ARCHITECTURE

further downtown, on which stands the New York Stock
Exchange where, as it happens, shares in Forest City Enterprises
are traded daily.
As the ULI case study confirms, in some ways
New York by Gehry is unusual; in others it is not. When
the project began, it was planned as a mixture of condominium
and rental units designed to profit from the strong
growth in the Financial District’s heretofore-limited residential
market (slowed by the September 11, 2001 attacks
but picked up again several years later). The timing involved
in bringing the building’s 899 units to market had
to balance market volatility with the scheduled phase-out
of tax abatements available through the federal Liberty
Bonds program, established in the wake of 9/11 to stimulate
development in the area. With the federal subsidy
soon to expire, the developers moved up the construction
start date to comply. They also revised their pro forma
midstream into one based solely on rental units on the assumption
that the local condominium market was fast becoming
saturated. In 2009, in the midst of the international
financial crisis, but with federal subsidies still in place,
Forest City Ratner halted construction and renegotiated
work contracts with construction unions (some of whom
who would later join the Occupy Wall Street protests),
lowering construction costs by $25 million. The architect,
too, paid a price, when Ratner renegotiated downward
the deal to use Frank Gehry’s name on the building and
in its marketing materials. Still, Gehry must have been relieved
when his clients decided not to shorten the tower
mid-construction to half of the projected 76 stories, a
solution under serious consideration at the time to limit
the risks amplified by the crisis. 6
Ratner’s equity partner in the building was the
National Electric Benefit Fund (NEBF), a pension fund for
electrical workers, who were represented in the financing
by National Real Estate Advisors (NREA). Of the $680
million in bonds issued to finance the project, slightly less
than one-third, or $204 million, were tax free Liberty
Bonds. In April 2008, the New York City Housing Development
Corporation (HDC) announced: “The Beekman
Tower [8 Spruce Street] Liberty Bond program generated
approximately $6 million in fees that HDC will devote
to financing affordable housing.” 7 In midsummer 2011, as
protesters planned the occupation of Zuccotti Park for the
fall, the financing for 8 Spruce Street was restructured. A
year and a half later, in December 2012, Ratner and NEBF
sold 49 percent of their jointly held equity in the project
to the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College
Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF)—a financial
services organization that specializes in non-profit
industries, including higher education—in a transaction
that valued the property at $1.05 billion. 8 As of 2012, the
building’s owners took in a net annual income after debt
service of approximately $25 million, roughly equal to the
concessions made by the unions during construction. 9
Officially, Frank Gehry designed 8 Spruce Street.
Or rather, Gehry Partners LLP did, in collaboration with
Swanke Hayden Connell Architects (who designed the
brick-clad public school at its base), along with James Corner
Field Operations, Piet Oudolf Gardens and Landscapes,
WSP Cantor Seinuk, Philip Habib & Associates, and others.
This group was responsible for the building’s exterior
form and for its interiors, which combine to give New York
by Gehry what the property’s website calls a “distinctive
aesthetic” marked by “undulating waves of stainless steel
that reflect the changing light.” 10 But it is also possible to
say that the building was designed by another set of forces,
of which the name “Gehry” is just an expression. It would
be reductive to call this set of forces “real estate,” or even
“capital.” Let us be more precise and say what the Occupy
Wall Street protesters intuited: that the building and
others like it were designed by inequality. This, and not its
98 99