NYSE Establishes a Backup Site

The New York Stock Exchange said Thursday that it has set up a contingency site at an undisclosed location within New York where it could reestablish operations within 24 hours of any disruption that prevents it from using 11 Wall Street, the exchange’s home since 1903.

The trading floor, which was tested in early November, is larger than the current one, NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso said.

The NYSE’s current headquarters is a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, and though it didn’t sustain direct damage in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the need for contingency plans was heightened by the attacks.

Separately, the NYSE board on Thursday approved building a new trading and administrative facility across the street from its current headquarters that might anchor a scaled-down office tower, Grasso said.

The plan for a 1.1-million-square-foot office tower above the new NYSE building at 23 Wall Street will be reduced in size, although city officials haven’t yet determined by how much, Grasso said at a news conference.

With vacancy rates in lower Manhattan having doubled since the terrorist attacks, real estate officials have doubted the need for an office tower.

“I can’t tell you whether it’s going to be a box [for the stock exchange] only, or a box with some commercial space above it, but I can tell you it won’t have 1.1 million square feet of available space,” Grasso said.

The new building for the Big Board should be completed by 2007, although the exchange would like to finish it by 2006, said Robert Britz, the executive vice president in charge of the project.

The contingency trading facility announced Thursday, which Grasso said is a “short subway ride” from the current site, has all the phone lines and computers needed to run the exchange should 11 Wall Street be damaged, he said.

The NYSE said it will discuss with its board and industry executives the possibility of having a third site that would run simultaneously with the 11 Wall St. trading floor so all Big Board trading could be done at either site during the day.

For the “near term, we are satisfied that we have the capability to be up and running within 24 hours,” Grasso said.