Record numbers flock to Governors Island
Governor’s Island hosted a record 443,000 visitors this year, marking its most successful season since opening to the public in 2004. That’s up by 60 percent from 2009, according to the Trust for Governor’s Island. On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, the Island had a record number of 18,600 daily visitors.
The Island hosted numerous arts, cultural, recreational activities this year, including a free polo match with Prince Harry, a unicycle festival, an interactive sculpture garden and others. The free bike program drew thousands of day campers, community groups, individuals and “We are so pleased that so many New Yorkers are coming to Governor’s Island,” said Leslie Koch, president of The Trust for Governor’s Island.
The Island closed for the season last Sunday. It will reopen in June 2011.
Morgan Stanley searches for a new home
Morgan Stanley is seeking approximately one million square feet of office space in Lower Manhattan.
It is looking into acquiring additional floors at One New York Plaza, its current office space, and is also eyeing Goldman Sachs’s former headquarters at 85 Broad Street, among other sites.
The company was the largest tenant in the former Twin Towers before they were destroyed in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. It returned to Lower Manhattan in 2005, when it leased five-and-a-half floors at 1 New York Plaza.
There are plenty of Downtown spaces for businesses choose from: vacancies in Lower Manhattan rose to a six-year high of 12.1 percent this quarter, from 9.9 percent a year earlier, according to Cushman and Wakefield Inc., as reported in Bloomberg News. The future World Trade Center will have 4.4 million square feet of available office space by 2013, and the World Financial Center will have 4.6 million square feet.
