How to fill 10 million square feet of office space?
The Trade Center’s viability as an office location is still a matter of debate. Many of the tenants in the twin towers left downtown after 9/11, and few major tenants have been signed in recent months.
Four huge office towers were designed to replace the twin towers’ combined 10 million square feet of space. (For comparison, the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet high and has 2.8 million square feet of rentable space):
4 WTC ( 977 feet high, 2.5 million sq. ft.) opened in 2013 and is 62% leased. The largest tenant is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Trade Center site. This summer the building announced deals with several new tenants, including ones in communications, accounting and medical research.
1 WTC (1776 feet, 3 million sq. ft.) received its first office workers in November and opened its observation deck in May. The office space is 63% leased. Conde Nast publications occupies 25 floors (1 million square feet). Moody’s reportedly is negotiating a lease for about 80,000 square feet.
3 WTC (1079 feet, 2.5 million sq. ft.), now under construction, should be finished in about three years. The largest committed tenant is GroupM, which has taken about 500,000 square feet.
2 WTC ( 1270 feet, 2.8 mill sq. ft.) is being redesigned by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels to accommodate the Murdoch companies, which have signed a letter of intent to rent the lower half of the 100-story building. Anticipated opening: 2020.