year ago they would've been sold in two months," says the Corcoran Group's Patricia Cliff. "But I must've shown them 50 times, and everyone who came to look ended up buying at Time Warner. It was just like this siphon for the whole neighborhood."

Early buyers at Time Warner, no doubt aware of the price rise, have moved to resell or rent out their units. Douglas Elliman's Michael Shvo currently has a $7.5 million sales listing for a three-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath corner unit in the south building.

The seller purchased early for $5.5 million, and was turning down $7 million offers for the unit within a week of putting it on the market.

"Obviously, there was a tremendous amount of hype around the product, and there's always a slowdown when a building's finished - the hype can't go on forever," Shvo says. "But it's not that the enthusiasm went down. People are very happy there."

Cliff says she currently gets at least three prospective renters calling each day for a $12,500-a-month, 1,400-square-foot one-bedroom facing the park. An $8,000 two-bedroom listed by Bellmarc was just pulled, when the owner decided to stay put.

What residents do get is unencumbered shopping. There are more than 40 upscale stores, known collectively as "The Shops at Columbus Circle," on seven levels. Since the center opened in February, 97 percent of the retail space has been leased, according to Kenneth Himmel, president and CEO of Related Urban Development.

From February to June, combined sales for the center rose every month, averaging $1,200 a square foot. "That's not good - that's spectacular," Himmel says. "I said publicly that I'd be incredibly happy if this project hit $1,000 a square foot."

Foot traffic at those stores is often light. Save for the ridiculous overcrowding at basement behemoth Whole Foods (a recent lunchtime visit was replete with salad-bar elbowing), weekday activity in the shops is slow.

"We're definitely a weekend store," says Conisha Wade, manager at J. Crew. "During the week, we do have some people from CNN who shop on their lunch hour. But traffic's not heavy."

Last Tuesday, Bar Masa - the 39-seat neighbor of ultra-exclusive sushi joint Masa - was seating walk-in customers with no wait. A lone customer sat at the bar as waiters clustered in front of the kitchen. "We're not surprised we're able to seat people really quickly," manager Tommy Todd says. "This is a mall and you have to get New Yorkers to overcome that."

Still, some retail tenants report numbers that reflect Himmel's glowing assessment. Solstice, the upscale sunglasses store on the third floor, consistently posts the biggest profits of all the chain's 40 national outlets, according to assistant manager Chris Bryant.

And there are several new tenants yet to move into the center. Gray Kunz's Caf‚ Gray is scheduled to open Sept. 1, the Bouchon Bakery should open just before Christmas and the new restaurant from steak maven Charlie Trotter is expected to open next spring.

As for the residences, "there are a lot of New Yorkers who don't want condos and shopping downstairs - who want a more discreet experience," says Hall Wilkie, president of luxury broker Brown Harris Stevens. "It appeals to a high-end part of the condo market, and it's a lot of inventory to absorb."

"But they've been getting great prices, it's made such a change to the neighborhood, it's been important to the city. So is it a success? That's an unqualified yes."

Others remain more skeptical about the center. "Look, this was a big building to sell out - when you have 200 apartments to sell, it's kind of hard to have people breaking down the doors and getting into bidding wars," says Cliff, who has sold four apartments in the building and rented two. "Is it a success? It's much too soon to say. The jury's still out."

Those buildings are outstanding.
I specially like the one from central park, that it´s great.
Anyway those byuildings are improving a lot the skyline in that section of town

Awesome pics, savethewtc. The first one you posted towards the top of the page is gorgeous.

I absolutely love the TWC. The reflective glass is beautiful, and it was great to go back home and spot it out in the skyline, even from all the way on the Whitestone and Throg's Neck! It definately makes a wonderful addition. We may end up getting stuck with the Freedom Tower, but at least further uptown, New York has it's own little slice of the twins. :cheers1:

$2 million for a single apartment, $30 million for each penthouse, $12,500 per month for the rents units... of course this complex is having trouble filling itself up. :sly:

By the way, I went inside the place last Wednesday, and the shopping mall was pretty impressive- and clean.

More pictures from November 2003 from skyscrapers.com:

Time Warner Center North Tower:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230371.jpg

Mandarin Oriental Hotel entrance:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230978.jpg

Mandarin Hotel logo illuminated:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230984.jpg

The chandelier inside Mandarin Oriental lobby:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230981.jpg

View to Southwest:

http://www.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2003/11/230844.jpg
Once again, thanks for posting my pics. :)

interestingly enough I couldn't find a thread about these towers in the project section, and since I'm too lazy to open one I'll just post pics here:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/TM4sk/west+side/Copy+of+2004_0822Image0009.JPG
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/TM4sk/west+side/Copy+of+2004_0822Image0011.JPG
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/TM4sk/west+side/Copy+of+2004_0822Image0012.JPG
taken from the 59th street, then on Broadway around the Lincoln center

great pics 3tmk, shows how tall these buildings really are!!

Very good shots 3tmk, the sky worked perfectly with the towers. You picked the right day, it was BEAUTIFUL. :okay:

Outstanding pics 3tmk.
Also thumbs up Jack..(posted in late june)..nice images..

Look's like a really nice spot.

I like them even less than I did when they were proposed. They just look so cheap, banal and totally uninspiring. When I look at this project, it doesn't make me excited about getting into architecture, it makes me want to change my major to history or something.

I like them- simple, clean, modern lines. I love the classics but NYC needs more contemporary stuff. This will blend in well w/those structures to come in the future. Wish they were 20-30 stories more tho

I'm still wondering when they're gonna light up the building at night, I've seen nothing so far.

The time warner center is stunning, they are almost like having small glass wtc twin towers. :)

beautifull twin towers! nice shape from beside the tower(?)

I was inside the Time Warner shopping mall last July, and it was great. Four levels, plenty of stores, and relatively clean and free of litter. The restaurants were a bit expensive, but still good. With all the obvious amenities, it still angers me that local NIMBY's tried to derail these fabulous twin towers.

Columbus Circle is really picking up. Today it looked like the fountain operations thing was completely buried and the ground is at least level again.

I like these a lot.

Seems rather like the Roppongi Hills Tower project in Tokyo which was finished late last year. Both projects are amongst the most expensive buildings ever built - and look it.

Two great shots...

http://www.pbase.com/image/31790895/original.jpg

At night, I'm still waiting for the crowns to be lit...

http://www.pbase.com/brianfj/image/31790898/original.jpg

Another incident at the TWC...

NY Daily News

Death leap at Time Warner tower

BY OREN YANIV and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A Manhattan artist plunged to his death inside the Time Warner Center yesterday, horrifying lunchtime shoppers.

Glenn Moosnick, 35, climbed over a glass railing at the top of the shopping center's grand atrium and swan-dived more than 50 feet, slamming onto the mall floor just after noon, police and witnesses said.

"It was awful. It was horrible," said Jeffrey Savitch, 49, who was on his way to eat lunch in the $1.7 billion, 55-story complex at Columbus Circle.

The forceful impact sent a loud explosion echoing through The Shops at Columbus Circle, and scattered dozens of people.

"People thought a bomb went off. That's how loud it was," said a worker at J.W. Cooper, who was standing a few feet from where Moosnick landed. "He fell right in front of us. It's not something I'll ever forget."

Moosnick, who lived in Hell's Kitchen, had battled schizophrenia, according to relatives who described him as an artist and a caring man.

His suicide was the latest in a string of unsettling incidents at the complex. Two men died during the skyscraper's construction. And in April 2003, a spectacular blaze caused more than $8 million worth of damage.

Originally published on September 28, 2004

Can you find the TWC? :D

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/500/24042004_1005Image0016.JPG

Man I really like this building.

I went to the bar in the Mandarin hotel. Great views of the park, not so great, and very expensive drinks.

yeah baby!!! they are awesome

i visited the newly opened samsung showcase yesterday
AWESOME STUFF! KOREAN POWER! :)

Another incident at the TWC...

NY Daily News

Death leap at Time Warner tower

BY OREN YANIV and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A Manhattan artist plunged to his death inside the Time Warner Center yesterday, horrifying lunchtime shoppers.

Glenn Moosnick, 35, climbed over a glass railing at the top of the shopping center's grand atrium and swan-dived more than 50 feet, slamming onto the mall floor just after noon, police and witnesses said.

"It was awful. It was horrible," said Jeffrey Savitch, 49, who was on his way to eat lunch in the $1.7 billion, 55-story complex at Columbus Circle.

The forceful impact sent a loud explosion echoing through The Shops at Columbus Circle, and scattered dozens of people.

"People thought a bomb went off. That's how loud it was," said a worker at J.W. Cooper, who was standing a few feet from where Moosnick landed. "He fell right in front of us. It's not something I'll ever forget."

Moosnick, who lived in Hell's Kitchen, had battled schizophrenia, according to relatives who described him as an artist and a caring man.

His suicide was the latest in a string of unsettling incidents at the complex. Two men died during the skyscraper's construction. And in April 2003, a spectacular blaze caused more than $8 million worth of damage.

Originally published on September 28, 2004
That sucks. I know, I've been there, it was strangely attracting me to jump over the railing, right there where I later ate lunch. Same feeling also was in Marriott Hotel, and someone jumped from there too.

resist!

If I didnt i wouldnt be typing here now.

I can't believe it, they lit the crowns up last night, it looks great. Kind of like Bloomberg tower's only more white in apperance than yellow. I tried taking pics, but it was windy and dark so they came out bad. I'll look them over and see if any are worth posting.

^they did? Finally!

Well I am posting from Cape Town South Africa! I am glad to hear the crowns are lit up finaly.

but I didn't see it lit up tonight.
But then, it was around 5:30, though all the other buildings were lit, maybe there's a difference with the TWC?

perhaps they were testing it?

Not sure if it was on tonight.

Here are two from last night, I know they're not really good but I figured I showed them anyway:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/500/2404crown1.JPG

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/500/2404crown2.JPG

Good enough to get the idea. They look just as I expected they would.

Graphic of people who live in the tower from the NY Times...

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/21/realestate/re1.gif

GASP! they omitted me! :P

New York Times
November 29, 2004

Hanging at Columbus Circle, a Thing of Light and Colors

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/29/nyregion/center.184.jpg
The 150-foot tower on the 58th Street prow of the Time Warner Center is illuminated each evening from 4 to 11 p.m.

New Yorkers who do not like the color of the new environmental sculpture at the Time Warner Center have only to wait three minutes. It will change. And change again.

Known as the "Prow Sculpture," this glowing nighttime exclamation point over Columbus Circle was installed by Time Warner as part of its headquarters. Set in a 150-foot prowlike glass showcase on 58th Street, the sculpture is divided vertically into 12 groups of 36 lighting panels, looking something like a giant keyboard set on end - if keyboards came in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

Since mid-November, the sculpture has been illuminated each evening from 4 to 11 p.m., showing off a range of patterns. The panels change color for three minutes, then hold their color for 30 seconds. The display pauses every quarter hour to tell the time, using large panels to indicate the hour and smaller panels for five-minute increments. (For example, six large panels and three smaller ones would mean 6:15.)

Equally significant is what the prow has not been doing. There have been no sightings of promotions for "Alexander" or HBO or People magazine or any other Time Warner brand or product.

George H. Ladyman Jr., a Time Warner vice president and the sculpture's executive producer, said the deal struck with the city called for no third-party commercial use of the sculpture. The company may use it from time to time to promote special events like a concert in Jazz at Lincoln Center or the premiere of a Warner Brothers movie. But Mr. Ladyman said the sculpture was meant to complement its surroundings and the architecture of the building.

"This is a piece of art," he added, "a piece of technological art."

As such, it is a vivid reminder of how color can set a mood. On a recent evening, as the palette of the sculpture changed, the images it brought to mind went from a desert sunset to ocean depths to a polar landscape to a wooded glen. Then the sculptural tower would turn briefly into a quiltwork.

"We were listening to music just to get a feel for the rhythm and evocative transition," said David Rome of RomeAntics Productions. His company designed and programmed the sculpture, which was made by Cinnabar, with systems by Scharff Weisberg Lighting.

There are strips of light-emitting diodes behind the double-sided translucent polycarbonate panels, which are 2 by 8 feet, 6 by 6 feet and 4 by 12 feet, supported by a 121-foot vertical truss. The lighting arrays would stretch 728 feet, almost to the top of Time Warner Center, if laid end to end. The entire sculpture weighs 10 tons.

Though designed as part of Columbus Circle, the sculpture may be most effective when seen from Eighth Avenue, where it appears to be floating in air, a new kind of gateway to an Upper West Side that is growing more and more like Midtown. In that sense, something big, bright and restless may be the perfect pivot.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Yay! Finally they put that light thing to good use. Also nice to see all the people in the towers, seems like a helluva list. Those guys should make, like, the World's Most Powerful People club or something. Well, actually they kinda have that downstairs with the main center of Time Warner Inc., directors of CNN, Time, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema (LOTR) and more crap than you suspect.

The crowns are lit tonight! Check it out at the Wired New York webcam:

http://www.wirednewyork.com/webcam2/default.htm

Here's a screen grab:

http://img158.exs.cx/img158/4166/twclit1tz.jpg

BTW, it's all lit up tonight again too. Looks pretty good, I still prefer Bloomberg Tower's crown though.

yay!

Is the lighting of the crowns permanent? Or is it some sort of Christmas present?

Here's a better shot courtesy of WiredNY. I think the lights are here to stay. Its a big improvement over the daytime crowns.

http://www.wirednewyork.com/aol/images/time_warner_center_crown.jpg

The crowns are gorgeous at night. :okay:

Wow. The buildings change the area from some periphery to a definite part of Midtown.

looks definitely better

Nice. Tough, striking presence, I love it.
The lit crowns are hot.

And look at that, Hearst tower rising in the foreground! :)

Just saw them today. Totally awesome, esp with Bloomberg behind.

Lots of great high-res shots here:

http://www.mandarinoriental.com/hotel/520000076.asp

nice! mandarin hotel looks cool

:cool:

Another incident at the TWC...

NY Daily News

Death leap at Time Warner tower

BY OREN YANIV and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A Manhattan artist plunged to his death inside the Time Warner Center yesterday, horrifying lunchtime shoppers.

Glenn Moosnick, 35, climbed over a glass railing at the top of the shopping center's grand atrium and swan-dived more than 50 feet, slamming onto the mall floor just after noon, police and witnesses said.

"It was awful. It was horrible," said Jeffrey Savitch, 49, who was on his way to eat lunch in the $1.7 billion, 55-story complex at Columbus Circle.

The forceful impact sent a loud explosion echoing through The Shops at Columbus Circle, and scattered dozens of people.

"People thought a bomb went off. That's how loud it was," said a worker at J.W. Cooper, who was standing a few feet from where Moosnick landed. "He fell right in front of us. It's not something I'll ever forget."

Moosnick, who lived in Hell's Kitchen, had battled schizophrenia, according to relatives who described him as an artist and a caring man.

His suicide was the latest in a string of unsettling incidents at the complex. Two men died during the skyscraper's construction. And in April 2003, a spectacular blaze caused more than $8 million worth of damage.

Originally published on September 28, 2004

They should really make those railings much higher around the atrium on the upper floors of the mall. It feels scary just going up to the rail to look down, and I don't have any suicidal thoughts.

its called thrill! ;)
but if its too high, you won't get that "WHOA" feeling :)

(Great picture posted by Edward on WNY)

The view from 76th floor penthouse at One Central Park, with Upper West Side and Hudson River:

http://www.wirednewyork.com/aol/images/1centralpark_hudson.jpg

WOWOWOW! That is one magnificent pic! The reflections are amazing and the sun combined with the shadows on the city below... just perfect!

that pic would definitely be a winner in the UPC if posted

http://www.bus.umich.edu/RossB-SchoolGift/img/Exterior-Taxi_lg.jpg

Wow, very nice pic Big Mac, thanks for posting. They look so clear and smooth. Talk about blending in with the surrounding sky too.

love that pic with the cabbies in front, it adds some more NYC atmosphere to it, thanks Big mac for sharing this one with us

Hot shot:

http://pro.corbis.com/images/CRB002470.jpg?size=67&uid={82dffd4b-cfa4-4b87-a551-0de709d040fc}

Recent shot found from pbase, the crowns are very visible:

http://www.pbase.com/richmois/image/43880619/original.jpg

Also from pbase, on a cloudy day:

http://www.pbase.com/richmois/image/43880638/large.jpg

I loved this building from the very first time, its the coolest building in NYC IMO.

Another hot shot...

http://img298.imageshack.us/img298/1094/bluetime9de.jpg

Time Warner Center is a beauty.

NY POST

$51M FOR NYC PAD?

http://www.nypost.com/photos/re07232005041.jpg
TIME WARNER RECORDS: Martinez's place would be NYC's priciest pad.

By BRADEN KEIL

July 23, 2005 -- NEW York City is about to chalk up a new record price paid for a Manhattan apartment.

Mexican financier David Martinez made headlines in 2003 after paying a record-shattering $42.2 million for a condo apartment at the Time Warner Center.

But he's about to add greatly to that figure by enlarging the original 12,200-square-foot configuration to just under 17,000 square feet for an additional $9 million to $10 million - which will give him two full floors in the 80-story south tower.

Sources say Martinez, who combined the 76th floor (comprising 8,400 square feet), which features one of only two private residential terraces in the two-tower building, with about half of the 77th floor, is about to go to contract for the remaining 4,200 square feet.

Martinez, a bachelor, bought the original bit of the 77th level to break through and create double-height ceilings. Other touches will include a large fish tank sunken into the floors.

The apartment's heavy construction was close to completion before neighbors recently began hearing bone-jarring banging in the unit.

"We were told they were breaking through another part of the floor," says our spy in the building.

Should the sale go through, it will eclipse the present NYC record of $44 million.

Martinez could not be reached for comment. Neither Steve Ross, the building's developer, nor Louise Sunshine, of the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group returned our phone calls.

Here some shots I took 2 months ago

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/chady/London/estrados051.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/chady/London/estrados052.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/chady/London/estrados058.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/chady/London/estrados059.jpg

I love this thing !!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/chady/London/estrados065.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/chady/London/estrados060.jpg

Nices ones Chad, I like the hanging wing too, the transparency is great.

Good shot from pbase...

http://www.pbase.com/wedgwood/image/45955396/large.jpg

I want to make friends with this guy!


NY POST

$51M FOR NYC PAD?

http://www.nypost.com/photos/re07232005041.jpg
TIME WARNER RECORDS: Martinez's place would be NYC's priciest pad.

By BRADEN KEIL

July 23, 2005 -- NEW York City is about to chalk up a new record price paid for a Manhattan apartment.

Mexican financier David Martinez made headlines in 2003 after paying a record-shattering $42.2 million for a condo apartment at the Time Warner Center.

But he's about to add greatly to that figure by enlarging the original 12,200-square-foot configuration to just under 17,000 square feet for an additional $9 million to $10 million - which will give him two full floors in the 80-story south tower.

Sources say Martinez, who combined the 76th floor (comprising 8,400 square feet), which features one of only two private residential terraces in the two-tower building, with about half of the 77th floor, is about to go to contract for the remaining 4,200 square feet.

Martinez, a bachelor, bought the original bit of the 77th level to break through and create double-height ceilings. Other touches will include a large fish tank sunken into the floors.

The apartment's heavy construction was close to completion before neighbors recently began hearing bone-jarring banging in the unit.

"We were told they were breaking through another part of the floor," says our spy in the building.

Should the sale go through, it will eclipse the present NYC record of $44 million.

Martinez could not be reached for comment. Neither Steve Ross, the building's developer, nor Louise Sunshine, of the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group returned our phone calls.

I have already been there about four or five times, and I usually go to Barnes & Nobels and the Wholesale Market.

http://www.glassalum.com/image/pAOL.gif

http://www.swinyc.com/var/swinyc/storage/images/our_portfolio/corporate_portfolio/time_warner_center_prow/images/time_warner_prow_b/12421-2-eng-US/time_warner_prow_b_extralarge.jpg

http://www.swinyc.com/var/swinyc/storage/images/our_portfolio/corporate_portfolio/time_warner_center_prow/images/time_warner_prow_a/12418-1-eng-US/time_warner_prow_a_extralarge.jpg

The entrance 8th Ave Line at 59th St-Columbus Circle, of the IND branch, was renovated as well recently when you take the A, B, C, or D trains there.

http://images.nycsubway.org//i32000/img_32403.jpg

Storm front coming...

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID156-time.warner.thunderstorm.jpg

September 9, 2005:

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/8990/twc4large4xj.jpg

New York Times
September 27, 2005

Chef and Developers Cancel Columbus Circle Restaurant

By FLORENCE FABRICANT

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/27/nyregion/trotter.jpg
Charlie Trotter in December 2004 at his restaurant in Chicago.

Nearly two years after it was announced that he would become the final star in the constellation of top chefs at the Time Warner Center, Charlie Trotter and the building's retail developers have decided to cancel plans for him to open a seafood restaurant there.

Mr. Trotter said in a telephone interview yesterday that as his restaurant's budget climbed from $6 million to $9 million to $11.5 million, the Related Companies, the center's co-developer, decided to scale back the concept and design.The $11.5 million cost - for what would not have been a formal restaurant although it was being designed by the noted architect Michael Graves - would have been almost as much as that for Per Se, where dinner with wine routinely costs $200 or more.

"I didn't want to remove some of the exciting design elements to make it work," Mr. Trotter said. "And then the concept changed to something a little more casual than we originally planned."

Kenneth A. Himmel, the president and chief executive of the retail-development division of the Related Companies, said: "There was a real disconnect between the cost and what this project should come in at. We couldn't get the project to where Charlie and I were both comfortable."

In addition to the loss of Mr. Trotter's restaurant, Mr. Himmel said he was looking for a replacement for Jean-Georges Vongerichten's V Steakhouse, on the building's fourth floor. But Phil Suarez, Mr. Vongerichten's partner, said no final decision had been reached on the steakhouse, which is jointly owned by the two men and Related Companies. "It may happen and it may not," Mr. Suarez said.

From the time the center opened in February 2004, the idea of having five of the nations' most acclaimed chefs cooking in a high-end shopping mall has been controversial. Thomas Keller's Per Se and Masa Takayama's Masa were given four stars by The New York Times's restaurant critic, Frank Bruni. Gray Kunz's Cafe Gray has been well received, and Mr. Himmel said it has been doing better than expected.

But Mr. Himmel said he has not been happy with the financial performance of the steakhouse, which has gotten a tepid reception since its opening last year. Now, the question of whether the "Restaurant Collection," as the building's developers call the complex, can succeed as a vertical dining destination in Manhattan is still unclear.

Mr. Trotter's restaurant in Chicago, Charlie Trotter's, was one of the first to present elaborate, multicourse dinners with small portions of creative food.

"I was welcoming a chance to do something other than an 18-course tasting menu," he said, "and also to be part of the New York restaurant fabric."

Mr. Himmel said he would consider only New York chefs for future restaurants in the center. "I'm going to have a firm hand in the design and a firm hand in the selection," he said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

New York Times
September 28, 2005

Clouds, Silver Linings and a Mall in the Sky

By JAMES BARRON

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/27/nyregion/colo184.2.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/28/nyregion/colo.8583.1.jpg
Where the stores are: In the Time Warner Center, most of the stores are on the first and second floors. The restaurants are on the third and fourth floors.

It began as a concept with, at best, a checkered history: a mall in the city. This one was to look different, with quartz and granite and an irregular shape, and be different, with very expensive restaurants instead of a food court.

A year and a half later, the public pullout of the big-name chef who was to fill one of the few remaining vacancies has some people wondering about the Time Warner Center, the silver-skinned complex at 10 Columbus Circle. It brought together the restaurants, a hotel, a condominium and stores, along with the workings of Time Warner - from offices for its magazines to studios for CNN - and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

For Manhattan, it was something of a gamble. Malls in Manhattan have not had the best track record. Malls, almost by definition, are about cars and huge parking lots. Also, while Manhattan may not have room for big-box stores, the vast majority of its stores are boxes: discrete squares or rectangles, each with its own door facing a street, not an indoor corridor.

The Time Warner Center is a city within the city, a vertical world reached by elevators or escalators. When it opened in February 2004 with a party that attracted everyone from Cindy Crawford to Gov. George E. Pataki, some partygoers wondered how soon crowds would find things beyond the first and second floors, where the stores are. The restaurants are on the third and fourth floors.

Hotel-industry analysts say that the hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, has hit its stride. Retail specialists say that the Whole Foods market, on the lower level, is booming.

Some of the restaurants upstairs received good reviews, and restaurateurs say those restaurants appear to be doing well, an idea confirmed by an effort to make reservations yesterday. All the restaurants except Per Se offered to make reservations available for today or tomorrow, though some very early or very late. Fridays and Saturdays were already booked until late in the evening, but the Japanese restaurant Masa offered a table for two at 6 p.m. on Saturday. The first table available at Per Se - whose tasting menu runs $210, including tip - was for lunch on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, because Per Se will not make a reservation more than two months in advance. Tomorrow is another day. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving will be available then.

The retail space is some of the most expensive in Manhattan - $250 to $300 a square foot, brokers say, about what stores pay on Madison Avenue. And Richard D. Parsons, the chairman of Time Warner, says that the center is flourishing.

"Williams-Sonoma and Borders are having their highest per-square-foot sales here of anywhere," Mr. Parsons said. "Jazz at Lincoln Center is, I think, the finest performance arts center in the country. All but three or four condos sold out. We are very happy here. It is a huge success."

Spokeswomen for Williams-Sonoma and Borders said that they did not release detailed sales figures on individual stores. A spokeswoman for Whole Foods said it did not, either, although she said that the store in the Time Warner Center "is one of our top performers."

Yet Charlie Trotter, a celebrity chef from Chicago who was planning to establish a New York beachhead, has parted ways with the Time Warner Center. And Jean-Georges Vongerichten's V Steakhouse, which received at best lukewarm reviews, may be on its way out.

Kenneth A. Himmel, the president and chief executive of the retail-development division of the Related Companies, said on Monday that he was looking for a replacement for V Steakhouse. But Mr. Vongerichten's partner, Phil Suarez, said the departure was not definite, adding, "We're doing decent numbers."

Still, Alfred Portale, a chef and co-owner of Gotham Bar and Grill, is one of at least two restaurateurs who have been approached about taking over the third-floor space that Mr. Trotter's restaurant was to have occupied. Danny Meyer, whose Union Square Hospitality Group owns restaurants in the Flatiron district and at the Museum of Modern Art, has also been contacted about the Charlie Trotter space. Like Mr. Portale, he would not discuss any details.

At lunchtime yesterday, Miriam Schumacher of Tenafly, N.J., was sitting in the balcony area outside the restaurants. "This is a place to escape, an oasis in the city," she said. "I come here as often as I can." But while she has a fondness for Whole Foods, she said she spends little time in the other stores.

Manhattan has never fervently embraced the mall concept. While Trump Tower's 22-year-old shopping atrium on Fifth Avenue draws some tourists (thanks to its supporting role in "The Apprentice"), Herald Center, the 10-story mall inside the former Gimbel's department store on Herald Square, has had a troubled history. Originally bankrolled by Ferdinand E. Marcos, the Philippine dictator, it opened in 1985 with tenants that included Ann Taylor, Brookstone and Caswell-Massey. After a mortgage default and an auction, it was reinvented as a discount mall, with stores like Payless Shoes.

Vertical dining, too, remains an exception in Manhattan. Yesterday at Time Warner, the Dean & DeLuca cafe inside the Borders store was full. How many customers the restaurants draw from within the building is an open question.

"To tell you the truth, I rarely go to those restaurants," said Doug Ganley, a CNN producer. "I've had drinks a couple times at Stone Rose and occasionally run down to Whole Foods to grab something. But we have a cafeteria that is pretty nice, and the price is certainly cheaper than those restaurants."

Restaurant-industry specialists talk not about price but location. Mr. Trotter's restaurant was to go on the third floor, while V Steakhouse, Stone Rose and Per Se are on the fourth floor. But restaurateurs say that one would not go there unless one knew to go there. And they say that this was not helped by the way the Time Warner Center turned out - uninviting and unexciting, they maintain.

"The restaurant floors were designed to look just like any of the other retail floors," said Michael Whiteman, an international hotel and restaurant consultant. "It's cold, it's gray, it's dark. There's no sense of anybody eating, drinking or having fun."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Charles V. Bagli, John Clarke Jr., Florence Fabricant, Jennifer 8. Lee and Jennifer Steinhauer.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

It's a shame that the TWC won't be having the resturaunt it was looking foward to have.

http://daniel-nyc.earthcammobile.com/pics/1/1291-11911.jpg

nice building and i loved the jazz thing they had going on, on the 3 or 4th floor

http://www.arrakeen.ch/usacan/028%20%20Time%20Warner%20Center.jpg

Here's one...

http://www.pbase.com/jorge1822/image/45165031/large.jpg

http://adrem.ua.ac.be/~michiels/blog/uploads/city-colombus-circle.jpg

WebWire
November 2, 2005

Spectacular Light and Music Show Kicks Off the Holiday Season at The Shops at Columbus Circle Time Warner Center

Alan J. Segan

The Shops at Columbus Circle, at Time Warner Center, New York City’s newest shopping, dining event and entertainment destination will celebrate the holiday season with an experience that is certain to become a New York classic. Visitors to Time Warner Center will witness New York City’s latest holiday celebration experience, a 21st century spectacle of light and music. The multi media sound and light experience will be launched at 6:00PM, November 16, and will begin every evening thereafter at 4:00PM until January 8.

The 150 foot high Great Room will resound with holiday music that has been programmed to be choreographed with twelve 14 foot stars that will hang in the room and be lit by the largest specially crafted display of illuminated color mixing in the world.

“New Yorkers and world visitors alike have embraced Time Warner Center since it opened to the public in February, 2004. This year we are giving New York a special gift of the stars, and hope that the spirit and warmth of the holiday season will envelop all who visit New York’s newest landmark destination,” said Stephen M. Ross, Chairman and CEO, The Related Companies, L.P.

The Related Companies, L. P. and Time Warner have partnered to produce this holiday experience “Under The Stars.” Over 8,500 color LED’s will be programmed to coordinate with original interpretations of holiday music derived from the legendary Nutcracker Suite. The compositions will range from jazz to rock and classical renditions, and will cue to the complex lighting design in each star.

"We’re extremely pleased to work with our partner The Related Companies to create this stunning light and music spectacular at Time Warner Center. This unique multi-media show is destined to become a treasured holiday tradition for the people of New York City and our many visitors from around the world for many years to come," said Richard D. Parsons, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner Inc.

The sound and light experience will take place everyday during the holiday season from November 16 to January 8. The visual and sound experience is being created by Holiday Image, Inc. a Brooklyn based firm renowned for one of a kind holiday displays for many of the nation’s top retailers.

The holiday spectacular also further highlights Time Warner Center as New York City’s newest destination for corporate and civic events. Coordinating these efforts has been Related Experiences at Columbus Circle, the event marketing and sponsorship arm of Time Warner Center.

The Shops at Columbus Circle offer New Yorkers and visitors a world class dining experience including two four star restaurants, along with an array of retailers to accommodate the most discerning shoppers.

“We are thrilled to be able to bring a new exciting dimension to the holidays in New York and we welcome all New Yorkers to stop by and enjoy an evening Under the Stars,” said Kenneth A. Himmel, President and CEO, Related Urban Development.

WebWire® 1995-2005

NY1
November 17, 2005

Celebrate The Holidays With New Light Display At Time Warner Center

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Columbus Circle is greeting the holidays in a whole new light this year, and the starry display made its debut Wednesday night.

At the Time Warner Center, a dozen 14-foot stars twinkle to tunes re-mastered from “The Nutcracker” in a display inside the 150-foot high atrium on Columbus Circle called "Under the Stars."

The Related Companies, which developed the Time Warner Center, worked two years to bring this gift to New York City.

"Our concept here is that this is the ‘Holiday Under the Stars’ at Time Warner Center,” says Related Experiences President Tim Hindert. “We've got plenty of celebrities at Time Warner Center, but more than that, we really think it's a wishes time of year for all New Yorkers and for our world visitors. So we love the idea that they can make their wishes under the stars and make their wishes come true here."

Brooklyn based Matthew Schwam from Holiday Image brought the stars to light.

"The stars are programmed to custom music that we recomposed, traditional songs of ‘The Nutcracker’ with modern beats and compositions,” says Schwam. “They're going to see those songs and the stars, combined with a lot of technology, and it's going to be an experience that no one's ever really quite seen before."

The stars will be lit up every day from 4 p.m. to midnight through January 8th.

Time Warner is the parent company of NY1.

Copyright © 2005 NY1 News

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^^ ill.

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(Photo by plemeljr on Flickr)

New York Post
February 22, 2006

TIME WARNER BECOMING A LANDMARC

By BRADEN KEIL

It looks like the Time Warner Center has finally found someone to take over the restaurant space that Charlie Trotter vacated.

Chef Marc Murphy and his wife (of TriBeCa's Landmarc restaurant) have an agreement with the Center's developers, the Related Cos., to take the large northeast-facing raw space that chef Trotter bailed out of last year, citing escalating costs for the buildout.

Neither Murphy nor Related would return phone calls. According to our sources, Murphy will have equity in the project, which will be financed mostly by the developers, much like the deal that chef Michael Lomonaco has in the Center's former V Steakhouse space that Jean-Georges Vongerichten and partner Phil Suarez vacated in December.

Speaking of Japanese, Lindsay Lohan wasn't the only one dining at Morimoto over the weekend. Morimoto's former boss, Nobu Matsuhisa, and guests were served personally by the "Iron Chef" star. No word on what his comment card said.

Bringing a Japanese restaurant from Philadelphia to New York might not be such a stretch - Chicago is offering its own version of fine dining from the land of the rising sun.

Japonais, which has wowed the Windy City with its Far East fare since 2003, will open a branch at 111 E. 18th St. (at Park Avenue South) in late Spring.

Restaurateur Rick Wahlstedt (of Le Colonial) and Miae Lim are collaborating with designer/partner Jeffrey Beers to open the 11,350-square-foot, two-level eatery.

The menu, described as modern Japanese, will be prepared by chefs Gene Kato and Jun Ichikawa.

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

I am trying to find information on the TWC for a research project:

1. what is the exact current ownership structure?
2. what do retail places pay in rent now?
3. does apollo and related still own the building?
4. if not, how much did they sell it for?

any help would be great... i need to finish a project in city planning program...

thank you!

A lot of the info can be found via Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Center

"Its design, by Mustafa Kemal Abadan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill..."
i thought it was by dave childs?

http://www.pbase.com/didierv/image/55448842/original.jpg
Damn.

thanks! i wish there was also something on actual ownership.. like who owns garage? or the "other" office space?

Does anyone know of any books about the TWC? SOM's latest book of their works only goes up to 2000.

I hear that construction contractors started work on the new Daniel Libeskind tower the day after St. Patricks day, but relatives of the victims are trying to put a block on its construction.
Source: Telegraph, London

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Does anyone know of any books about the TWC? SOM's latest book of their works only goes up to 2000.

It is profiled in the newest (2nd) edition of Manhattan Skyscrapers by Eric Nash.

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

love the building hate the Whole foods supermarket in the basement though

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

fucking beautiful dude. i'm so glad they light the crown up every night now.

when i first noticed these towers in a pic a few weeks ago, i thought it was just a render lol

very nice towers... i like the shine from the crown when light reflects off it.

I love how they play off the light and can look different on any day...

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source: fant flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/noli/)

Love it...

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yilenes (http://www.flickr.com/photos/7599845@N06/)

nice place

Love the building not the area around.

I like it.....a big improvement on what was there years ago....
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the circle's traffic pattern used to be such a mess

This project took about 3,000,000,000 USD to develop and build, making it one of the most expensive projects in America. Ever. For the money spent on this, New York could have gotten 2 or more 1500 foot towers, maybe even one tower around 3500 feet. Hey, this is just me, but I love supertalls, and that's what New York needs.

Imho Time Warner Center has been the best improvement of the 21st century in New York

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Who can to post the plans of floors of TWC? In advance thanks!

TWC is awesome... they don't care if you're a pirate.

Thanks for the information. I simply was interested, at a distant day I can to look alive at it) It's my favorite buildings in NYC.

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