World’s Tallest Building, TV City Slated for 13-Block Site : Trump Plans Giant N.Y. Complex

Real estate developer Donald Trump said Monday that he plans to build a giant development on Manhattan’s West Side that would include the world’s tallest building and a 3.6-million-square-foot complex of television and movie studios.

Television City, as Trump calls the project, would cover a 13-block area bordering the Hudson River between 59th and 72nd streets, he said during a morning press conference. Its centerpiece would be a three-sided, 150-story structure that would rise 216 feet above Chicago’s Sears Tower, currently the world’s tallest building.

Also envisioned are a 65-floor office tower, six 36-story luxury condominium buildings and a 1.7-million-square-foot retail center.

Trump declined to estimate the cost of the development, but it has been placed as high as $2 billion. A spokesman for Trump, Norma I. Foerderer, insisted that, while financing plans have not been completed, raising the money would be no obstacle.

Trump still needs city permits, and he seems to have some way to go before realizing his dream of making the project a center of the television industry.

NBC Plans to Move

National Broadcasting Co., which occupies about 1.1 million square feet of New York office space, last week said it plans to move from the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center to larger quarters. In the next 15 years, the network may need 1.8 million square feet for its operations in the city, a spokesman said.

But the spokesman added that the Trump site was “only one of several we’re considering in the New York area.”

Spokesmen for ABC and CBS said they have each recently built or leased additional space in Manhattan and are not in the market for additional space.

The 100-acre site is the largest undeveloped tract on Manhattan and is located at the former site of the Penn Central Railroad yards. Trump said the project would take 10 years to complete.

Last year, Trump proposed to build a $1-billion skyscraper on 26 acres of landfill near New York’s financial district. No developer has been chosen for that site.

Earlier this year, Trump and developer Peter Kalikow failed in their bid for another key project, a 137-story hotel and office tower at the site of the New York Coliseum.