Your City's Policies For Unfinished Skyscrapers

[IMBY]

Here, in Las Vegas, we have the 63-story Fontainebleau Tower, with construction being halted in 11/2008, and since then, it just sits there unfinished, 5 years later, with no resumption of further construction scheduled.

The owner says: Waiting for the economy to recover!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontain...sort_Las_Vegas

I'm just curious, if this project were sitting in Chicago, San Francisco, NYC, what would those cities be doing about it? They'd be powerless to do anything about it?

Do you know of any other examples of this in other cities in the country, unfinished skyscrapers/buildings sitting there for years, with no completion?

[mhays]

What could you do?

If they could build, they probably would. Owners of stalled projects generally have urgent desire to move them forward, to avoid deterioration, carrying costs, etc., until the point where they cut their losses and bail.

You could penalize the owners, but that might drive them (actually the controlling LLC) into bankruptcy, which would end up in the courts for a while.

So you'll generally require little more than maintaining public safety.

[simms3_redux]

Jacksonville has an unfinished bland, stucco condo tower on the edge of downtown that was the victim of both the recession and a tragedy involving the parking deck, which collapsed in construction, killing workers.

These pictures are from 2009 when they removed the tower crane, but the building still stands as-is.



http://www.metrojacksonville.com/for...c,3734.30.html

And from a forumer on MetroJacksonville in a thread related to the tower above, discussing the possibilities, this was brought up:

Originally Posted by Scrub Palmetto,358051

I wish someone could evaluate the structure and put an end to the speculation about whether it will HAVE to be demolished or not.

There is precedent for this sort of thing. Here in Kansas City, the construction of a concrete high rise apartment building was halted in 1930 due to the stock market crash. It was left exposed for about 14 years before finally being completed in the mid-1940s. I'm sure there are other examples from the same era.

This is how it looked in 1940, after a decade of extreme winters and summers (KC has both):



This is it today:



It wasn't as exposed as Berkman II, but the top 3 floors were, and none of the others had windows.

[LMich]

I really wouldn't think this would be that different from city-to-city. Eventually, an unfinished project becomes blight if not properly maintained, so you'd just fine the owners like you would any blighted property, and then eventually you could probably take the owners to court. I doubt there is a specific municipal policy for high-rises than any other blight in a city.

[scalziand]

In Chicago, the Waterview Tower got stalled by the recession ~30 stories up. This was a reinforced concrete structure that was left entirely exposed to the elements from 2009 to 2012, when a more experienced developer bought the project and incorporated the stub into a smaller project.

Waterview Tower Thread
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=119993

111 West Wacker Thread
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=185023

[IMBY]

Parked behind the unfinished Fontainebleau tower is 4 luxury 40-story condo towers (Turnberry Place) who have to look out at the unfinished tower every day, with an occasional glass panel falling out!

It would be so nice if Icahn would do something with this building, if nothing else, tear it down!

[downtownpdx]

In Portland, the Park Avenue West Tower stalled construction in April 2009, (and just resumed about a month ago), and left the abandoned crane up for a while. But Nordstrom sits directly across a narrow street and sued the developer because the crane would swing over its property and was a "nuisance." The crane was removed and the city put up wooden fencing around the block with a mural to make it less of an eyesore.

Don't know what the city would do with the construction site otherwise... guess they just assume and hope the project will resume at some point.

Gaytor Rasmussen, a Washington crane inspector who has also operated and erected tower cranes, agreed that leaving the crane up was a good move. It would cost roughly $40,000 to take the crane down, and another $40,000 to erect it again, he said.

In the 1946 case United States v. Causby, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that navigable airspace was public highway and within public domain.

But the ruling went on to say that “if the landowner is to have full enjoyment of the land, he must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere.”

Ross Caron, a spokesman with the city of Portland Bureau of Development Services, said the bureau has no authority to regulate cranes. The state, he said, has a department that makes sure cranes are manufactured to certain standards, but there isn’t an authority that oversees how cranes are used or what they do.

“It’s usually dealt with as a civil issue,” he said.

Read more: http://djcoregon.com/news/2011/07/12...#ixzz2o2RG2Dew




Read more: http://djcoregon.com/news/2011/07/12...#ixzz2o2Qtjudg

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by scalziand

In Chicago, the Waterview Tower got stalled by the recession ~30 stories up. This was a reinforced concrete structure that was left entirely exposed to the elements from 2009 to 2012, when a more experienced developer bought the project and incorporated the stub into a smaller project.

Waterview Tower Thread
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=119993

111 West Wacker Thread
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=185023

The Fairbanks at Cityfront Plaza was also planned to be a taller building and then got put on hold for 4 years until someone grabbed it and finished it as a shorter condo project:

http://www.emporis.com/building/the-...chicago-il-usa

[Roadcruiser1]

The Hearst Tower in New York City was built on top of a never finished skyscraper from the Great Depression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst_Tower_(Manhattan)

http://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.c...man-foster.jpg


Another good one is the Metropolitan Life North Building. It was supposed to be taller than the Empire State Building, but the Great Depression hit. It's base was finished though. Today if Metropolitan Life wants to finish the building they still can, because the base was designed for it to be finished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrop...North_Building

Current base.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...th_St_crop.jpg


What could have been..........
http://www.replicabuildings.com/imag...posed-1024.jpg