Remember UBS's trading floor in Stamford, CT? The world’s largest trading floor, it was part of a lavish office complex in Stamford, CT, that was built in the 1990s to lure what was then Swiss Bank Corp. and thousands of workers away from New York. Soaring 40 feet high, the trading floor was bigger than a football field, unimpeded by columns and soon filled with hundreds of stock, bond and currency traders.

Now it’s mostly empty and up for grabs.

CW Capital Asset Management, the servicer that controls the $149.4 million mortgage on the 712,000-square-foot complex near the Stamford train station, is selling that debt – which is widely expected to sell for well under that amount. UBS, which acquired Swiss Bank in the late 1990s, no longer occupies that trading facility. The Stamford office market, meanwhile, is suffering one of the highest vacancy rates in the U.S., at more than 30%.

The empty trading floor has become a symbol of the end of a freewheeling era on Wall Street in which banks and hedge funds made vast sums buying and selling securities. The financial crisis prompted a wave of regulation making it more difficult for banks to trade their own capital. Hedge funds, meanwhile, retrenched.

The saga also spotlights the double-whammy that has hit the Stamford office market in recent years.

• Urban downtowns like New York, with their young and creative workforces, have become more attractive to employers than suburbs and satellite cities like Stamford.
• The contraction of the financial-services industry has hit 2 of Stamford’s biggest employers - UBS and RBS.

OPTIONS.    What does one do with a trading floor that has expanded over the years to about 100,000 square feet? Suggestions have ranged from the whimsical - like a roller derby rink - to the more prosaic, like call centers. It also could be converted into a film or television studio.