The tower was designed by the P&T Group to resemble a walking stick, though earlier iterations took the shape of a fin and a diamond. It was conceived as the centerpiece of the Goldin Metropolitan Scheme, a mixed-use luxury development catering to the ultra-wealthy that would include a polo club nearby. The vision was grandiose: a central business district rising from Tianjin's suburban periphery, anchored by a tower with 117 habitable floors housing apartments, a hotel, and commercial space -- the number that gave the building its name. Construction began in 2008, and from the start, the project's economic viability was questioned.

The tower's construction history reads like a fever chart of China's economy. Work began in 2008, then halted in January 2010 as the Great Recession rippled through global markets. Construction resumed in 2011 with a revised completion target of 2018-2019. On September 8, 2015, the building was topped out -- a genuine engineering achievement that briefly made it one of the tallest structures ever built. But three months earlier, China's stock market had begun its 2015 crash. Goldin Properties, a subsidiary of Goldin Financial Holdings, was caught in the downdraft. By December 2015, construction was suspended again. China State Construction Engineering Corporation pulled its workers from the site and left.

For years, Goldin Finance 117 stood as the most visible symbol of China's overbuilt property sector. It was so conspicuous that it helped prompt the Chinese government to ban construction of buildings taller than 500 meters nationwide -- a regulation born partly from the embarrassment of having one of the world's tallest towers standing empty. The building attracted a different kind of attention too: in 2015 and 2016, urban explorers from Russia and China scaled the unfinished tower and its construction crane without authorization, their videos drawing millions of views and worldwide media coverage. Russian couple Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau climbed the structure in 2016, their footage garnering over 922,000 views.

In April 2025, Tianjin authorities announced that construction would resume. A new permit was issued to P&T Group and BGI Engineering Consultants, with completion targeted for 2027. If realized, Goldin Finance 117 would shed its record as the tallest unoccupied building and finally fulfill the purpose it was designed for more than fifteen years earlier. Whether the market has caught up to the ambition remains an open question. The tower stands as a reminder that the distance between a building's top floor and its grand opening can be measured not just in meters, but in decades.