Construction begins at WTC Tower 3
July 09, 2010 10:30AM By Yaffi Spodek
From left, Janno Lieber, rendering of Tower 3 and Larry Silverstein
"This is an exciting moment in this project," Lieber said Wednesday at a Bisnow-sponsored conference addressing the state of the construction industry. "We now have the entire WTC site under development, with 7.5 million square feet of space from Towers 2, 3 and 4."
First up in what is expected to be a four-year project at Tower 3 is the mobilization stage, a precursor to the excavation period, when the foundation contractor, the Laquila Group, will start drilling through the rock to create the tower's footing, said Dara McQuillan, Silverstein's senior vice president of marketing and communications, in a follow-up interview. Once the excavation is complete, the Laquila Group will be able to start pouring the concrete footing, he said.
It is unclear how long the first phase of construction will last, but the entire Tower 3 project, located at 175 Greenwich Street, is slated for completion in December 2014, McQuillan said. Tower 4, Lieber noted at the conference, is scheduled to open in 2013.
With 54 office floors, Tower 3 includes 2.5 million square feet of office space and five trading floors. The site will have three retail floors from the ground floor to the third floor plus two below grade. The tower, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, will have a reinforced concrete core and columns with steel girders and beams. Bound by Greenwich Street to the right, Church Street to the east, Dey Street to the north and Cortlandt Street to the south, Tower 3 is at the center of the WTC memorial site development. The complex -- with an estimated price tag of close to $1 billion -- includes four new skyscrapers on Greenwich Street plus a fifth on Liberty Street, a Sept. 11 memorial and museum, a WTC transportation hub, a retail complex and a performing arts center.
The entrance to the three-level public lobby of Tower 3 is on Greenwich Street, with views of the entire WTC memorial project.
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Comments
Anonymous
4 years!!! if you read the article here about the empire state building it took them 2-3 years build in the 1920's! Sad
Comment #1 Posted By: Anonymous 07/09/10
Anonymous
I'm confused. I thought they had mothballed towers 2 & 3 until they could get preleases. Weren't they going to build temporary retail bases in the meantime?
Comment #2 Posted By: Anonymous 07/09/10
Anonymous
9 years too late..............just build it already - go 24/7 - America is being laughed at for a decade
Comment #3 Posted By: Anonymous 07/09/10
MVC1
It took 16 months to build the Empire State Building ( almost 80 years ago ) and they just cleared 30 stories on tower 1 that started over 4 years ago. Talk about milking a project!
Comment #4 Posted By: MVC1 07/09/10
Anonymous
It took them 2 years to build the Empire State Building because there was no air conditioning, no safety standards, etc.
Comment #5 Posted By: Anonymous 07/09/10
Anonymous
You are all stupid... blame the unions and the buearocrats... Also try and compare the empire state building and the new towers without concluding that the esb should be torn down now based on new standards.
Comment #6 Posted By: Anonymous 07/09/10
Anonymous
The Empire State Building had no saftey standards, no unions and 5 men died building it in the rush. I'm appalled at the comment here, do men's lives really mean so little to you that you'd want them to rush construction and kill people on the way? Disgusting, all of you.
Comment #7 Posted By: Anonymous 07/09/10
Anonymous
new 7 WTC was built pretty quickly. One WTC is going up about as slow as Deutshe Bank is going down.
Comment #8 Posted By: Anonymous 07/09/10
Anonymous
The design competition, political infighting of who controls what, redesigns of the Freedom Tower. collapse of the economy, glut of office space and who pays to build what have all contributed to the delays in this project. Now that the Port Authority and Silverstein have settled their differences things are moving faster. Kudos to Daniel Libeskind, for his design of the master site. I hope to visit when it is completed.
Comment #9 Posted By: Anonymous 07/10/10
Anonymous
Workers also tragically die building Goldman sachs and taking down old WTC #5. I'm surprised there weren't more deaths during the ESB construction. One of these types of deaths is too many.
Comment #10 Posted By: Anonymous 07/13/10
Anonymous
Tower's 3 continued construction schedule is a very complicated animal and the ongoing foundation construction/excavation is happening on a daily basis. Yes, the ESB was built quickly, but what does that have to do with anything. This is a unique project, with unique stakeholders involved, and an ongoing redesign to accommodate any possible future tenant. Patience my friends is a virtue that pays off well. Give the PA and SPI a chance to build it right.
Comment #11 Posted By: Anonymous 07/23/10