In wake of 9/11, Wall Street is now more of a notion than an address

In the two decades since terrorists destroyed Twin Towers, downtown Manhattan has undergone a transformation, drawing in residents to luxury condos while office buildings have struggled to keep tenant

The years-long evolution of lower Manhattan enters a new chapter this month: Deutsche Bank AG, the last major bank on Wall Street, is moving to Midtown. It’s the end of an era for a corridor that has been synonymous with global finance for centuries. These days, Wall Street is more of a notion than an address.
 
In the two decades since terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers, downtown Manhattan has undergone a transformation, drawing in new residents to luxury condos while office buildings have struggled to keep tenants.
 
Technology upgrades mean it’s no longer a necessity to be close to the New York Stock Exchange, while many of the Financial District’s dated towers are less of a draw for cutting-edge companies. Elsewhere, new glass-and-steel skyscrapers close to commuting hubs have sprung up in recent years, including at the massive Hudson Yards development on the far West Side.
 
“Wall Street was a place where people physically gathered and that’s less the case today,” said Jeremy Moss, executive vice president at Silverstein Properties, the developer of much of the World Trade Center complex. “The banks just became more diffuse over time.”
 
While finance firms have been relocating to midtown for decades, the shift accelerated in the last 20 years. In the summer of 2001, finance and insurance companies accounted for about 55 per cent of the employees in lower Manhattan. By last year, that had dipped to 30 per cent, according to the Downtown Alliance.
 
Blackstone Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co have been in Midtown for decades, while Wells Fargo & Co expanded there after September 11. Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices at One World Trade Center were destroyed, signed a lease on 59th Street in 2004.

 After the attacks, finance firms opened secondary hubs outside Manhattan in the New York City area, meant to supplement existing office space or act as back-up sites in case of future disasters. That included Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s office in Jersey City and Morgan Stanley’s outpost in Westchester County.
 
Then came the financial crisis, which saw financial firms reduce their space, as the industry consolidated and cut jobs. The redevelopment of the World Trade Center, meanwhile, drew tenants from outside the financial world, including Conde Nast, Spotify and Uber Technologies.
 
There’s also been a boom in residential construction, with developers converting former bank offices into high-end condos. There were 64,000 people living in lower Manhattan in 2019, compared with 25,000 twenty years ago, according to estimates from the Downtown Alliance.
 
Still, the neighbourhood has been hit hard by the pandemic. With many workers staying home for months, the amount of office space available for sublease has surged and companies including JPMorgan are looking to exit. The boom in luxury residential construction, aimed at those wanting to live near work, has also resulted in a deluge of supply.
 
At 60 Wall Street, the building that Deutsche Bank is leaving, the landlord is planning an expensive overhaul to attract a new crop of tenants with the tower’s days as a finance headquarters ending after roughly 30 years. It’s part of the latest bid to revitalise the area.
 
“September 11 created a gaping hole in downtown New York, but the funding and spirit to rebuild was there and the city picked itself up and kept going,” said Ruth Colp-Haber, chief executive officer of real estate brokerage Wharton Property Advi­s­ors. “That still exists today — it took us years after September 11 and this will take time as well. But the city needs to bring off­ice workers back because they’re the centre of the whole ecosystem.”