Ground Zero developer Silverstein <br> expects to attract brokerage tenants

NEW YORK – Developer Larry Silverstein said he expects to lease space at the three towers he’s building at the World Trade Center site to Wall Street firms seeking new securities trading floors.
The lower levels of the two of new towers, designed by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, will have a total of nine trading floors with more than 50,000 square feet each, Silverstein said. The top of Foster’s lower Manhattan building, canted in the shape of four diamonds, will have “hedge-fund space,” he said.
Trading space is increasingly important for the world’s biggest securities firms, which last year made more than half their revenue from buying and selling stocks, bonds and currencies. Merrill Lynch & Co., the world’s biggest brokerage, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are all in talks with New York developers about expanding trading space, people familiar with knowledge of the situation said in the past month. Silverstein declined to name the firms to which he’s spoken.
“We are producing space that is perfectly suited for the needs of major financial institutions,” said Silverstein. “The market in New York is very strong. There is a need for quality space.”
Silverstein said construction will start on two of the buildings at the trade center site in January. A third property may not begin until July 2008, he said.
Counting the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, which Silverstein is overseeing under contract to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, nearly 10 million square feet will be under construction in lower Manhattan by mid-2008.
Silverstein bought the leasehold for the World Trade Center’s twin towers six weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack that destroyed them. He has an agreement with the Port Authority to build 6.2 million square feet of offices at the 16-acre site.
Manhattan office rents surged to an all-time high in the first quarter with job growth in the financial industry pushing the vacancy rate below 6 percent, according to broker Cushman & Wakefield Inc. Asking rates for the best space averaged $64.54 a square foot.
The only office project completed so far at Ground Zero is a new building at the site of 7 World Trade Center, which has 1.7 million square feet and is 70 percent leased, Silverstein said.
Moody’s Investors Service has leased one-third of the 52-story building. Other tenants are ABN Amro and Darby & Darby PC.
David M. Levitt contributed to this story.