By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Completion of four proposed buildings at the World Trade Center site could further glut the already over saturated office space market in downtown Manhattan.
Two towers that are already under construction will add 4.4 million square feet to Lower Manhattan's supply of office space, while experts at Cushman & Wakefield Inc. predict a record-breaking vacancy rate for the area, Bloomberg reported.
Construction of a third tower is contingent on the site's owner Larry Silverstein raising $300 million, according to a deal struck Thursday with the Port Authority. A fourth tower has been put off for the time being.
“The amount of space that’s potentially going to come to the market will increase availabilities and put pressure on pricing,” Kenneth McCarthy, Cushman’s head of New York- area research, told Bloomberg. “It will be quite a while before it can be absorbed.”
The vacancy rate for downtown office buildings is expected to exceed 14 percent, the highest since 1997, by 2011, two years before any of the new towers are expected to be completed in 2013, Bloomberg said.
One World Trade Center, the first of the buildings for the Ground Zero site to begin construction, will be the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, contributing 2.6 million square feet of office space, according to Bloomberg.
However, John “Janno” Lieber, who is in charge of the World Trade Center unit at Silverstein Properties, says he's not worried.
“We are not building for today’s market,” Lieber told a New York State Senate panel in September, as quoted by Bloomberg. “These buildings will take four or five years to build and when they open, the city will be in a much stronger position. We need to be ready.”
