Houston Community News >> Shanghai Skyscraper Almost Complete
9/13/2007 (AP)-- After a more
than a decade of delays, China's tallest building is slicing through Shanghai's
hazy, skyscraper-studded skyline a new trophy built by a Japanese property
tycoon.
The 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center, a 1,614 foot wedge-shaped tower
with a rectangular hole at the very top, will be topped out Friday as its last
beam is laid.
In a city whose skyline evinces the belief 'the taller the better,' the building
is bound to be a major tourist destination and landmark.
With China's economy growing nearly 12 percent a year and stock and real estate
prices soaring, 'the timing is just about the best it could be,' said the
builder, Minoru Mori.
'When I saw the building this morning, at its full height, I thought it's really
beautiful. I think we've really succeeded,' Mori told reporters at Shanghai's
Jinmao Tower, a silver spire next door to the World Financial Center that at
1,381 feet was China's tallest building until now.
Mori's visions of a 'vertical garden city' have transformed the landscape of his
hometown of Tokyo with mammoth, mixed-use redevelopment projects such as
Roppongi Hills, Ark Hills and Atago Green Hills.
The $1 billion Shanghai project by the developer's flagship Mori Building Co.,
due for completion in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is a monument to the
city's ambitions to reclaim its status as a key international center.
It's also evidence that despite the political tensions that flare up between
China and Japan at regular intervals, business is business.
Mori acquired the land for the huge project, in the city's Lujiazui financial
district, in 1994. Piling work began in 1997, and then halted for six years
after the Asian financial crisis wiped out demand for new office space.
By the time the project was revived in 2003, Mori had proposed and won approval
from the Shanghai authorities to expanding its size to make it the world's
tallest _ a trophy for China and symbol of its growing affluence and economic
might.
The tower, buttressed by a conference center and shopping mall, will eventually
house 70 floors of office space meant to accommodate 12,000 people, with a
hotel, restaurants and an observatory at the top.
Taiwan's Taipei 101, at 1,667 feet, beat the building's height, taking the
tallest sweepstakes in 2004. Developers of a skyscraper in oil-rich Dubai
recently declared theirs the world's tallest building when construction reached
1,680 feet _ and the building is still far from finished.
There were other hurdles along the way, including a fire just weeks ago. Sparked
by welding work, it broke out in an elevator shaft on the 40th floor of the
building and was extinguished after more than an hour, without any casualties
reported.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the building
was redesigned into a so-called 'megastructure,' with four huge pillars to make
it stronger, Mori said.
Later, the builders altered another key design feature _ a circular cutout near
the top _ after complaints that it resembled the rising sun on Japan's flag, a
symbol reviled by many Chinese because of Japan's brutal occupation of the
country in World War II. Mori obliged, changing it to a rectangle.
'For us it wasn't such a big deal to change it and it pleased the Shanghai
authorities,' he said. 'We were happy to do it because it didn't cause any real
delays.'
Mori shrugged off the issue of political tensions _ real enough that they flared
into sometimes violent anti-Japanese protests in Shanghai and other Chinese
cities in 2005.
Construction never halted because of the protests or any other political
problems, he said.
'We were never bullied because we were Japanese,' he said. 'This is everyone's
landmark which belongs to the Shanghainese and will be the pride of Shanghai.'
Mori Building claims nearly full occupancy in its two other mainland China
projects and given strong interest from many international financial firms
expects occupancy in the new building to be at 90 percent by the end of 2008,
said Hiroo Mori, the tycoon's son-in-law and a managing director of the company.
He said plans call for rents of more than $3 per square meter per day, higher
than originally expected. Higher than forecast profitability means that the
company expects to recoup its investment within 15 years.
'So far, this project has surpassed our expectations,' he said.
Contributed by AP