The World Trade Center that was destroyed almost ten years ago was a frequently photographed symbol of New York City, but it was also a huge boondoggle of the New York & New Jersey Port Authority that was heavily subsidized by motorists paying bridge tolls. So of course, it is completely appropriate that the building that will replace it will be an even bigger boondoggle, costing $3.3 billion. As New York Times columnist Joe Nocera says, this is “an example of just about everything wrong with modern government.”
Still under construction.
Flickr photo by Sergey Shpakovsky.
This price tag will make it “by far, the most expensive office building ever constructed in America,” yet it “will add 2.6 million square feet of office space in a city that doesn’t need it.” At the time the original, 13.4 million-square-foot World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11/01, Manhattan already had more than enough vacant office space to make up for it. At the most recent report I can find, downtown Manhattan alone currently has more than 10 million square feet of vacant space.
The building will be just one part of “a staggering $11 billion worth of government-sponsored construction,” says Nocera, including a subway station that is already $1 billion over budget. How fitting that we celebrate the attack that led to the most expensive war we’ve ever fought with the most expensive war memorial ever built. Of course, somewhere with 72 virgins, Osama Bin Laden is laughing away, because what better way to defeat the Americans than to get them to spend themselves into oblivion.
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To pay for this new building, which is renting out for half the amount needed to repay its costs, the Port Authority is planning to increase the tolls on the six bridges and tunnels into Manhattan that it controls. Of course, the city has wanted to impose a cordon tax (which some misleadingly call “congestion pricing”) for years. The problem is that some of the bridges to Manhattan aren’t controlled by the Port Authority, and they don’t have tolls.
This has led to much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. If only the city could toll those bridges, it could turn Manhattan into a paradise.
The Antiplanner supports user fees to pay for the facilities that are being used. But New York City just wants to get as much money from motorists as possible to spend on boondoggles like the Second Avenue Subway, the East Side Access tunnel, and the new trade center.
One of the problems is that almost ten years have passed since 9/11 and almost nothing has been done to build a memorial or a new building. It is so embarrassing that yesterday, Fark.com asked its readers to photoshop “10 years from now” and the second entry was a photo of ground zero where construction still has yet to begin.
That’s why the future of cities will probably not rely on the skyscraper in the near future. In America there is an abundance of land for businesses to build inexpensive offices in suburban areas and small towns. Go to Baltimore there are highrise buildings, but throughout much of the city, there is an entire collection of smaller, architecturally impressive buildings. They’re short, typically less than 10 stories and in most cases never more than 3-5.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/2008_05_07_-_Baltimore_-_N_Howard_St_at_W_Baltimore_St.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/2008_05_07_-_Baltimore_-_Rainbow_Bldg_on_N_Howard_St.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/2008_05_07_-_Baltimore_-_View_along_Baltimore_St_from_Hanover_St.JPG
The building in the middle is only 37 stories. And is the best looking building in the city.
Chicago had plans to build the 2,000 foot tall (150 story) Chicago spire. Only to go into default and the project died. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chicago had a surplus of office space ready for occupancy, why do we need additional towers in the heart of major cities. The new towers at the WTC site, you can see a uniform similarity of the tallest to shortest. After a while, it gets hard to tell one from another and there isn’t anything really special about any of them, no decoration or ornament or anything that makes us look at them as impressive except their height (eclipsed by supertowers in Dubai and China, but we’ll see how long their trend lasts).
We probably will not be able to renovate these buildings, especially the newest ones with the glitziest systems made of the most high tech materials, even the ones that style themselves “greenâ€. Expensive costs just to build them self defeat the green benefits it describes. Fortunately we have a group of architects still designing smaller buildings, ones that you can actually walk around or up with feeling as if you scaled Everest. (Just take out the elevators and we won’t have an obesity problem anymore). he growing trend are businesses with employee’s that can work from home. If you work from home, you don’t need to drive or take transit or be stuffed into a building. Buildings with smaller floor plans and small clusters of networked employees will render the cubicle farms obsolete. Look no further than Washington D.C., which has no skyscrapers, just midrise buildings (a lot of them hideous but a few are interesting). Don’t get me wrong, modern architecture is fine in small doses. The architecture of the older buildings is obviously superior (to be fair that was easy to do when you were just paying depression era youths less than a dollar an hour or immigrant masons and artists). One could argue the sustainability of such buildings, I disagree. What’s more sustainable than a building that can largely go decades before being renovated. The Romans built bridges we can still drive on. Europe built structures centuries ago that stood up to plagues, fires, floods, earthquakes, the rise of fascism, Nazism, and two World Wars.
Sorry, typo, typo. I meant to say ” without feeling as if you scaled Everest. And “The growing trend……”
This is what you get for spilling soda on your keyboard.
Wow, Antiplanner made a Muslim joke, somebody with no sense of humor, gonna be pissed.
“Wow, Antiplanner made a Muslim joke, somebody with no sense of humor, gonna be pissed.”
No, not even surprised. After hearing comments of a similar nature over and over, not disappointed either – more resigned.
Antiplanner needs to dust that Koran down ASAP.
4:93 “And whosoever kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell to abide therein; and the Wrath and the Curse of Allah are upon him, and a great punishment is prepared for him”.
So if OBL was expecting 72 virgins, he’s going to be disappointed. Come Judgement Day, he’s going to find out how a Flame Grilled Whopper feels about life.
I must admit, though, to being surprised at the crass knee-jerk reaction to the idea of putting a Muslim centre some blocks from WTC. There was a clear opportunity to wrest back the initiative from Al Qaeda, by building a grand mosque at the site, and generally embracing the opportunity. Instead, all we got was wall-to-wall wailing about the purported evils of Islam. Then murdering OBL in cold blood, when we gave a fair trial to the Nazis at Nuremberg. OBL killed 3000 people, the Nazis closer to 50 million, together with chairs and lampshades. Something has gone badly wrong. The perspective has been lost.
Wow, Antiplanner made a Muslim joke, somebody with no sense of humor, gonna be pissed.
True, this post has more than its share of controversial statements. I’m surprised that the usual suspects haven’t spoken up.
But overall, many good points are covered. In particular, the idea that attempting to add more office space to dense downtowns is foolish, particularly on point. People don’t want to go to downtown, and don’t want to work there. Randal has pointed out time and time again that “downtown” is an outdated concept today, with hardly any new downtowns popping up anywhere.
The only exception I’m aware of is Bellevue, WA, which I live about 15 miles from. It has experienced significant downtown growth, though I wonder how much of it is due to government edict and subsidy. Though, it is a much nicer downtown than Seattle’s, with wide streets, safe pedestrian access, and large blocks that give buildings room between sidewalk and building.
There are good reasons for having people together in an office, including the constructive process of formulating ideas in a team. Yet there are also powerful arguments for telecommuting from home or a more local office, from the train, or from the local park. I wonder if the new WTC skyscrapers aren’t indeed the last of their breed.
Interesting ideas in postings so far. I don’t have much to add or comment, other than to just note how incredibly poignant it is that there is still basically a hole at NYC Ground Zero.
I am not sure it is a story about government subsidies, but it is a very poignant story about America in the early 21st century.
I am not sure it is a story about government subsidies, but it is a very poignant story about America in the early 21st century.
I suppose, but it’s not an excuse for a gigantic, costly boondoggle. A memorial could be smaller, cheaper, and not composed of a bunch of expensive, un-needed office buildings.
I’ll start by saying that I agree with the basic premise of the article. The reconstruction of the WTC was underwritten more as the goal to erect a symbol of strength rather than to fill a current void of commercial square footage. Given our national, financial state of affairs, it’s probably not the best time to do that right now.
A lot of that cost is most likely not for extravagance. The tower itself isn’t really all that attractive. Huge amounts of dollars go into structural systems meant to withstand another terrorist attack. If you go down and look at the site the lower floors are almost entirely reinforced concrete. There are massive, steel belt trusses (diagonal reinforcing that wraps around the building) to provide redundant support in the event of something hitting the building.
It may be true that there is not a shortage of commercial space in NYC, but the vacancy rate is falling (as it will inevitably continue to). A more recent reading is which is already down from Randal’s link a year ago. As of February, New York and Honolulu have the lowest commercial vacancy rates in the country.
Lastly, when we are not in a recession this space will be full. New York continues and will continue to expand and for a downtown that is supposedly outmoded the rents are still among the highest in the country and new towers are still going up. The new Frank Gehry tower at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge was completed within the last year and is one of the tallest residential buildings on the island. It too will be full and there will be more of them. New York has plenty of growth left and its continued growth in density only adds to its inherent efficiency.
Plenty of people do want to live and work downtown. The rents and developments speak for themselves.
I guess I typed that link wrong, sorry for all the linked text.
Interesting that New York needs tolls to pay for bridges rather than using income from the original tolls to invest and then pay for upkeep. In London England the City Bridge Trusthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Bridge_Trust
maintains the bridges out of investments on original bridges and now pays for bridge maintenance out of the income from investments, crossing all London’s bridges is free. The trust could not spend money on anything other than bridges until 1995, but then had such a surplus it is now allowed to use some income for charities.
This sounds like an excellent way to build and maintain bridges and is an interesting example of the trusts the Antiplanner has proposed.
The Antiplanner wrote:
To pay for this new building, which is renting out for half the amount needed to repay its costs, the Port Authority is planning to increase the tolls on the six bridges and tunnels into Manhattan that it controls.
I don’t understand why the PANYNJ is in the business of building office space at all, with possible exceptions on the grounds of its airports and port facilities, and presumably a headquarters building for itself (which it could very well lease or purchase from the private sector). Seems to me this is a question that its board members should be asked.
On a related matter, Peter Samuel of TOLLROADSNews discusses the recent proposal to increase tolls here.
Of course, the city has wanted to impose a cordon tax (which some misleadingly call “congestion pricingâ€) for years.
I prefer to use the term that Stockholm, Sweden uses, which is a congestion tax in a cordon around its downtown area. But I’ve no problem with such a tax if it is used to control congestion and the revenues are used in a way that benefits the people paying the tax.
A congestion charge in New York City would have required the approval of the New York State legislature, and that approval never passed, so the proposal is, at least for the time being, dead.
The problem is that some of the bridges to Manhattan aren’t controlled by the Port Authority, and they don’t have tolls.
The Port Authority does not control any of the intrastate bridge and tunnel crossings in the New York metropolitan region, only the interstate ones between N.Y. and N.J. The intrastate crossings are under the control of the N.Y. MTA, and much of the toll revenue that they generate is diverted to transit subsidies (the MTA’s Web site even says so, here).
Some of the bridges into Manhattan, notably the Brooklyn Bridge and other crossings of the East River are not tolled (however it is not possible to cross the Hudson River from North Jersey to Manhattan without paying a toll). Several of the East River crossing remain “free” (see a historical discussion in the N.Y. Times here).
Also agree with basic premise of the post. I also point out that the world trade center – the symbol that was attacked – was heavily subsidized.
DS
After the barbaric attack/mass murder that took place 10 years ago, it’s appaling that those idiots at the Port Authority have done everything in their power to avoid doing the proper thing and rebuild the twin towers. This trancends politics, it shows that the USA is no longer a great nation that can bebuild after suffering a loss. See http://www.twintowersalliance.com/ for more. If this had happened in the 1940s, we’d all be speaking Japanese by now.
Hugh, this speaks more to the economic state in which we find our selves, and the huge cost of building sky-scrapers. I also think that in the furture, NYC, and all cities will continue to grow and become densers.