Empire State Building does not add any population!

Yilo I had the exact same issue when I built mine, which wasted a lot of keys.

Jeff, I understand what you are saying, when you move the building your landmark population screen says that you have a huge population increase, BUT, in reality your population up in the top left hand corner does not change. Not even by 1 resident.

Someone had just mentioned in another thread that if your zone already has a population boost of 100% from other sources (entertainment, gambling, etc) that it won't go any higher.  Could that be the problem?  My Empire State Building resulted in a final population boost of about 10,000 people in the area I put it, even though the Landmark bonus shows that it should be closer to 35,000. That's because I have a nearby University and Luxurious Casino, which are both 50% bonus. That means that anything that touches both of those AND the ESB will show 0 population gain from the ESB.

Also, when moving it out of the area to test, you should actually place it in an open area rather than let it hover. It won't recalculate the final numbers while it's still hovering in "move" mode.

Lets say for example you have 10,000 people in a building with 0 bonuses from nearby structures.

If you add schools, gambling, stadium, parks, landmarks, etc, and those hypothetically add up to +220% population.

Your population should now be 22,000 in that 1 building.

No where in the game does it say you can only increase your population a maximum of 100% when combining different upgrades.

The higher the level you reach, the harder it is to obtain keys since the challenges require more and more, and I dont think a lot of the players waste as  much time doing key challenges if they knew the building they were saving the keys up for would have no effect on their population.