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| International-UN-NGOs |
| Kofi's next billion $$ scam: $1.2B renovation of UN bldg |
| 2005-06-03 |
| The United Nations has said its plans to renovate its headquarters at Turtle Bay will cost $1.2 billion. That strikes Donald Trump as far too much. "The United Nations is a mess," the developer said yesterday, "and they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars unnecessarily on this project." And he's not the only one. Several Manhattan real-estate experts told The New York Sun this week that renovating premium office space should cost a fraction, on a per-square-foot basis, of what U.N. officials expect to pay. An executive managing director at the commercial real-estate firm Julien J. Studley Inc., Woody Heller, said a thorough renovation of an office building would probably cost between $85 and $160 per square foot. An executive vice president at Newmark, Scott Panzer, said renovation prices could range between $120 and $200 per square foot. Mr. Panzer, who works with many corporations to redevelop their buildings for future efficiency and energy cost savings, put a price of $70 to $100 per square foot on infrastructure upgrades. Those would include heating; ventilation; air conditioning; replacing the central plant; fenestration (specifically, switching from single-pane to thermal-pane windows); upgrading elevator switch gears, mechanicals, and vertical transportation; improving air quality, and making security upgrades. On top of that amount, another $50 to $100 per square foot would take care of the inside office improvements. ...It would appear, then, that hundreds of millions of dollars are unaccounted for, even on the most generous assumptions. Trump has gone further, expressing the view that the expenses projected by the U.N. can only be the result of graft or incompetence. In a speech on the Senate floor on April 6, 2005, Senator Jeff Sessions recounted his conversation with Trump: Let me share this story with you, which is pretty shocking to me. The $1.2 billion loan the United Nations wants is to renovate a building. Some member of the United Nations, a delegate, apparently, from Europe, had read in the newspaper in New York that Mr. Donald Trump . . . had just completed the Trump World Tower--not a 30-story building like the United Nations, but a 90-story building, for a mere $350 million, less than one-third of that cost. So the European United Nations delegate was curious about the $1.2 billion they were spending on the United Nations. He knew he didn't know what the real estate costs are in New York. So, he called Mr. Trump and they discussed it. Mr. Trump told him that building he built for $350 million was the top of the line. It has the highest quality of anything you would need in it. They discussed the matter, and an arrangement was made for Mr. Trump to meet Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, to discuss the concerns. . . . So according to Mr. Trump, who I talked to personally this morning, they go meet with Mr. Annan, who had asked some staff member to be there . . . When the European asked how these numbers could happen, Mr. Trump said the only way would be because of incompetence, or fraud. That is how strongly he felt about this price tag because he pointed out to me that renovation costs much less than building an entirely new building. So he has a meeting with Mr. Annan, and they have some discussion. And Mr. Trump says these figures can't be acceptable. He told me in my conversation this morning, he said: You can quote me. You can say what I am saying. He said they don't know. The person who had been working on this project for 4 years couldn't answer basic questions about what was involved in renovating a major building. He was not capable nor competent to do the job. He went and worked on it, and talked about it, and eventually made an offer. He said he would manage the refurbishment, the renovation, of the United Nations Building, and he would not charge personally for his fee in managing it. He would bring it in at $500 [million], less than half of what they were expecting to spend, and it would be better. . . . Yet he never received a response from the United Nations. |
| Posted by:thibaud (aka lex) |
| #20 PissChrist, meet ScheistKofi |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-06-03 22:24 |
| #19 Don't forget the lobby art. |
| Posted by: anon 2005-06-03 14:57 |
| #18 "The United Nations is a mess," the developer said yesterday, "and they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars unnecessarily on this project." With two bankruptcies under his belt, I'd listen to The Donald. He sure knows how to spend money unnecessarily. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-06-03 14:57 |
| #17 Doesn't the 1.2Gigabucks include building an entirely new building to house (temporarily...) the Useless Nations while the current building is being renovated? I read that somewhere.... And you have ti factor in the costs of Conferences in Taiwan, Paris, Turkey, to plan the luncheons which will plans the conferences concerning the color of the carpeting..... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-06-03 14:52 |
| #16 Each WTC tower contained about 5 million sq. ft. of space. In addition there were 7 other buildings in the complex for a grand total of 12 million sq. ft. It's kind of difficult to estimate renovation costs when the UN can't even decide if it has 1 or 2.6 million sq.ft. As far as I care, stick their butts on an unused cruise ship and let them work on site (and see the effects) of their projects. Cruise Ships for sale |
| Posted by: ed 2005-06-03 14:42 |
| #15 Ego / turf issues. You inflate the sq footage of everyone's office so that they have bragging rights. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-06-03 14:35 |
| #14 Nice one, Mrs D. Nice joke, that is. BA: those numbers were from the article. The U.N.'s Capital Master Plan states that a total of 2,651,000 square feet will be renovated. Assuming that figure to be correct, the per square foot cost would be $452. But, as reported by the Sun, real estate experts question whether the U.N.'s facilities contain anywhere near that amount of space. According to the U.N.'s website, the organization's headquarters include four main structures comprising 1,029,000 sq ft, as follows: * Secretariat Building: 39 floors and three subfloors, approximately 500,000 square feet. * General Assembly Building: Five total floors, approximately 380 ft. by 160 ft., or 304,000 square feet. * Conference Building: Four stories, approximately 115,000 square feet. * Dag Hammarskjold Library: Four stories and two sublevels, 219 ft. by 84 ft., total 110,376 square feet. |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-06-03 14:31 |
| #13 If Studley's Woody can't show Kofi how to do it, nobody can. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-06-03 14:17 |
| #12 Heres an Idea, F#ck the U.N. F#ck Coffi,F#ck them all. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-06-03 14:03 |
| #11 If they're going to renovate the existing structure for $1.2 billion, even using Kofinomics that means that there's going to have to be an awful lot of demolition. So we just wait until the demolition contractor is finished and then have the New Yawk Department of Public Safety issue a permanent cease and desist order. |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-06-03 14:02 |
| #10 Thibaud, where'd you get those square feet #s? If I recall, it seems to me that (again, this is rough estimate from memory) I heard that each of the twin towers were like 1 million square feet (and each floor was like an acre in size). There's no way in he!! the UN building is near that size (110 stories vs. 30 stories)! |
| Posted by: BA 2005-06-03 13:54 |
| #9 Trump builds a tower 3x as high for 1/3 the cost (and I'm sure Trump's is more extravagent). That means that actually it should be around 1/9 of what they want and probably divide that by 2 (as renovation is probably cheaper than building new). Try and take it out of the $15 billion we're giving for AIDS in Africa, Kofi, if you're sooooooo worried about your precious building. When you get a Senator from Alabama and Donald Trump agreeing on this issue....look out! |
| Posted by: BA 2005-06-03 13:52 |
| #8 LOL, TGA. Kofi's new "Bolton Building": http://www.chemeco.com/NorthDakota%20Outhouse.jpg |
| Posted by: Tom 2005-06-03 13:33 |
| #7 Lots of opprtunity for documents -n- stuff to go 'missing' during this renovation. You know how sloppy those contractors can be... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-06-03 13:30 |
| #6 I suggest the Bolton Plan of renovation |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-06-03 13:28 |
| #5 Note that these jokers can't even agree on how many square feet the UN bldg actually has. The estimates range from ~1m to over 2M sq ft. No wonder Bill Clinton wants in on this game. |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-06-03 12:45 |
| #4 Have to admire his audacity. No need to pay off Pasqua or Galloway or Zhirinovsky this time. A cool $700M profit - minimum. Nice. |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-06-03 12:43 |
| #3 he'd better not try to muscle in on anything more lucrative ... the russian mobs might take offense. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-06-03 12:37 |
| #2 Who's the contractor on this job, Kojo? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-06-03 12:37 |
| #1 What next for Don Kofi? Cornering the midtown garbage collection racket? |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-06-03 12:32 |