One World Trade Center has proved to be attractive to daring teens and BASE jumpers, but not so much to tenants. The Wall Street Journal reports that no private company has signed up for office space in the building in three years, leaving 55 percent of the 1,776-foot, 3.1-million-square-foot tower un-leased. Now, the owners — real-estate developer Douglas Durst and the Port Authority — have cut asking rent for the skyscraper’s middle floors from $75 per square foot to $69 per square foot. “The market’s not there,” explained Durst, who bought a piece of the skyscraper a few years ago. “When we started in 2011, everybody expected the economy to take off, and obviously that hasn’t happened.” He also noted that rent in several similar buildings in the neighborhood only costs around $50 per square foot. With One World Trade set to open by the end of the year, it seems that the Condé Nast people might be on their own for a little while. Update: On Tuesday afternoon, the Post reported that One World Trade broke its three-year dry spell with a lease from the advertising firm KiDS Creative, which will be taking 37,500 square feet of space off of Durst and the Port Authority’s hands for $90 per square foot. Only many thousands more to go!
