It’s a record China never wanted to hold.

When construction began 13 years  ago, Goldin Finance 117 in Tianjin  

was going to be the fifth tallest  skyscraper ever built – today,  

it's probably most well known as that building  those daredevils on YouTube climbed.  

Despite reaching its full  height of 597 metres in 2015,  

the site was suddenly deserted shortly afterwards,  and the project remains unfinished to this day.

With communication drying up in 2018 and  no official word on when – or even if – the  

project will ever be completed, many have come to  wonder how one of the world’s strongest economies  

with the fastest rate of urbanisation in history  – become home to the World’s Tallest Ghostscraper?

Proposed back in 2008, when cities across China  were vying for their place on the world stage,  

Goldin Finance 117 was to be the centrepiece of  billionaire Pan Sutong’s, “Goldin Metropolitan”  

scheme – a 1.8 square kilometre high-end  residential and central business district  

about eight kilometres from downtown Tianjin.

With multiple residential and commercial towers,  French and Italian style manors, a wine museum,  

extensive gardens and even a polo club,  the scheme was aimed at the super-rich,  

with the landmark skyscraper  viewed as the jewel in its crown.

We mean this literally, the building was to be  topped with a three-storey diamond-shaped atrium  

which would have been home to the world’s highest  observation deck, pool, restaurant and sky bar.

Likened to a walking stick the mixed-use  tower would contain 128 floors above ground  

with 117 of them housing hotel and commercial  space - as well as providing the ingenious source  

of the building’s name - 11 dedicated  to mechanical and operational services  

and a further four levels underground.

Unique among many of the world’s tallest  buildings, Goldin Finance 117 was to be  

habitable up to its highest point,  foregoing the addition of any vanity  

height that seems to have become commonplace  among many of today’s tallest skyscrapers.

In fact, when comparing it with other structures  purely on the highest habitable floor,  

the building would have been second only to the  Burj Khalifa - with just half a metre in it.

Lacking any major setbacks to disrupt wind loads  and with its height-to-width ratio of 9.5:1  

exceeding the limit set by China’s seismic  code, Goldin Finance 117 should have been  

highly susceptible to lateral forces - and  given a logical reason for its abandonment - but  

the building was designed in such  a way to resist these forces.

Not unlike the structural system  used at Malaysia’s Merdeka PNB118,  

Goldin Finance 117 was designed with a perimeter  frame consisting of tapering mega columns,  

mega braces and transfer trusses, all  supported by - and tied back to - a  

full height reinforced concrete core  creating a near immovable structure.  

But while on the surface the skyscraper appeared  

no different to many of the others  rising across China at the time,  

underneath it seems like the cards were  stacked against the project from the outset.

To maintain the integrity of the Chinese property  market, new developers aren't permitted to start  

pre-sales on their schemes until authorities have  inspected and signed off on the finished product,  

with exemptions typically only granted to  established and usually state-owned firms.

At the time, Goldin Properties was a publicly  listed, Hong Kong-based company and a relatively  

new player in the mainland Chinese market. It had  to fully self-finance the entire USD $10BN master  

plan and wouldn't be able to begin recouping its  investment until each building was completed.

This put the entire scheme in a  precarious situation from the beginning,  

but if the developer was able to  put up the capital investment and  

there were no major disruptions  to markets during construction,  

the rewards would be worth it. They went ahead  and construction began on 18 August 2008.

While the Global Financial Crisis didn’t topple  China’s economy it did make it wobble. Goldin  

feared the cooling Chinese property markets and  with substantial investments across Europe and the  

United States to worry about as well, construction  at Goldin Finance 117 was halted in January 2010.

The property market regained its footing by 2011  and with an asset-to-liability ratio at the time  

of roughly 4:1, the company decided to continue  work on the tower with an expectation that it  

could be completed and ready to start sales  as the market reached its next natural peak.

The project marched skyward, but the  slow recovery of international markets  

compared to China put the Goldin Group  in a particularly vulnerable situation.

With its asset-to-liability ratio reduced to  almost 1:1, the company was effectively all-in  

on Goldin Finance 117 and desperately needed to  complete the project before the next economic hit.

Like something out of a movie, after staving  off the worst of the Global Financial Crisis,  

June 2015 saw China’s stock bubble  burst, wiping a third off the Shanghai  

Stock Exchange’s value in a month - and the  market volatility persisted until early 2016.

While not a full-blown crisis,  the damage was already done.  

With nothing left in reserves to ride out the  turbulent period, Goldin’s own share price on  

the Hong Kong Stock Exchange plummeted and  company chairman Pan Sutong – with a 64%  

stake in the business – reportedly lost an  eye-watering USD $13BN of his own fortune.

The topping-out ceremony in September was  meant to reignite confidence in the project  

but by December 2015 all work had ceased.

In 2018 it seemed to restart and hopes began  to rise, but the China State Construction  

Engineering Corporation then left again,  taking all of its company signage with it.

On the surface, you’re probably thinking  that Goldin Finance 117 failed because of  

a series of unfortunate events and a market  that tends to favour state-owned companies.

But, even when it was put up for sale with a  handful of other Goldin Metropolitan assets,  

it didn’t attract much attention and  no attempt was made to resurrect it.

It had all the makings of a high-end  development aimed at the super-rich,  

but the project's location on former industrial  land on the outskirts of one of China's  

second-tier cities meant that the appeal for  those that could actually afford it simply wasn’t  

there - it was like attempting to build New York’s  Hudson Yards on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

It’s like Goldin tried to get in early  on a city it expected to later thrive.  

It relied heavily on China’s continued growth,  favourable market conditions and the “build it and  

they will come” philosophy. The firm took  a gamble on an ambitious scheme and lost.

Like Pyongyang's infamous hotel, Goldin  Finance 117 looks set to stand not as a beacon  

for an emerging city, but as a monument  and cautionary tale of over-ambition.

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