Verizon officials want luxury residential, hotel and restaurant owners to move into their landmark lower Manhattan headquarters — which means the workers have to leave.
The telecom giant is looking for real-estate investors to attract high-end operators to their West Street building, officials said.
But jumping in on the Manhattan real-estate boom means there won’t be enough room for their actual employees.
The 1,100 workers will be inconveniently shipped to offices in Brooklyn, union officials said.
The plan, revealed in a May press release, would retain the bottom 10 floors of the building for some employees, with “plans to market 18 of the upper floors” for development.
The firm took $185 million in federal funds in the form of 9/11 relief money to spruce up the 31-floor building, said Keith Purce, president of Local 1101 of CWA.
That, Purce said, amounts to a subsidy, allowing the firm to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars after hitting up taxpayers.
Verizon brass said they can use their building as they see fit.