The Southern Metropolis Daily reported construction on Shenzhen’s tallest building has begun on a vacant lot in Futian’s central business district.The building will house the headquarters of Shenzhen-based financial conglomerate Ping An Insurance and will cost an estimated RMB10 billion (US$1.46 billion) to RMB15 billion.
Work has started on a 24-hour basis on the excavations of the 18,931-square-meter lot opposite the Coco Park shopping mall, which had previously been used as a temporary parking lot.
Ping An, which acquired the land for RMB1.66 billion in November 2007, states the skyscraper is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2014. Ping An, China’s second-largest life insurer, will use its own cash to fund the skyscraper instead of obtaining a bank loan.
No one is talking about the final height. This is skyscraperism and is a game oft played by developers who will bung on a few extra floors to keep the tallest title. Previous media reports said Ping An planned to build a 646-meter, 115-floor office tower, which will be taller than the 492-meter Shanghai World Financial Center, the tallest building on the mainland. It could be taller than the 632-meter Shanghai Tower, which will also be completed in 2014.
Ping An has denied such reports. As if a serious real estate company would be that childish. The very idea is silly.Shenzhen is developing the Futian CBD into a financial center, dubbing it Shenzhen’s Wall Street, according to a government plan.
Shenzhen News reports that since Ping An bought rights to the land in the Futian CBD in November 2007, 13 other well-known companies, including CITIC Bank, Guosen Securities and China Merchants Securities, have acquired land to build their office buildings in the area.
On a personal note, the writer was stationed in Hong Kong in 1953 in the Intelligence Corps and would go up to the border in the New Territories and view with small interest the very, very small village of Shenzhen which was a few huts and a lot of mud. Times have changed. (Note the illustrations are NOT of the planned opening of the Ping An tower. They are about the Empire State Building and the movie King Kong. Well before your time. By damn, that Fay Wray was a brave young gal.)