WTCN has already gained WTCA Membership, which makes it a key attraction for global business elites.
SHANGHAI – Executives in Nanjing soon will have the option of locating their company, home or hotel room in an impressive green development affiliated with the World Trade Centers Association (WTCA) that offers unparalleled advantages for doing international business.
Presently under construction in the CBD of Nanjing’s rising Hexi New Town district, the World Trade Center Nanjing (WTCN) encompasses an area of 430,000 sqm and comprises a grade 5A office tower, luxury boutique urban resort hotel, lifestyle retail plaza and two deluxe residence towers with sky gardens. New York based developer F&T Group and a real estate fund managed by JP Morgan Asset Management are investing a total of $700 million USD in the project, which aims to become Nanjing’s first edifice to obtain LEED certification from the US Green Building Council.
With its prestigious WTCA membership, WTCN will be Nanjing’s new business card for the global marketplace, a location synonymous with excellence in cross-border commerce. Leading multinational corporations will locate their offices within the complex, which will also be a favored residence of the city’s top business elites. As the place to go for upscale shopping and entertainment in west Nanjing, WTCN is also sure to become a coveted location among luxury retailers.
World-acclaimed architectural service firms and designers have been commissioned for the project, which is scheduled to open its first phase in 2014 with full opening in 2015. Gensler, a company whose projects include the 632-meter Shanghai Tower and the Gate Building in Dubai, is designing the office tower. The Milan-based Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel and Partners, renowned for its work on Bulgari hospitality properties among others, is designing the interior of the boutique hotel. The interior of the luxury residences will be designed by renowned Taiwanese architect Wei Ming Lee, the master behind Beijing’s Diaoyutai VII Homes and Shanghai’s Jiu Jian Tang Villas. And for WTCN’s lifestyle plaza F&T Group has commissioned Mix StudioWorks, the firm responsible for design of the malls at the Shanghai World Financial Center and China World Trade Center in Beijing.
WTCN has already been granted membership in the prestigious WTCA, a network of more than 300 world trade centers covering nearly 100 countries. WTCN joins world trade centers in Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing as the four WTCA members in Greater China that have seats on the organization’s Board of Governors. Founded in New York in 1970, the WTCA seeks to promote the development of world trade, international business relationships and understanding between nations by encouraging mutual assistance and cooperation between its member properties and between their respective tenants and members, which together comprise a network of nearly 1,000,000 business organizations spanning the globe.
Located in east China’s prosperous Jiangsu province, Nanjing has long been one of the nation’s key political and military centers as well as a focal point of commerce, finance, science, education and culture. The city’s unique location 300 kilometers from Shanghai at the junction of numerous highways, waterways and rail lines – including the Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail – has made it the key economic hub connecting the economies of China’s inner provinces with the Yangtze River Delta and international marketplace. WTCN will further bolster Nanjing’s status as a nexus of domestic and international commerce by attracting companies and individuals at the forefront of global commerce.
WTCN’s Hexi New Town location puts the development at the center of Nanjing’s economic future. A 94 square kilometer area (of which 56 kilometers is land) that the government plans to develop into Nanjing’s new financial center, Hexi New Town is blossoming into an urban oasis filled with modern skyscrapers, high-level residential areas, scenic parks and riverside recreational spots. The area is often compared to Shanghai’s Pudong New District, which in the last fifteen years underwent an epic transformation from vast rural expanse into a leading global financial center. Hexi New Town has already attracted investment from a host of world-class Chinese and international real estate companies, including F&T Group, Sun Hung Kai, Vanke and Shimao Group.
As a WTCA member, WTCN will be able to offer a wide range of unique services and amenities designed to facilitate success for companies and individuals engaged in international trade. These include provision of up-to-date information on local products and businesses, and customized market research services; educational courses, seminars and workshops on timely business topics; opportunities to participate in outbound and inbound trade missions; and a business club with comfortable lounge and dining services, spaces for informal and formal meetings, cutting edge office technologies and regular business networking events.
Nanjing has already begun to reap the first of the many economic benefits that WTCN is expected to bring the city: during the opening ceremony for the WTCN Business Club last February, the Port of San Diego, which also owns the World Trade Center San Diego, signed a Sister Port Agreement with the Port of Nanjing.
Developer F&T Group is an umbrella company comprising a number of integrated real estate service firms based in New York City. With projects throughout the greater New York metropolitan area, F&T Group in the late 1990s established its presence in China, where it focuses primarily on the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing. Led by its Chairman and CEO Michael Lee, who immigrated to the US from Taiwan in 1983, F&T Group seeks to stimulate economic growth in emerging markets and often overlooked areas. It is perhaps best known for its contributions to the development of the historic New York City town of Flushing, including the acclaimed Queens Crossing complex, a mixed-use development that is now home to the company’s headquarters.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management is a global asset management leader providing world-class investment solutions to institutions, individuals and financial intermediaries. With over 40-year history of successful investing and a staff of several hundred professionals, J.P. Morgan Asset Management – Global Real Assets’ broad investment capabilities and framework for analyzing opportunities in today’s complex real estate and infrastructure markets provide critical insights for its institutional clients and high net worth individuals in both the public and private markets.
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