Tall & Urban News

One of the final pieces of the World Trade Center puzzle may be put into place—albeit in a somewhat risky fashion. Bloomberg reports that Larry Silverstein, the head of Silverstein Properties (which owns many of the WTC sites), is looking into building the skyscraper without an anchor tenant in place.

“I think we’re in an increasingly good spot, [and] in a good position, to do that,” Silverstein told Bloomberg, noting that if the firm began construction in the near future, the building wouldn’t be finished for another three or four years—theoretically enough time to find a client to lease a large amount of space.

But that’s proven to be difficult in recent years: Initially, News Corp and 21st Century Fox were set to move their headquarters from Midtown to the Financial District, occupying about 1 million square feet (92,930 square meters) at 2WTC. But the media conglomerate pulled out in early 2016, preferring to maintain its lease uptown, and there hasn’t been much movement on a new anchor tenant since. There is also a bevy of new, swank office buildings already on the rise throughout the city—Hudson Yards, Manhattan West, and the new towers on the rise in Midtown East among them. Bjarke Ingels Group is still the architect of choice for the building, which would potentially span 2.8 million square feet (260,128 square meters), and have a stepped-back design (renderings of which were memorably included in the city’s pitch for Amazon’s HQ2).

For more on this story, go to Curbed.