Prime office rents in big cities are vertiginous; Rio's are the highest in the Americas, north or south.
Prime office rents in the city center here fell 12.5percentt last year, to $31.20 to $33.60 a square foot annually, according to Mr. Battle, about the same as the average rate in Berlin.
Prices are substantially lower than in Midtown and other prime office neighborhoods.
The average rent for prime office space in Midtown today is about $61 a square foot.
Mr. Langevin will receive a prime office with easy access to the Capitol.
Critics, however, bemoaned the cost of the towers and the foolishness of installing government employees in prime office space.
The brightest prospects are in industrial properties in Asia, prime office locations in northern Europe and apartment blocks in large, coastal American cities.
"The debt they piled on top of the equity was startling," said Douglas Durst, whose family owns 10 prime office buildings in Manhattan.
In London, at least, the price of prime office space is edging up, mostly because potential sellers are waiting for it to rise further.
The Vornado project was to be the first prime office tower to be built in Harlem in more than three decades.
The equivalent of 15 Empire State Buildings, or an estimated 15 million square feet of prime office space, has been destroyed, or rendered at least temporarily useless.
