BY SAM SPOKONY | Any Tribecans who were browsing the real estate blogs Thursday probably spotted an alarming item — a rendering of a futuristically absurd, 860-foot residential “Sky Wing Tower” planned for 101 Murray St. (pictured above). The story, as reported by the sites, was that developers Steven Witkoff and Fisher Brothers are jointly developing the gargantuan tower on the site — which is currently a St. John’s University building — after purchasing the site from St. John’s last year for $223 million.
Well, we checked it out…and although the Witkoff/Fisher purchase of the site is real, the story behind the rendering is false. We repeat, that monstrosity is NOT planned for 101 Murray St., according to the developer.
It turns out that Coop Himmelb(l)au, the Austrian architectural firm, who designed that rendering, has absolutely no connection to that development site, according to a spokesperson for Fisher Brothers. According to the firm’s site, the tower is planned for an unspecified location in New York City.
“There have been some recent online blog posts about 101 Murray St. that are wrong,” Suzi Halpin, the spokesperson, wrote in a Feb. 21 email to Downtown Express. “There is no design rendering yet. The image that was used in those inaccurate posts is not the rendering, and the cited architectural firm is not working on the project.”
We’ll keep you updated on what actually is planned for that project…and hopefully the response to this zany hoax will keep the developers from attempting a similarly harebrained skyscraper.
