The 76-story, mixed-use tower being developed near City Hall by Forest City Ratner Companies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Forest City Enterprises, Inc., will have a rippled stainless-steel facade, according to a rendering shown at a presentation of the project last night in the New York State Assembly Hearing room at 250 Broadway.

The mid-block tower is adjacent to the New York Downtown Hospital on the block bounded by Beekman Street to the south, Spruce Street to the north and William Street to the west.

Renderings shown at the public meeting did not appear to differ significantly from earlier ones although the pronounced degree of "ripple," as can be seen in the rendering shown at the right, was not so obvious before.

The building will be 867 feet tall and will contain 175 parking spaces below grade for the hospital, 21,000 square feet of doctors' offices on the fifth floor, the 100,000-square-foot school on the first four floors, 1,300 square feet of ground-floor retail, amenity floors for the residential portion on the building on floors 6 through 8 and 903 market-rate rental apartments on floors 7 through 76.

The tower's exterior wall will be erected between early 2008 and summer 2010 and landscaping of the project's plaza will take place between fall 2010 and summer 2011.

Earlier this year, Forest City Ratner announced the closing of $680 million in construction financing for its "Beekman" mixed-use development at 8 Spruce Street near City Hall in Lower Manhattan.

Company representatives last night indicated that the Downtown Hospital's ambulatory care space on the fifth floor will "turnover" in the fall of 2009 and that the pre-K through 8th Grade public school for 630 students will be completed in July 2010 and residents will start moving in the fall of 2010.

The $680 million in bonds, of which approximately $204 million comes from the New York Liberty Bond Program, are being issued by the New York City Housing Development Corporation.

The four lead banks participating in the financing, according to the press release, are Eurohypo AG, Europe's leading international real estate bank which is also acting as Administrative Agent; Nord/LB, an international real estate bank with branches in New York, London, Singapore and Shanghai; ING Real Estate Finance, a subsidiary of one of the world's largest financial institutions; and Fifth Third Bank, a leading financial institution headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.

RBS Citizens, N.A. is providing the credit enhancement for the bond issue. The Mezzanine Loan provider for the project is the National Electrical Benefit Fund, which is also Forest City Ratner's equity partner in the Beekman project.