[NYguy]

^ I need to find my old pair, just for that.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/ny...g-profits.html

Nice View, and the Profits Surpass All Horizons



By CHARLES V. BAGLI
December 24, 2011

The owners of the Empire State Building like to promote it as the most famous office building in the world. But the real moneymaker at the 102-story skyscraper is not the 2.7 million square feet of commercial space occupied by tenants like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It is the view.

The decks attract four million visitors a year and generated $60 million in profits in 2010, while the owners made little if any money on the office space, according to newly disclosed documents that offer a rare glimpse at the building’s balance sheet.

In Chicago, the owners of the Willis Tower, formerly named the Sears Tower and the tallest building in the United States, unveiled glass balconies for the observation deck in 2009 that allowed visitors to look straight down, 1,353 feet, onto South Wacker Drive. Since then, attendance has jumped 28 percent, to an estimated 1.4 million this year. Top of the Rock, the observatory at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, reopened six years ago after a long dormancy and now pulls in 2.5 million visitors a year and a $25 million profit, according to real estate executives who have been briefed on the project.

Eight companies are vying to operate what would be the largest and highest observation deck in the city — the one at 1 World Trade Center, the 1,776-foot tower under construction in Lower Manhattan.

It remains to be seen whether the observatory at 1 World Trade will undercut the performance of the Empire State Building’s, or establish a new market among the millions of tourists expected to visit the 9/11 memorial and museum downtown. But the Empire State Building prospectus does warn that competition from 1 World Trade and Top of the Rock “could have a negative impact on revenues.”