There has been rather intense speculation about the status of the planned mixed-use tower at 80 South Street, a couple blocks south of the South Street Seaport, that has been designed by Santiago Calatrava for the Sciame Construction Company.

The spectacular tower consists of 12 four-story cubes, ten of which are "townhouses in the sky" and two are commercial spaces.

The tower is planned to rise 835 feet high and to be topped by a mast that will reach 1,000 feet. It and a mixed-use tower now under construction on Beekman Street near City Hall for Forest City Rattner and designed by Frank O. Gehry promise to significantly alter the skyline of the east side of Lower Manhattan.

There has been little news about the project for months, although Kent Swig, a major property owner in Lower Manhattan, remarked on a recent television program that he thought the project might make sense if the individual four-story residential cubes were divided in two.

The current issue of Fortune Magazine, however, has an interview in which Julie Schlosser asks the architect whether it will be built.

"It is a dream I hope I can realize," he replied, adding that "it is one of the most beautiful things I've ever done. I have a wonderful client and I hope we can build it. It is a wonderful location. He wants to do something different. He wants to deliver something very special. We are very close, and I am full of hope we will start it."

Mr. Calatrava, who was the subject of a recent retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, has designed the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and this year construction started on his design for the tallest building in the United States, a 115-story building close to Lake Michigan in Chicago.

The top "townhouse-in-the-sky" unit has a reported sales price of $59 million.