Twenty-five years after the Twin Towers fell, the last piece of the rebuilt World Trade Center site finally has a tenant and a start date.

Silverstein Properties is starting construction on 2 World Trade Center this spring with American Express as the anchor tenant. The 1,226-foot, 88-story Foster + Partners design will host Amex’s global headquarters when it tops out in 2031, capping the longest commercial redevelopment in Lower Manhattan history.

Project Scope

The tower will deliver roughly 2 million square feet of office space across 88 floors, with floor plates engineered for trading and large open-plan teams. American Express has committed to consolidating its New York operations from 200 Vesey Street into 2 WTC, with the move sized to accommodate up to 10,000 employees on flexible floor plates and modern workspaces. Foster + Partners’ design borrows from Bjarke Ingels Group’s 2015 stacked-volume concept, retaining a staggered crown that reads as a series of cantilevered terraces stepping up the spire.

The site sits at 200 Greenwich Street on the northeast corner of the 16-acre WTC superblock, on land owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Silverstein holds the development rights. The tower will connect into the WTC’s underground transit hub and the larger Lower Manhattan PATH/MTA infrastructure, giving Amex employees direct access to 13 subway lines and the Newark-bound PATH train without leaving the building.

Construction will lean heavily on the existing site infrastructure built during the broader WTC redevelopment, including the foundation work that was substantially complete by 2014. Vertical construction will begin once steel mobilization and curtain wall procurement complete, both of which are running ahead of the Spring 2026 groundbreak.

Why It Matters

2 WTC closes out a redevelopment that began in 2002. Every other tower on the site — 1 WTC, 3 WTC, 4 WTC, 7 WTC, and the Oculus — has been operating for years. The hole in the skyline at 2 WTC has been the visible reminder that the original master plan didn’t get fully built.

The economic case for the build was always tied to landing an anchor tenant capable of taking down 60% or more of the rentable area. The original News Corp/21st Century Fox deal in 2015 collapsed when Murdoch decided to stay in Midtown. A 2024 proposal to advance without a single anchor never moved past concept. The Amex commitment closes that gap: a single tenant of Amex’s scale unlocks the construction financing and removes the speculative-build risk that has stalled the project for more than a decade.

Beyond the symbolism, the financials are non-trivial. New York State estimates the construction phase will generate roughly 2,000 union construction jobs and 3,200 total jobs, contributing $5.9 billion to the city’s economy and $6.3 billion to the state’s economy over the build cycle.

The tower’s completion in 2031 will leave the WTC site fully built out, returning Lower Manhattan’s commercial inventory above its 2001 levels for the first time and giving the Financial District its first new supertall office tower since 1 WTC opened in 2014.

Project Team & Details