Towers Finally Eclipse Terminal Below

Three designs for the new New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal have been unveiled. Each design is over forty stories in height and pay homage to the bus terminal.

By: Kathryn Michaud

After years of planning an office tower above the bustling Port Authority bus terminal, 3 contending designs have been released for public viewing. The designs, all of which exceed forty stories in height, each at least pay homage to the bus terminal below. Three separate design firms were involved in the conceptual renderings, and each has its own appeal and design features.

Certainly the most unusual of the designs is the offering put forth from Rogers Sturk Harbour & Partners. The firm, which is also designing the new Tower 3 at the WTC site, offers up a post-modern minimalist design for its structure. Featuring four featureless rectangular boxes surrounded by open metal trusswork, the forty-two story offering from the London-based firm most closely echoes the design features of the terminal over which it will loom.

As a polar opposite to the striking minimalism of the first design, the design put forth by Manhattan-based Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects offers a more clean, crisp look. The tallest of the three designs on offer, the tower will boast 48 stories of office space, and will enclose the X-shaped reinforcing braces behind the surface of the tower. The almost mirror finish of the tower will reflect an enormous amount of light and will allow the light to shine on the streets below.

Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, based in New Haven, has proposed a design that is less extreme in its design. Classical design elements such as wave-patterned curtain walls on the north and south sides of the building will draw the eye of the viewer away from the bus terminal below, and focus it on the monolithic structure of steel and glass that rises above it.

The buildings, regardless of their designs, are to house 1.3 million square feet of office space, and are to begin construction in late 2009, or early 2010; construction is expected to take 4 years.The space occupied by the building is owned by the Port Authority will be leased, if all goes according to plan, for 99 years at a cost of nearly $345 million. In addition to the initial revenue realized by the lease, the Port Authority is also requesting a portion of the rental proceeds paid by occupants. It should amount to approximately $125 per square foot, totalling nearly $163 million.