Tall & Urban News

Construction will start in early 2021 on what could be Shanghai's third tallest skyscraper on the North Bund waterfront in Hongkou District.

The 480-meter landmark structure will echo the Lujiazui skyscrapers across the Huangpu River.

The new building could become the tallest structure in Puxi, surpassing the 320-meter high Sinar Mas Plaza tower, the current tallest also on the North Bund and the third-tallest in the city, after the 632-meter Shanghai Tower and the 492-meter Shanghai World Financial Center in Lujiazui.

More than 10 companies from both home and abroad are negotiating with the North Bund to set up headquarters or offices in the new building, said Liu Jun, executive vice director of the North Bund Development Office.

Other key projects near completion on the North Bund include the city's third Raffles City mall and the city's first Broadway-style theater.

The mall, which will open to the public in 2021, will cover 120,000 square meters of shopping area with three stories above ground and two underground levels. 

The theater, named North Bund SIIC Center, will be finished structurally by the end of the year to cover a total of 240,000 square meters. It will feature a 2,000-seat theater which will mainly stage Broadway musicals to locals, he added.

Thanks to the new round of development on the North Bund, Hongkou has managed to reverse the economic slowdown since March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and achieved rapid growth on the financial, shipping, and other sectors, said Wu Xinbao, the Party secretary of Hongkou.

"The growth rates of GDP and tax revenue of Hongkou in the first half of the year rank the top among downtown districts. The financial sector has increased by nearly 40 percent," Wu told a press conference on Sunday.

The shipping industry of the district, mainly based on the North Bund has reversed the loss since June and made an 8.9 percent increase on year in August.

Since the blueprint for the North Bund was publicized on February 20, 2020 the waterfront has attracted increasing global attention. A total of 171 projects have signed on to base on the riverside region with total investment of ¥100 billion (US$14.7 billion), Wu said.

“Every building on the North Bund will be green and intelligent as well as interconnected,” Wu added.

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