U.N. Will Lease, Not Build, Temporary Office Space

The U.N. is not going ahead with its plans to build a temporary office tower in Midtown while its headquarters is being renovated. Originally, Mayor Bloomberg had proposed building a new, temporary headquarters for the world body over Robert Moses playground near its current building, however approvals and construction timing seem to be issues. Instead, the U.N. will look to rent space in Midtown (7 World Trade Center had been reviewed, but the U.N. thought it would be too long a commute for officials based in Midtown). Well, some lucky broker will hit the jackpot is there's 200,000 square feet of space around. Ah, remember when the U.N. was thinking about moving to Brooklyn for a spell? It's still in play, according to their report, since Brooklyn is the least expensive.

And the U.S. government has final approval of any U.N. renovation plans - and has only approved $23.5 million of the over $1 billion the U.N. needs. Mayor Bloomberg is also still pushing another Turtle Bay tower on them - this is almost as messy at Freedom Tower!

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By Jen Chung in News on April 18, 2006 9:35 AM

Comments [rss]

rikomatic

It's not a question of "commute." The entire UN community is based around the east midtown area -- all of the national government missions, associated businesses and service providers, non-profits, and related intl organizations (EU, World Bank, etc) are in that neighborhood. They come and go from the UN, often several times a day, from meetings to their offices and back. Moving that downtown or to Brooklyn would severely hamper the functioning of the entire system.

People often forget that the UN is the largest employer in the New York area outside of city government. Making reasonable arrangements to minimize the disruptions from their capital improvement plan makes good sense for the city.

Dave J

umm...

Maybe Sheldon Solow could rent some of the space that he is building on the ConEd site one block away? Six million sq feet?

http://therealestate.observer.com/2006/03/con-ed-waterside-project.html