The United Nations, sleek and elegant on the East River, may soon have a new neighbor, a tall and silvery condominium tower that Donald J. Trump is planning to build on a site overlooking the complex's permanent gardens.
Mr. Trump, along with the Daewoo Corporation, a South Korean conglomerate, has signed a $52 million contract to buy the site at First Avenue and 47th Street and is interviewing architects -- including Frank Gehry, Robert A.M. Stern and John Portman -- in what Mr. Trump calls an informal competition, according to sources in the Trump Organization who insisted on anonymity.
Mr. Trump and his development partners plan to rip down the existing 18-story building on the site, the United Engineering Center, which was built in 1961. The sources said the developers plan to build an 850,000-square-foot tower, with either 300 large apartments ranging in price from $1 million to $12 million, or to combine a hotel, with about 200 rooms, with a slightly smaller residential section.
According to Samuel H. Lindenbaum, a zoning lawyer who is representing Mr. Trump, the site is zoned to allow construction of the $300 million tower, just yards from the United Nations, without variances that would require public hearings. Calls to the city Department of Buildings were not returned.
The lawyer said that the luxury condominium tower could rise 69 stories -- the height that the sources said that Mr. Trump prefers -- but only if the developers buy the air rights from a handful of nearby buildings, including two brownstones, the Holy Family Church and the Japan Society.
Carl Schellhorn, a vice president at the Japan Society at 333 East 47th Street, said yesterday that the society, which abuts the Trump site, was negotiating to sell about 60,000 square feet of air rights. He declined to discuss the details, but said he expected a deal ''in about a month.''
David S. Brown, the director of real estate for the Archdiocese of New York, said last night that he was helping Holy Family Church with its air rights negotiations. He said the church was considering selling about 125,000 square feet to Mr. Trump.
''We haven't reached an agreement on price,'' he said, stressing that the church itself owned the air rights, not the Archdiocese.
The sources said that even without the air rights, Mr. Trump could still build a 55-story building.
Mr. Trump refused to comment on his plans yesterday, citing a confidentiality agreement.
But the sources said that Mr. Trump plans to pick his architect within a month. He also is to decide by February whether to build only condominiums or to combine condominiums with a hotel in the new building. Demolition is expected to begin in six months and tenants are already moving out of the Engineering Center. The owners of the building, the United Engineering Trustees, refused to comment.
Two commercial mortgage brokers, who were familiar with the deal but not involved with it, said Mr. Trump and his partners should have no problem financing it. Andrew Singer of Singer and Bassuk and Alan Weiner, who heads American Property Finance, said that Mr. Trump would likely put up little or no cash: the Daewoo Corporation would put up the money, with Mr. Trump supplying the local expertise and, of course, his name.
''Increasingly, within the last 12 to 18 months, that's been his modus operandi,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Trump puts up his substantial reputation and organization, but not his cash and not his credit.''
Officials at Daewoo did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment.
Several developers who had considered the property said they backed out when they heard that Mr. Trump wanted it. George Klein, a developer who is chairman of the United Nations Development Corporation and heads Park Tower Realty, said he had bid on the United Engineering site, joined by Rose Associates, another Manhattan development group, but they were outbid.
At $52 million, Mr. Klein said, the Trump-Daewoo group ''paid probably the highest price for any residential site in recent times.''
While the United Nations is not an official New York City landmark, the complex is generally considered an important and impressive example of postwar modernism. The site, between 42d and 48th Streets, was donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr., after William Zeckendorf, a developer, assembled it for private development. The complex of buildings rose between 1947 and 1953 and was designed by a team of architects including Le Corbusier and Wallace K. Harrison. The contrast between its 32-story Secretariat building and the much lower General Assembly building is striking and recognizable internationally.
Last night, Anthony C. Wood, a noted preservationist and a former director at the Municipal Art Society, expressed dismay at the planned height of the Trump building.
''Trump is taking on the world in a sense by having a building twice the size of the United Nations,'' he said, predicting that ''urbanists and those concerned with the fabric of the city should look at whether something so dramatic should be built; something that dwarfs the United Nations.''
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