text: In addition to what became the final design, Stubbins and his associates studied at least six alternate proposals for the tower, with varying rooftop designs. Early plans also called for installing stilts underneath each corner. These plans were scrapped because the northwestern stilt would extend into St. Peter's Lutheran Church, and the church wanted its sanctuary to be structurally separate from the tower. Before the official plans for the building were announced, the architects had designed a roof sloped at a 45-degree corner, which was to contain west-facing terraces for about 100 apartments, but the New York City Department of City Planning would not approve a zoning change to permit that use. The architects then rotated the roof southward to accommodate flat-plate solar collectors.
  Plans for the project, then known as Citicorp Center, were publicly disclosed on July 24, 1973. The plans called for a  tower with stilts under the center of each side, rising  above street level. The project would also include an eight-story office annex, three stories of retail, a landscaped public plaza, and a new church building.  St. Peter's old church building had been demolished by mid-1973, and First National City Bank had become known as Citibank, a subsidiary of Citicorp.  St. Peter's pastor Ralph E. Peterson described the project as "a very bold venture in an urban environment". In part because of Peterson's insistence, the plans included a publicly accessible plaza with shopping available. Early plans for the church also called for it to have a cube design; the church's final design, with a diagonal skylight, was announced in April 1974. The city government approved plans for Citicorp Center the same year.