New Jersey's `Wall Street West' Quakes Amid Namesake's Turmoil

New Jersey's `Wall Street West' Quakes Amid Namesake's Turmoil

By Stacie Servetah and Terrence Dopp

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Jersey City, where New Jersey bet it could transform warehouse and factory tracts into a ``Wall Street West'' across the Hudson River from Manhattan, was paying off. That is, until its investment bank tenants started collapsing.

Many of the towers that have sprung up in the past decade on Jersey City's waterfront are filled with satellite offices for the largest investment-banking firms. More than 3,000 employees of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. work in New Jersey's second-largest city.

Lehman this week filed for the biggest bankruptcy, while Merrill agreed to a takeover by Bank of America Corp. Those firms joined Bear Stearns Cos. and at least 20 banks and credit unions nationally that couldn't survive this year's credit crunch.

``It's basically a disaster for tri-state real estate,'' said Andy Merin, vice chairman at Cushman & Wakefield in East Rutherford, New Jersey. ``Financial companies drive this region. Clearly of all the markets in New Jersey, Jersey City is the most dependent on New York City and the financial arena.''

Jersey City's Hudson River waterfront has attracted securities firms since the early 1980s, sparking a building boom for office space that now totals 17 million square feet (5.2 million square meters), more than in downtown Atlanta or Pittsburgh, according to the city's economic development agency.

Only four years ago, Jersey City's office vacancy rate was more than 18 percent. It's now about 7 percent, said Seena Stein, principal in real-estate broker Newmark Knight Frank's East Rutherford office. ......(more)

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