As long as the weather cooperates, the tower will surpass the 1,250-foot Empire State Building at 2 p.m. on its way to a final height of 1,776 feet.
“It’s wonderful,” Mayor Bloomberg said Sunday.
“It’s taken a long time. This is probably the most complex construction site in any place ever. I think what we’ve shown is that democracy works.”
Once completed, the Ground Zero skyscraper, often called the Freedom Tower, will have 104 floors, including 71 office floors with 3 million square feet of space.
At this point, the Port Authority says 55% of the office space is expected to be filled.
“Incidentally, once this building tops out, there’s still a lot of work before people can move in, a couple of years,” Bloomberg said.
“The most important thing is that they get the building up safely. We don’t need any more lives lost. So far, their safety record has been exemplary.”
The Empire State Building was completed in 1931 after a little over a year of construction.
If One World Trade Center is completed as hoped in late 2013 or early 2014, it will have taken about eight years to build.
The project is currently estimated to cost $3.9 billion.
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