How Tall Is Too Tall?

Background: The information in this column is woefully outdated, because it was published ten years ago, and it seems like they're always breaking a "world's tallest skyscraper" record every other year. I was intrigued that Oregon's tallest structure at one point was KVAL-TV's 700-plus foot tower on Eugene's Blanton Heights (according to KLSR-TV General Manager John Mielke). However, even that record was soon broken by a new television/radio tower built in Portland's west hills.

     It must be a privilege for a country to have the world's tallest building. Nowadays, such a distinction rarely lasts more than a few years, before some other country builds a taller one yet.
     That thought was going through my mind last month, as plans were unveiled to build the world's tallest building on the former site of the World Trade Center in New York City. The so-called "Freedom Tower" will rise 1,776 feet above the Manhattan skyline, once completed later this decade.
     The Freedom Tower will have a circular appearance with a  spire at the top, which is supposed to evoke images of the nearby Statue of Liberty. By comparison, the twin World Trade Center towers were 1,368/1,362 feet tall, and the 1,250-foot Empire State Building is the next tallest building on the New York skyline.
     To put all of this in perspective, I consulted my 1,001 Skyscrapers book that I purchased from Ingram Books. Admittedly, I am somewhat hesitant to quote information from this source, as it was copyrighted in 2,000. Three years have already gone by. In the ever-competitive world of skyscrapers, who knows how much of it is already outdated?
     For example, the Shanghai World Financial Center tower is scheduled for completion in 2004 (or maybe it's already finished?). The 1,509-foot tower will be the world's tallest structure. This unique building will actually have a hole cut out of the top floors, so that the building kind of looks like an erect bottle-cap opener.
     But poor China can only claim that building as the world's tallest for five years, until the New York Freedom Tower is finished. Currently, the world's tallest building(s) are the twin 1,476-foot Petronas Towers in Malaysia, having held that title since only 1997.
     Gone are the days when a building could hold the "world's tallest" title for several decades. The 1,454-foot Sears Tower in Chicago held that title for twenty-two years before giving it up in 1996. Apparently the West Coast of the United States never got in on the "my building is taller than your building" contest. The tallest one west of the Mississippi is Los Angeles' First Interstate Bank (Wells Fargo) tower built in 1990, measuring in at a mere 1,018 feet tall.
     Here in Oregon, one becomes even more hard-pressed to find a skyscraper that we can proudly display to the world. In fact, this state's tallest structures aren't even skyscrapers....they're broadcast transmission towers. If one is in Eugene and looks south toward the Blanton Heights ridge, you will see a group of towers, or "antenna farm" in the south hills. The tallest one is the 700-foot KVAL-TV tower, which is Oregon's tallest structure.
     Also in that same antenna farm, when it was built in 1990, the 650-foot KLSR-TV tower was the second-tallest structure in Oregon. The next highest structures were the 500-foot television towers in Portland's west hills. During the past decade, Portland has erected or extended broadcast towers that exceed 600 feet.
     As previously mentioned, I'm hesitant to quote any figures as fact, because people are constantly building taller buildings and towers every year. One of the reasons that some people live in Oregon is because we don't have skylines dotted with tall buildings that reach the sky.