Shanghai Tower-China’s tallest building construction progress

Shanghai Tower -China’s tallest building construction progress

Bloomberg News

When completed in 2015, the Shanghai Tower will be China’s tallest building. The 632-meter (2,074-feet) skyscraper will also deepen a glut of offices in the city, putting pressure on rents.

The project, in the Lujiazui financial district, will add 220,000 square meters (2.4 million square feet) of office space, or more than 10 percent of the new supply forecast for the city in 2015, according to RET Property Consultancy Ltd. About 2 million square meters of grade-A offices will be added between 2014 and 2015, more than double the supply in the previous two years, according to broker Savills Plc.

Tallest Towers

Once finished, Shanghai Tower will rank as the world’s tallest building after the 828-meter Burj Khalifa in Dubai, data compiled by Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat show. It will surpass China’s current record holder, the 492-meter Shanghai World Financial Center, which is diagonally across Dongtai Road and houses the local offices of Google Inc. and Ernst & Young LLP .

Lujiazui, on the east side of the Huangpu River in Pudong and across from the Bund historical waterfront area, has evolved from rice paddies three decades ago into Shanghai’s main financial district. The 421-meter Jin Mao Tower, now the city’s second tallest, sits across from Shanghai Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center.

Most offices being built over the next two years will be located outside prime areas where land is becoming scarce. About 70 percent of the new office space expected by 2015 will be in non-prime locations including those near Shanghai’s smaller airport in the city’s west and the area where the World Expo was held in 2010, Savills said.

Physical Height

While new offices will mainly be located outside Lujiazui, it may still take time for the 125-story Shanghai Tower to be filled, said Sam Xie, a Shanghai-based property analyst at CBRE. The vacancy rate at Shanghai World Financial Center dropped below 25 percent only three years after the skyscraper opened in 2008, said Xie.

Shanghai Tower, being built at a cost of 10.3 billion yuan ($1.7 billion), will include offices, a luxury hotel and retail space. Developer Shanghai Tower Construction & Development Co. could have gone taller, President Gu Jianping told reporters in Shanghai in August, however the company didn’t aim for physical height when planning the building.

An increasing number of companies have chosen to move out of the traditional commercial areas to locations where rents are less costly and they get more space, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, which estimates companies can save about 50 percent with such moves.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/shanghai-glut-rises-with-tallest-tower-real-estate.html

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Video: Shanghai Tower construction

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Video: Shanghai Tower, China

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Video: Shanghai skyline

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Video: Shanghai in December 2013

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