Santiago Calatrava's much lauded plan for 80 South Street has been dropped by the project's developer, Frank Sciame, who is now marketing the site facing the East River south of the South Street Seaport.

The design called for a 835-foot-high tower with 10 four-story-high, 10,000-square-foot, "townhouses-in-the-sky" alternating around a central core above a small commercial base. When the project was announced in 2005, the least expensive unit was priced at about $29 million.

In an exclusive article in today's edition of The New York Post, Lois Weiss reported that "Oddly, while the site is now on the market and expected to fetch around $115 million, equating to $400 a buildable foot, in the last year, the luxury market has racked up many sales higher than that benchmark, albeit in more traditional locations, such as around Central Park."

"The Power Trio of Jimmy 'King' Kung, David Noonan and Jennifer Schwartzman have just been hired by the investor group that includes Sciame and Cord Meyer Development to market the 8,128-foot parcel at South and Fletcher Streets," according to her article.

Last week, a rendering by the architectural firm of Cook + Fox of a tower on the site appeared on wirednewyork.com and Ms. Weiss quoted Alice Hartley, a Cook + Fox spokesperson, as stating that "the renderings were created for a private developer who requested proposals form five firms about six months ago." The rendering is shown at the right.

Calatrava's design for the 80 South Street tower was been widely acclaimed and it and the Frank O. Gehry mixed-use tower for Forest City Ratner nearby at 8 Spruce Street have been viewed by some observers as important as the towers planned for Ground Zero on the other side of Lower Manhattan at least in terms of their impact on the city's skyline.

Mr. Calatrava, a celebrated architect famous for his "lyrical" bridges and other projects, was the subject of a recent retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and he also designed the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.

The design of the transportation hub project has been revised a couple of times because of financial concerns and an article in today's edition of The New York Times by David W. Dunlap said that "concerned that the permanent World Trade Center transportation hub cannot be built as designed within the budgeted amount, the Port Authority has begun preparing plans for a more modest alternative."

A recent "risk assessment" prepared for the Federal Transit Administration, according to the article, indicated "there was a 10 percent probability that the costs would exceed $2.991 billion" and the article said that Anthony E. Shorris, the authority's executive director, said the "goal was to design a project that could be built for no more than $2.5 billion."

The article said Mr. Shorris said the authority was "preparing a more modest plan that would greater use of the existing tracks and structure of the interim PATH terminal, pare down the design of below-ground elements, increase the use of columns in wide spans and simplify some engineering," but added that in no case "would the hub lose its aboveground aesthetic signature: an elliptical, ribbed, winged structure that Mr. Calatrava has likened to a bird taking flight."

An article by Douglas Feiden about the Ground Zero project in today's edition of The Daily News said that "Runaway costs and endless delays at the hub at could spill over and slow work on the adjoining 79-story Tower 2 and 71-story Tower 3 because they share a common underground infrastructure at the 16-acre site, experts say."