Brooklyn Borough President

Borough President Urges New York Stock Exchange to Move Second Trading Floor to Brooklyn

In a letter sent earlier this week to Richard Grasso, the Chairman and Chief Exchange Officer of the New York Stock Exchange, Borough President Marty Markowitz urged him to consider the downtown Brooklyn area for its second trading floor.

"The Bloomberg Administration has targeted Downtown Brooklyn for development into a major regional central business district because it is an ideal location for large corporate facilities," said the Borough President. "The Downtown Brooklyn business community is strongly committed to growth. The Downtown Brooklyn Council, the reinvigorated Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and Brooklyn’s elected officials stand ready to work closely with the NYSE to make building a new trading floor and associated facilities go smoothly and quickly."

The Borough President stressed a number of important points including:

Downtown Brooklyn’s proximity to Wall Street, yet it is on a different power grid than Manhattan.

Downtown Brooklyn is already an established financial center. The NYSE would be joining major facilities of JP Morgan Chase, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the Securities Industry Automation Corporation. Suitable sites exist and plans are being drawn for zoning changes that would permit development of another nine million square feet of commercial space.

Downtown Brooklyn is a center of higher education, with over 22,000 college, university and law school students.

Downtown Brooklyn is surrounded by some of New York City’s most desirable neighborhoods, including Brooklyn Heights and its famous promenade overlooking lower Manhattan, and Fort Greene, with the world-renowned Brooklyn Academy of Music.