SHANGHAI, China — 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 today 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.
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