DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN ANYONE?

BLOOMBERG--Downtown Manhattan, where demand for office space began to surge three years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is about to lose its spot as the best- performing U.S. market.

Vacancies may exceed 14 percent of the area’s 87 million square feet by late 2011, empty space that’s equivalent to four Empire State Buildings and the highest rate since 1997, according to property broker Cushman & Wakefield Inc. That doesn’t include the 4.4 million square feet of offices in two towers now under construction at the World Trade Center site. Those are scheduled for completion in 2013.

WB7: Filling that space will be doubly challenging since this pace of computer automation in the securities trading industry is roughly following Moore's Law and the trend in investment banking is heavily skewed towards growth in the emerging markets, particularly Asia. Wonder which empty towers will fill faster Shanghai or lower Manhattan?