The World Trade Center’s reconstruction has been in the works for over fifteen years, with multiple iterations of 200 Greenwich Street, aka Two World Trade Center, making the media rounds. Now, the New York Post’s Steve Cuozzo has reported that Deutsche Bank may be returning to the WTC, with the firm possibly set to lease 1.3 million square feet of space within the site’s last unbuilt supertall.
The report includes additional information that Deutsche Bank may still choose Related’s latest office tower at 50 Hudson Yards, where Blackrock has already committed to 850,000 square feet.
With 50 Hudson Yards already rising regardless of Deutsche Bank’s commitment, the move Downtown would be substantially more beneficial for all New Yorkers. The corner of Church and Greenwich Street will remain a perpetual construction zone until 200 Greenwich is fully completed, and with steel rising for the Vehicle Security Center underneath the future Performing Arts Center, the two projects could potentially be completed around the same time.
Unlike 50 Hudson Yards, 200 Greenwich Street benefits from having its foundation already completed, though as YIMBY reported in an interview with the project’s architect Bjarke Ingels of BIG Architects, if the new design is used, there will have to be extensive re-configurations of existing columns. The finished version of the foundation was built to support Norman Foster’s original proposal.
BIG’s 200 Greenwich, composite by Jose Hernandez for YIMBY, image originally by Joe Woolhead
As luck would have it, Deutsche Bank’s move signal a return to Foster’s design. That iteration of 200 Greenwich Street was shelved because the previous potential anchor tenant, Newscorp, required floorplates far different from those used by financial companies. While the Financial District has mostly been abandoned by the companies from which it gets its name, the return of Deutsche Bank would help round out the mix of diverse corporations taking space at the new World Trade Center, and also potentially allow its original intention to be realized.
No commitment has been formally announced yet, but whenever work does begin at 200 Greenwich Street, it should take about three years for the tower to be completed.
Subscribe to YIMBY’s daily e-mail
Follow YIMBYgram for real-time photo updates
Like YIMBY on Facebook
Follow YIMBY’s Twitter for the latest in YIMBYnews
Change or not change there will be progress.
How could they move into 50HY if 90% of the building is already committed to Mitsui?
Mitsui bought 90% of the project but they won’t actually be taking offices there.
Whoever the tenant, please don’t let the final 2 WTC become the horrible boxy Bjarke Ingels version!
No mention of this pipe dream of returning to the previous design in Cuozzo’s article so I would leave it in the pipe dream file.
Either way its good news and hopefully we can walk down there someday free of the construction.
I’m betting if DB takes this Tower (which I pray to god that they do) it will be Fosters design. That was designed for a bank specifically. The foundation is already there. I feel like that would be the best bet. The redesign was specifically for Fox, and with them gone so should the design.
This seems like a replay of when News Corp used 2 World Trade as leverage to get a better deal somewhere else. DB will end up in Hudson Yards with a better deal.