Posted on 03/27/2009 6:46:39 PM PDT by kellynla
It took three years of stop-and-start negotiations, but a Chinese real estate company is finally signing a lease for space in a 102-story skyscraper under construction at ground zero, becoming the first commercial tenant for the rebuilt World Trade Center.
The Beijing Vantone Industrial Company has agreed to a 23-year lease for floors 64 through 69 in what will be known as 1 World Trade Center, at the southeast corner of West and Vesey Streets. The $3.1 billion office building, once called the Freedom Tower, is scheduled to be completed in 2013.
Vantone plans to build a cultural and business center for Chinese companies doing business in the United States and American companies working in China.
“The fact that the Chinese government would approve this major investment in what amounts to a speculative venture is significant,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business and policy group that has long supported the Vantone project. “It could create the anchor for a number of other international tenancies from China and elsewhere. Maybe we’ll see the World Trade Center finally become a world trade center.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No wonder they changed its name, dropping the reference to “Freedom”.
I guess the Communists have changed their name, too. :-)
.. that’s the More ze-DUNG Towers.
And they even get to rename it apparently.
Well, maybe if Al Qaeda destroys it again, we won’t feel as bad about it.
Guess we know how a crack ho feels when she sells her dignity.
Might as well set up a home base they own us anyway thanks to these idiots in Washington.
Building this outlandish monument to the egos of architects and developers is the dumbest thing NYC has done in quite a while. So far the only tenants they’ve been able to scrounge up are a bunch of government agencies and now one Chinese company. The employees of free, private companies simply don’t want to work in one of these idiotic structures.
They didn’t want to work in the old WTC either — the place was crammed to the rafters with teensy little foreign “trading” companies. The ultra high security was a pain in the @$$ and so were the mile-long elevator rides for something as simple as grabbing a sandwich for lunch. The impossibility of safe evacuation in an emergency was yet another huge downside. The evacuation plans necessarily ended at the front doors — so now you’ve got tens of thousands of people in the immediate perimeter of the evacuated building, and no way to get them out of the area quickly, due to the tiny streets and sidewalks of downtown NYC. So what happens? Lots of people got out of the towers on 9/11, only to get killed on the ground when the buildings came down on top of them.
If they’d dumped the super-skyscraper nonsense, and built a bunch of normal sized Manhattan office buildings, they’d have had no trouble leasing the space to private businesses. This thing aggravates me so much, I’d actually be happy to see it blasted down BEFORE it’s occupied. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda & Co. is surely working on plans to take it down AFTER it’s occupied. It’s a big, flashy invitation to do just that.
G’night, maybe ‘til Monday. Gotta do the GGG Digest, and may do that before I go to bed.
I can bet that Gazprom and Lukoil are going to rent space there...
They destroyed a neighborhood with a lot of character—”Radio Row,” which was where New Yorkers went to get bargains on new and old electronics stuff of every kind.
A friend of a friend who worked in the WTC had escaped, and was running with a woman who had also escaped. She was hit and killed by a jumper. When I heard the story, weeks after, the guy was still waking up from nightmares, vomiting.
The ChiComs haven't been commies for some decades now, ever since Deng Xiaoping saw the light. While maintaining the symbolism of socialism, they've morphed into fascists and have so far managed brilliantly to harness the power of capitalism while maintaining themselves in control.
By the end of his first term, Obama aims to accomplish the opposite transition.
“Totalitarianism Tower One”.
Oh really?
“The ChiComs haven’t been commies for some decades now”
Maybe you should clue the CIA and the 1,338,612,968 (July 2009 est.) who live there then, Mr./Ms. Know-it-all
China
Government type: Communist state
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
“The ChiComs haven’t been commies for some decades now?”
Oh really. Well since the Admin Moderator chose to delete the pix I posted of Chi-Com exectuions. Here is a link to Friends of Tibet’s webpage that has pix of executions. I guess the Chi-Com soldiers didn’t get your memo. Stick to what you know...whatever that is... because I have “up close & personal” combat experience on this issus.
Link:WARNING: Gruesome Photographs. Viewer Discretion Advised.) http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3F_adv_prop%3Dimage%26ni%3D18%26va%3Dchinese%2Bexecutions%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501%26xargs%3D0%26pstart%3D1%26b%3D19&w=427&h=284&imgurl=www.friendsoftibet.org%2Fmain%2Fimages%2Ftibet_execution_1.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.friendsoftibet.org%2Fmain%2Fexecution.html&size=13.2kB&name=tibet_execution_1.jpg&p=chinese+executions&type=JPG&oid=d22299dd51e0548e&no=21&tt=108&sigr=11h8ntavt&sigi=11o0lud9t&sigb=13rfi6tl2
You could post Auschwitz pictures also, but that would not prove Hitler was a communist.
If the ChiCom government had not given up the communist command economy years ago in favor of market capitalism, China would not be the economic powerhouse it is today. In order to achieve its economic success, it has had to allow scope for experimentation and entrepreneurship. China is actually quite free today, as long as you don't threaten the regime. If you do that, you can get shot, after no trial or a very efficient one.
It remains to be seen whether it will continue in the current mode, slowly evolve into a democracy, or encounter a crisis and have another revolution.
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