World Leaders Descend on UN Headquarters, Under Construction

As world leaders gather this week for the 66th United Nations General Assembly, some may not realize that they're meeting at a massive construction site. 

Many locations at the New York City headquarters have been gutted, as part of the Capital Master Plan — the U.N.'s five-year, nearly $2 billion renovation project to make the complex more sustainable and energy efficient.

The project is now halfway in, and some buildings, like the Secretariat, are completely empty. Since early 2010, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and approximately 3,500 of his U.N. staffers have been working out of temporary office spaces.

WNYC took a behind-the-scenes tour of the headquarters under construction with the director of the project, Assistant Secretary General Michael Adlerstein, and Capital Master Plan spokesman Werner Schmidt.