1.5M Sqft of New Retail Space Coming To Lower Manhattan

Here's a visualization of the 1.5 million square feet of new retail space under construction or being renovated in Lower Manhattan. According to the Downtown Alliance, consumers spend over $5 billion each year at over 1,000 retail and restaurant locations in downtown New York.

Development of new retail across Lower Manhattan

Buildings with new retail space coming to market

A report of the properties with new retail space is available here from New York's Downtown Alliance. The report includes 5 under construction properties and 18 projects with new retail coming from repositioned space. Watch the video below to see the entire visualization.

Cesium: The Best Choice For Mapping On The Web

Development of the Cesium mapping platform is happening fast. The software is now the obvious choice for visualizing spatial data on the web. With strong support from AGI, Cesium development has accelerated since the version 1.0 release in August of last year with new updates every month. Recently, major attention has been given to help provide the same user experience in Cesium as was possible with the Google Earth API. Support for KML, flyTo Camera controls and easy ways to draw placemarks and labels on the map are just a few of the latest updates. Thorough blog posts have been published to help developers use the latest functions. With the recent updates to Cesium there are no longer any technical limitations that make any commercial mapping products a reasonable alternative. In fact, the stability of the Cesium map and rapid, high quality graphics make Cesium the indisputable choice to delivering web-based mapping solutions.

The AGI development team has recently ported the famous Google Earth Plugin site Monster Milk Truck to Cesium. Dennis Wegewijs, the creator of Cycling the Alps has ported his application to Cesium as well. This is evidence that Cesium is a logical alternative to migrating complex GIS web applications and can provide a consistent experience to Earth. These converted applications are especially valuable for developers to see how logic written for the Google Earth API can be translated to work with Cesium in a straightforward manner.

When one considers that Cesium is Apache 2.0 licensed (free for commercial use), uses WebGL (native in iOS 8), requires no plugin to run in a web browser, and is cross-platform compatible, it's undeniable that this software is going to dominate 3D visualization on the web.

Cesium-based Monster Milk Truck!

The Cube Cities team is using Cesium to build new kinds of interactive real estate applications. We've been sharing imagery from the programs we've been developing, but soon we will be giving public exposure to our Cesium-based applications. Below is a look at our building data for Manhattan with a glimpse into the new One World Trade Centre.

Available office space in One World Trade Centre in Lower Manhattan

Contact us to learn more about how Cube Cities can help migrate legacy real estate mapping products to free, Cesium-based web solutions.

Visualizing Available Office Space in The Durst Organization's Midtown Portfolio

The Durst Organization's buildings near Bryant Park. 
Dark green = full floors, light green = partial floors

Here's a look at new Cube Cities imagery of the available office space in The Durst Organization's New York portfolio. Taken from our new Cesium-based mapping application, this visual shows every floor in each building and lights up the available space in each property. Cube Cities can quickly produce interactive visualizations for any landlord or property owner in New York.

Distribution of the Durst Organizations' midtown portfolio

The buildings in this visualization, clustered on the left include:

4 Times Square

One Bryant Park

1133 Avenue of the Americas

1155 Avenue of the Americas

114 West 47th Street

The cluster on the right are:

655 Third Avenue

205 East 42nd Street 

675 Third Avenue

733 Third Avenue

825 Third Avenue

Buildings visualized with surrounding midtown buildings

The National September 11th Memorial

South pool of the September 11th Memorial

The National September 11th Memorial is vast and imposing. The Memorial is a tribute to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center site, near Shanksville, Pa., and at the Pentagon, as well as the six people killed in the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993.

The Memorial’s twin reflecting pools are each nearly an acre in size and feature the largest manmade waterfalls in the North America. The pools sit within the footprints where the Twin Towers once stood. Architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker created the Memorial design selected from a global design competition that included more than 5,200 entries from 63 nations.

The names of every person who died in the 2001 and 1993 attacks are inscribed into bronze panels edging the Memorial pools, a powerful reminder of the largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil and the greatest single loss of rescue personnel in American history.

[from 911memorial.org]

View NW across the south pool towards the World Financial Center

The plaza is very open, noticeably so when entering the plaza from the surrounding density of Lower Manhattan. White oaks are planted at regular intervals throughout the plaza. The pools are cavernous and contain basins where water falls to unseeable depths. The scale of the site is very impressive.

World Trade Center complex in red

The full buildout of the World Trade Center complex will eventually include over 10,700,000 square feet of office and retail space. The Port Authority of New York will eventually develop 1,300,000 square feet in WTC 5 on the south side of Liberty street. The visualization above shows the density surrounding the complex.