Nightmare on 34th street? Merrill Lynch is reportedly close to deciding between a new location near Penn Station over renewing/expanding its Financial District digs.

Hm… could this be a move to get more subsidies out of the city and we’re just contributing to the media cycle? Perhaps, but the NYT reports that Merrill is considering the Hotel Pennsylvania building on 7th Ave. Currently, Merrill’s lease for 222 Broadway and Tower 2 at the World Financial Center is up in 2013.

Moving uptown would allow Merrill to build out bigger trading floors and own the space. Proposals to keep Merrill downtown include expanding several floors in Tower 2 for the trading floor space, or constructing a WTC 2.4MM sq ft building.

“What we need more than anything else is the contiguous space that allows for 70,000-to-80,000-square-foot trading floors comparable to what we have in London and Tokyo … If we don’t have that, we’d consider ourselves to be at a competitive disadvantage in New York” ML spokesman Jason Wright told the NYT.

Doubt they’d move, but there are some positives to a Penn Station move:

- Nutritious “fruit” shakes at Gray’s Papaya
- Pole position for LIRR to Hamptons
- New NYT building = 7/8th ave Renaissance…?
- If not … sex shops on 8th
- The weird bowling alley inside Port Authority