This huge mixed-use, twin-towered project replaced the former New York Coliseum and was scheduled for completion in 2003.

The complex consists of retail space, offices including the headquarters of AOL Time Warner, a jazz facility for the nearby Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a Mandarin Oriental hotel, CNN TV studios and 225 condominium apartments. It was developed by The Related Companies and designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

The development of this major site at the southwestern corner of Central Park and the western end of Central Park South after the decision to erect a new convention center for the city near the Hudson River at 35th Street resulted in a very heated and protracted controversy.

The Related Companies. Apollo Real Estate Advisors and the Palladium Company took on the project after protests by numerous civic groups over the environmental impact of the previous plan for the site by Boston Properties led to a reopening of the bidding process for the site's development. One of the issues was the length of shadows that the skyscraper project would cast on Central Park.

Boston Properties had originally commissioned a rakishly angled twin-tower project that was designed by Moishe Safdie, but then scrapped that design and commissioned Mr. Childs of S.O.M., whose first design was thematically related to some of the famous twin-towered residential skyscrapers of Central Park South, but significantly taller than them. Subsequently, Boston Properties and Mr. Childs scaled down the project somewhat.

Mr. Childs's new design for The Related Companies is about the same size of his last design for Boston Properties but instead of a Post-Modern Art Deco-style design the plan was "modernized' with glass facades and the massing of the towers was more sharply outlined with less architectural detailing. The caps of the twin towers retain a piered look, and while the towers will be much lighter in color than the bronze-color recladding by Donald Trump of the former Gulf & Western building at 1 Central Park West just to the north on Columbus Circle, their glossiness will be more in context with that structure than with the very rigorous and interesting green-metal clad tower at One Central Park Place one block to the south on the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 57th Street that was designed by Davis Brody. (Safdie's more rugged modernism was in more context with the Davis Brody building.)

Perhaps the best feature of this development is that its base facing Columbus Circle is curved and that the jazz facility will have spectacular windows looking across Central Park South. The towers are setback considerably on the site which extends half way into the long block. There are large, albeit smaller, residential towers to the west.

A pale imitation of the great high-rise architectural heritage of Central Park West, this very large project is not a masterpiece and would look more at home in a Houston suburb or someplace in New Jersey.

It is definitely inferior to One Central Park Place and Trump International Hotel and also to the former Huntington Hartford Gallery of Art on the south side of the circle and 240 Central Park south on the east side of the circle.

Nonetheless, it is more attractive than the banal New York Coliseum complex it replaces.

The controversy over its development was almost as dramatic as that over the redevelopment of 42nd Street, which eventually resulted in a very dramatic and very successful renaissance of the Times Square district.

This area, on the other hand, was not in need of new "urban renewal" as that function had been served by the creation several decades before of Lincoln Center.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, changed the psyche of the city.

In its October 15, 2001 issue, Crain's New York Business gave the following commentary about this project that it termed "The Next Rockefeller Center":

"There seems to be no end to the superlatives used to describe the emerging AOL Time Warner complex at Columbus Circle: The biggest construction project in New York City since the World Trade Center. The largest construction loan for a private project in U.S. History. The next Rockefeller Center. When it opens in late summer or fall of 2003, the complex will have five floors of stores and restaurants, 1.1 million square feet of offices, Jazz at Lincoln Center, a hotel, TV studios and more....Perhaps the biggest impact of the project is an unanticipated and symbolic one: Just as the city's two tallest towers have been destroyed, two more that eerily resemble them are slowing rising uptown."

While the half-hearted modernism of this project is uninspired, its presence will be hard to ignore as further proof that the West Side has arrived. Indeed, perhaps the most significant part of the project will be its luxury hotel component. It is also likely that the top apartments will fetch very impressive prices and that New Yorkers' affection for twin towers will continue.