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September 21, 2007
Pretty Expensive
Is Bruce Ratner having trouble financing his first Gehry-designed project?
From "Under Cover," the Downtown Express's real estate column:
Frank Gehry’s current design for the Beekman St. tower and K-8 school is spectacular but may never see the light of day because of developer Bruce Ratner’s financing problems, a source tells UnderCover.
Ratner has never released any pictures of the building model because he may want the celebrity architect to shave some costs and fancy features off the tower, our source says, adding that the developer does not yet have the loan to build. The tipster doesn’t think the project is in danger of falling apart, but the school opening may get delayed.
“It’s drop-dead gorgeous,” says our source, who has seen the model and is sympathetic to community concerns about the building’s height. The wavy tower “looks like the ocean’s above you.”
NoLandGrab: Clearly, Gehry and Ratner's caginess is beginning to raise suspicion, since real estate spectators have been eagerly awaiting the final renderings for some time (see, here, here, and here).
We've been keeping tabs on this project, the first Gehry-designed Forest City Ratner collaboration. Though the Beekman St. tower might appear to have little in common with the controversial Atlantic Yards megaproject, two things are worth tracking:
the cost of the public school, which is already slated to be the most expensive school per-square-foot in NYC history, and which is to be borne by the taxpayers, and
the overall price tag, which certainly includes a premium for the global starchitect's services, and is now undoubtedly rising because of the growing costs of financing and building materials, and increasing competition for "as-of-right" subsidies.
[Back in April, Matthew Schuerman reported in The NY Observer some details of the financing structure of the Beekman Street project, including a few stumbling blocks.]
Posted by lumi at September 21, 2007 9:59 AM