Wednesday, May 18, 2005

UN-believable



Personally, I think the United Nations is a joke and should be expelled from Manhattan. But this story I read today is absolutely crazy.

Instead of kicking the UN out, the federal government is loaning it 1.2 billions dollars to renovate its headquarters. The problem is, that based on what numerous real estate developers have appraised, using square footage and considering possible rates for renovation, this figure of $1.2 billion is multiples of what it should cost. Donald Trump told Kofi Annan that he would do it for under $500 million and got no response. In fact, forget renovation, Trump just spent only $350 million to build a new 90 story building.

This last paragraph of the article I read is particularly nauseating.

American taxpayers have a legitimate interest in knowing the answers to these questions. The renovation is to be financed by a low-interest, 30-year, $1.2 billion loan from the U.S. government. (Kofi Annan's original request for an interest-free loan was turned down.) And, of course, the loan will then be repaid largely by American taxpayers, who foot a little over 20 percent of the U.N.'s bills.
Here is the entire article.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

unlikely that trump built a 90 story tower for $350 million. for that to be true it would have to be a building of about 8600 square feet on each floor, that's pretty small. a city block in nyc is 200 by 600 or 120,000 sq ft to give you an idea

Anonymous said...

I looked it up. The current UN buildings add up to 1,269,189 sq feet of floor space. If they were to just replace them (and I believe they want to rebuild so that they can expand) that would cost $444 million (at a about $350 per square foot built). I don't know what the size of the new building would be but $1.2 billion does sound a bit high.

Anonymous said...

thanks for posting. i love back of the envelope calculations - it is the essence of this particular blog.

if one rents both penthouse apartments, 90A and 90B, it looks like they would get 10,147 square feet. the building looks perfectly rectangular from the top, so maybe the Trump World Tower is this wide throughout.

i tried but couldn't confirm the $350 million figure other than the link i already provided.

here is the apartment link.
http://www.trumpworldtower.com/pages/units.html