WTC construction: the next year — and beyond

Courtesy of Silverstein Properties
Courtesy of Silverstein Properties

By this time next year, when New York City commemorates the 12th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, construction at the World Trade Center will be a whole lot further along — with some of the site’s major projects nearing completion.

Construction on the September 11 museum, to be located at 1 Albany Street, is scheduled to resume by the end of this month. As The Real Deal reported, Mayor Michael Bloomberg Monday announced a last-minute deal that would ensure the completion of the museum, construction on which was delayed for months due to a $300 million budget dispute. Museum sources said the Port Authority would sit down with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum Foundation as early as this week to work out details of the new plan. Sources said the site should be nearing completion by next year’s September 11 anniversary, and is slated to open late 2013 or early 2014.Meanwhile, Four World Trade Center, a 72-story office tower at 150 Greenwich Street, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2013. The site is 50 percent leased, with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey taking 800,000 square feet, with additional space being leased by the city of New York. The developers are in talks with potential tenants, including law firms, that have leases expiring in 2014 and 2015.

One World Trade Center, a 2.6 million-square-foot site and the world’s tallest building at 1,776 feet, won’t quite be done by the 12th anniversary of the attacks, but will be a whole lot closer. It is slated to open in late 2014 or early 2015, officials said. Conde Nast is signed as the anchor tenant for 1.2 million square feet of space, while the U.S. General Services Administration signed a lease for 270,000 square feet, or six floors of space. A third lease, for 191,000 has been signed with Vantone China Center.

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Developers are in active discussions ongoing with potential tenants at Three and Four World Trade Center.

Three World Trade Center, which has 2.5 million square feet of office space at 175 Greenwich Street, is scheduled to open by 2016. The 88-story Two World Trade Center, located at 200 Greenwich Street, does not have a current completion date.

Silverstein Properties, which owns the Ground Zero site, said that the new trade center will change the landscape of New York real estate and noted that several key goals have already been reached. “This is really on the order of Rockefeller Center in terms of how its going to change the face of New York City,” said Jeremy Moss, senior vice president at Silverstein.