Building the opulet $2.2-billion AOL Time Warner Center along Manhattan's Columbus Circle is like "mounting two, 900-lb gorillas on a jungle gym..."
"There is nothing small potatoes about this Big Apple jobsaid to be the largest commercial development in the city since the 12-million-sq-ft World Trade Center that opened in the early 1970s. AOL Time Warner is financed by a $1.3-billion loan from General Motors Acceptance Corp. in what is called the "largest placement of private financing in the U.S. for construction purposes... Size would not have been as big an issue had the village not been so vertical and the program so varied. The stacking plan defies description. The uses are dissimilar but architecturally, physically and mechanically co-dependent. And everybody paid for it."
Thanks to Chris Steins
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