Green Taxi

Consider these statistics:

• 500 million square feet of commercial real estate developed since 2006 (2 years).  That is more than all of the office space in Manhattan.
• 100 million square feet of office space is vacant.  This would be a 14-year supply if filled up at the cities best rates, from 2004-2006, when 7 million square feet per eyar were leased.
• Housing sales in the city dropped 40% last year.
• Economists predict housing prices will drop 15 to 20% this year.

Beijing is not empty by any means of the word.  More than 17 million people live there.  But with the average salary being $6,000, residents find it difficult to pay the asking price in the fancy new buildings built over the past couple years in anticipation of the Beijing Olympics.  Many apartments are listed between $800k-$1 million, obviously way out of a normal person’s range.

Thus, the buildings sit empty.  Driven by the governments push pre-Olympics, many of the new buildings do not have a single tenant.  Landmarks such as a baseball stadium that opened last spring to host an exhibition game between the Padres and Dodgers, are already being demolished.  The Bird’s Nest, the crown jewel of the Olympics, costs $9 million per year to maintain.  It has only one scheduled event for 2009, an opera in August.

The government spent $43 billion for the Olympics, nearly 3 more than any other host city.  In the end, it looks like the cost may dwarf the show.  While the communist government will absorb much of the cost, I imagine many of the 1.5 million residents who were evicted from their homes in preparation of the Olympics must be asking if it was really worth it.

*image source: latimes.com

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