New York, Jun 11 (EFE).-The Twin Towers’ Ground Zero has starting this Monday a new skyscraper, 3 World Trade Center, which will occupy the vacancy left by the Marriott hotel, destroyed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The project has taken eight years to complete, largely because of the difficulties of finding investors to act as guarantors for the construction. One of the obstacles was finding department stores that would contribute to the expenses of the work.
The building will combine stores on the bottom four floors with offices all the way up, such as that of the GroupM advertising agency, which will lease nine floors – 65,000 sq. meters (700,000 sq. feet) in all – and which plans to move into the building this July.
However, 62 percent of the building is still looking for occupants and some companies that have already signed the rental contract will not occupy their offices until 2019, so it seems the skyscraper will take quite awhile to be fully occupied.
The work of architect Rogers Stirk Harbour – Pritzker prizewinner in 2017 – the skyscraper has a height of 329 meters (1,080 feet), 88 floors and a total floor space of 232,000 sq. meters, of which some 140,000 will be dedicated to stores.
The 3 World Trade Center is the third building in the reconstruction plan for Ground Zero, led since 2002 by architect Daniel Lieskind and which today has other skyscrapers awaiting completion.