Retail Banking Gets the Boot

Commercial brokers and business-owners share a common fear...the loss of bank branches and subsequent availability of space downtown.

By: Ryan Hartley The proliferation of retail banking in the city may be coming to an end, according to retail brokers who are preparing for the massive shedding of banking outlets in the wake of the banking crisis striking the city. An estimated half-million square feet of banking and other commercial spaces could come on the market when the Wall Street crisis is over. According to Faith Hope Consolo, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, "We are going to have some excess bank space, and we have known this for a few months now, and I think the next quarter will be the flushout and then we will see where we are going." The number of banking branches located in Manhattan increased to roughly 660 branches, up from 466 in 1998. The massive increase of banking sites in the city has been spurred chiefly by the massive number of mortgages, many of them with adjustable rates, during the early part of this decade. "The banks expanded too quickly," the executive vice president at Newmark Knight Frank, Jeffrey Roseman. A seniore VP at CB Richard Ellis has said that downsizing the number of banks may be a positive thing. However, if those branches are closing because of a market failure, his concern is that there may be a great number of vacant spaces where those banks used to be.