"Wall Street West" in NEPA - Where is it being built? (Scranton: renters, lawyer)

[marcelle]

Garbage, hmm thats nice.

[memoriesbre]

It only makes sense for the large NY Firms to look into the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. It would be a wonderful thing to see young college students being hired by the NYC Firms and making some real money without having to travel to NYC itself. I vote for New York West 100%. If everyone just keeps thinking negatively about change then Scranton and Wilkes-Barre could end up a ghost town. RCN is foolish for firing 300 or so employees and sending the jobs overseas to the Philipeans (sp?) LOL However it's spelled, that country shouldn't be getting our jobs. I blame this on our government. They don't listen to us. We need to speak up and be heard.

[weluvpa]

It does not have anything to do on whether or not we want those business's here it has to do with the reality of them coming here. I would love to see a influx of business like that but in reality its not in the cards right now not yet. The train is being pushed as a commuter service so that the public will support it but it will be a garbage train. Wall st west will be closer to NYC then Scranton because of the ease of travel to and from the main offices. This is the reality, whether we like it or not we do not have sufficient means of transport here that can be used in a timely fashion to get back and forth from the city. You can drive into the city in less than 2 hours but the train will take longer and its not direct to NYC only as far as Hoboken NJ then you have to transfer to train or ferry to get in the city. Its just too far and its the reality. Too much too fast is not good for this area either.

[gordon_bennett]

The WSW project is a nine county initiative in North East PA. One of the most talked about projects is the Penn Regional Business Center, a five phase $3.5 billion dollar multiple site grade A office complex with ultimately 3 million sq foot of sapce. This will be built in Monroe County by Larry Simons in Smithfield and Middle Smithfield Townships. East Stroudsburg University has its own plans for capital building projects for WSW again in Smithfiled Township. Rob Mericle poached Jim Cummings from NEPA Alliance for his projects in the Scranton area. I am sure he is also looking at Monroe County as are other developers that dont need the publicity that Mr. Simon's enjoys. Ben Franklin Technology Partners who are coordinating the Fiber Optic RFP and contracts as well as the WIRED grant hail from bethlehem so you can bet they have an interest in having some WSW activity in the Lehigh Valley (although it stretches the 125 mile requirement a bit). Actually its not the distance so much as the latency. Data must travel from point to point in under .5 milliseconds in order to ensure a syncronistic trade. This is only critical to trading companies where the trade in NY must be the same as the trade in PA. Other wall Street companies like insurance etc dont necessary need syncronistic data transmission, they just need it very fast. Latency could be less than .5 almost all the way to Scranton if the technology is right. As technology improves the fiber can go way beyond Scranton and still meet the requirements.

Ben Franklin technology Partners will announce the fiber optic vendor on Thursday June 7th. Once the fiber is underway the whole thing moves into the next gear.

Expect to see another blitz of media coverage on Friday and over the weekend and to see the names of financial institutions signing up by end of July.

The point of this all is not to move people from NYC to PA in the event of a disaster. It is to have a vertical slice of the company already operating in PA with executive decision makers who can take over the reins from Wall Street if NYC goes dark for one reason or another. PA Governor, Rendell is not putting $30 million dollars into the project for dark offices. He wants thousands of high paid jobs and a commercial tax base in the Poconos where there is none at present.

[gordon_bennett]

Also the cost of operating in the Poconos is a fraction of the cost in NYC. We are talking around $25 per sq ft and lower. lower taxes and HUGE financial incentives from Governor Rendell.

This is Congressman Kanjorski's baby. He initiated the Interagency White Paper in 2003 which laid out the recommendations from the SEC. Monroe, Carbon and Luzerne counties are his district and he is now the Majority Chair of the Financial Services Committee which has the power to legislate the financial services industry into the action that the 2003 recommended but did not mandate.

Its going to happen.

[cjseliga]

I would love thousands of high paying jobs in NEPA, but I don't see these WSW offices having huge numbers of employees. I would think all the accountants and brokers will still be in Manhattan and the NYC metro area, with a handful of tech geeks, probably high paying ones, watching the instantaneous transfer of the data as it's backed up onto machines here.

And the way technology is advancing, you probably could run these operations with 5 people or less per firm, just have some techs in case the computers break down. The computers and fiber optics are doing all the work here, you basically have one highly paid babysitter (which of course most people wouldn't mind being). I guess of course, God forbid, that terrorists destroy the "front office", they can temporary move to the "back office" while they rebuild.

[newjerseybt]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

I would love thousands of high paying jobs in NEPA, but I don't see these WSW offices having huge numbers of employees. I would think all the accountants and brokers will still be in Manhattan and the NYC metro area, with a handful of tech geeks, probably high paying ones, watching the instantaneous transfer of the data as it's backed up onto machines here.

And the way technology is advancing, you probably could run these operations with 5 people or less per firm, just have some techs in case the computers break down. The computers and fiber optics are doing all the work here, you basically have one highly paid babysitter (which of course most people wouldn't mind being). I guess of course, God forbid, that terrorists destroy the "front office", they can temporary move to the "back office" while they rebuild.

"I guess of course, God forbid, that terrorists destroy the "front office", they can temporary move to the "back office" while they rebuild."
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A great reason for WSW! Our nation needs more of this type of security. The "back office computer system" should have the same capabilities as the main computer system and not "miss a beat" in the event of a terrorist attack.

[gordon_bennett]

The corporate pyramid of the financial services sector is very broad at the base. It is this broad base that would be in NE PA together with enough middle managers and senior execs so that the company could function without its NYC HQ.

This issue is not the protection of Data but the protection of personnel. Data can be backed up pretty much anywhere no that the lessons have been learned (One company in Tower One had backed all its data to Tower Two).

Its not about getting on a train or in a car and driving to the Poconos to turn on the lights in an empty building. It about having a functioning back office operation already functioning so that the stock market survives intact and so that everyones pension and insurance policies remain in place and not blown out of a window across lower Manhatten.

Theres also an airport within two miles of the Monroe County site for the Penn Regional Business Center that could fly the CEOs and COOs from NYC in 20 minutes.

Lots of golf courses within 10 minutes drive too. Now where can you do a round of business golf in NYC?

Spreading out Wall Street across 9 counties in Pennsylvania makes sense economically and makes it much harder to have the devastating impact that occured on September 11. As most islamic radicals back in the Middle East have never heard of the Poconos, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre or the Lehigh Valley there is not much glory for the suicide bombers and the islamic audience would think Bin Laden had gone soft for not picking a high profile target. The terrorists like high prestige targets in cities that the man on the street in Kabul has actually heard of or maybe even seen on TV or in a movie.
Blowing up a four story building in Smithfield Township would appear lame. They certainly could not hit with a passenger jet and these buildings will have security up the wazzoo to stop walk in suicide bombers or truck bombs.

[gordon_bennett]

The 5 phase Penn Regional Business Center would provide 20,000 direct jobs and another 20,000 indirect jobs (consultants, lawyers, HVAC technicians etc). This is from the NEPA Alliance economic development report on the project.

Remember this is just one project. Multiply that by other projects in the Poconos, Scranton, Wilkes barre and Lehigh Valley and you will quickly get up to a hundred thousand new professional employment opportunities in communities that have lost a hundred thousand manufacturing jobs over the past decade or survive on $7.50 per hour season hospitality jobs.

Big announcement tomorrow, so I'm told, on the fiber optic infrastructure which is the last peice of the puzzle.

[DowntownJerseyCity]

Here is the link from 1010 WINS explaining WSW. Looks like the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area won't be seeing any benefits from this for the time being.

1010 WINS - On-Air, Online, On Demand - Wall St. to Link to the Poconos with Fiber-Optic