When Donald Trump buys air space, many a person New York starts holding his
breath. What is the real estate mogul getting up to next? Well, at the
moment, what he’s up to is nothing less than the world’s tallest apartment
house.
In the spring of 2001 it will tower above the East Side of Manhattan to a
height of 249 metres and 12 centimetres.
New York’s latest record-setting building will dwarf the United Nations
headquarters on the East River and dominate the entire skyline between the
U.N. building and the posh Upper East Side.
To accomplish this, Trump had to operate in utmost secrecy – not the
simplest thing to ask of an egocentric who has proudly put his name on all
sorts of extravagant projects, be it the casinos of Atlantic City, New
Jersey, hotels in Florida or office and apartment buildings in New York.
Without drawing any attention, the 54-year-old billionaire bought the air
rights above 15 buildings in a ring around his newest site at the
intersection of First Avenue and United Nations Plaza.
Having done this, he had fulfilled the most important bureaucratic
condition for what is to be the Trump World Tower. Its estimated cost: 370
million dollars.
In the meantime, the square, slender building is unstoppably rising higher
and higher. Tens of thousands of tourists have already photographed it,
while most of the neighbours are enraged by it.
All the prominent figures of the neighbourhood – from usually influential
New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the former chairman of Diners
Club, Seymour Flug – united to retain expensive lawayers to try to stop
Trump.
It was all in vain. The neighbours now must come to terms with the
realization that in New York, some “really tall” buildings can get built,
the judges ruled.
The fact that the new building is casting shadows on those around it, or
ruining the view of the local residents, is something which is all part of
the “architectural history of the City of New York”, they added.
A single square metre in the Trump Tower costs 6,000 dollars. The larger
apartments with the best views up on the 72nd floor and with their own
swimming pool cannot be had for less than 11 million dollars.
Although they haven’t even been built yet, the apartments were already
sold a long time ago. For absolute skyscraper freaks the only choice is to
change cities – in Chicago, for example, the world’s tallest building is to
be finished in 2003.
That project by the real estate company Scott Tobermann is to have 92
floors and some of the apartments will be up in the clouds at 360 metres up,
with a view over Lake Michigan reaching as far north as Canada.
But since that building will also have offices and television studios, it
won’t be able to contend with the Trump World Tower to be the planet’s
tallest apartment building.
Nor can the the World Trade Center in New York or the Hilton Hotel in
Shanghai qualify for that definition since they are not purely apartment
houses.
