Contingency trading site to be built at MetroTech

Real Estate Weekly, July 7, 1993

Bruce C. Ratner, president and chief executive officer of Forest City Ratner Companies, the developers of MetroTech Center, announced that Chubb Contingency Trading Facility (ChubbCTF), a new division of Chubb Services Corporation, has leased 42,000 square feet of space at One MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn. With this lease, One MetroTech Center is 100 percent occupied only 12 months after its completion in June 1992.

ChubbCTF will use its new space at MetroTech Center to construct a hightech disaster recovery hot-site trading facility that will provide up to 340 trading seats. The facility at MetroTech will be designed to be instantly accessed and operational (within 24 hours) without the usual delay for communications hook-ups, enabling financial traders to resume operations quickly if their regular facilities become inoperable.

The hot site will be equipped with all necessary voice and data communications for the firm's financial and trading needs essentially duplicating the trading room, communications, market data and other support services used at their primary office location.

The need for disaster trading facilities was identified by the Wall Street Telecommunications Association (WSTA), an organization of communications managers representing major banking and brokerage firms, who, in 1989, formed a "Disaster Recovery Hot Site Consortium" to formulate a plan to meet their emergency needs in the case of a disaster. The criteria for the hot site stressed that it be located outside Manhattan but within easy reach of Wall Street and Midtown traders and brokerage firms.

Con Edison recently re-designed and upgraded a fire-proof electrical substation with emergency failsafe features that distributes power more reliably and is independent of power sources that serve lower Manhattan. This, coupled with downtown Brooklyn's easy access to the Wall Street and Midtown areas, makes MetroTech Center an ideal location for this trading center hot site.

When not needed for emergency purposes, subscriber firms can use the hot site for non-emergency purposes such as for training programs, handling overflow from primary trading sites, or as a backup trading site during relocations.