Bank of New York has been in the building since the late 1980s, when it acquired Irving Trust.
Moving Workers
This is the second time in less than four years that BNY Mellon has explored vacating and selling its Wall Street tower. In November 2010, it told its employees that it would stay put. Ron Gruendl, a bank spokesman, said four months later that given the economic environment, coming out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, “we were not willing to make any move that would increase expenses.”
Prices for Manhattan office properties have risen 30 percent since November 2010, according to Green Street Advisors Inc. JPMorgan agreed to sell 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, once the headquarters of Chase Manhattan Bank, to Shanghai-based Fosun International Ltd. for $725 million, the most ever paid for New York building by a Chinese buyer, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc., a research firm that tracks commercial real estate sales.
Bob McGrath, a spokesman for CBRE, and George Shea, a spokesman for Jones Lang LaSalle, declined to comment on BNY Mellon’s moves.
Tax Subsidies
Mayor-elect de Blasio wants to change or eliminate programs that subsidize “wealthy corporations,” saving about $250 million, according to his campaign policy book. The money would be better spent helping the City University of New York and raising the skills of the city’s workforce, he said.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has awarded at least $2.1 billion of tax breaks to keep or lure businesses, including Panasonic Corp. and Revel Entertainment Group LLC, according to an analysis published in April by New Jersey Policy Perspectives, a Trenton-based non-profit group critical of such subsidies.
In September, Christie merged five incentive programs into two, the Grow New Jersey awards focused on attracting employers from other states and the Economic Redevelopment and Growth program aimed at retaining businesses. He said the overhaul was designed to make the state more competitive and make it easier to navigate the hodge-podge of government programs.
In 2009, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority awarded the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp., a company that manages Wall Street securities on behalf of stock brokers, $89.1 million of incentives to move to Jersey City.