Beijing's tallest building will tower 500 meters above the city and stand on an 11,478-square-meter site in the Central Business District that sold at auction for 6.3 billion yuan on Dec 21.

The completed building will offer 350,000 sq m of space.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resource said the planning department called for such a skyscraper in its design plan for the area.

The land where the building will stand is located on Guanghua Road in Chaoyang district, right at the heart of the CBD.

At the moment, the city's tallest building is China World Trade Center Tower 3, which is 330 m tall.

The CITIC Group, which now has usage rights to the land after winning the bidding war, plans to build the 122-floor skyscraper that will have four underground levels and call it Zhongguo Zun (Chinese goblet), the Beijing Morning Post reported on Wednesday.

A staff member with CITIC Group told the Beijing Morning Post that the skyscraper will serve as an office building and also house apartments and a hotel. The underground area will be used as a commercial area and connect with other underground commercial space in the neighborhood.

Beijing Times reported on Dec 22 that the building will take five years to complete.

Gu Yunchang, deputy director of the China Real Estate Research Association, said the building sounds like a good fit for the area.

"It is reasonable to build a skyscraper in the CBD, which is the financial center of Beijing and the skyscraper will also be a new landmark for the city," Gu said.

He pointed out that the cost of the land was a new record.

The central government released guidelines to help control the soaring price of land price on Dec 19. The guidelines stipulate that the price that land sells for should be reported to the land and resource authorities within two days. Just two days later, the new record was set.

"The high price shows that developers are optimistic about the real estate market," Gu said.

The price of land depends on its location to a great extent and the CBD is one of the most expensive real estate areas in the capital, he said.

"Land in the CBD is a scarce resource and the prices will certainly be high," he told METRO.