The Grand Central area is a dynamic commercial area with a combination of high end offices and high trafficked retail locations which benefit from the density of office workers who love the easy access to the commuter lines. Grand Central serves commuters traveling on the Metro–North Railroad to Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties in New York State, and Fairfield and New Haven counties in Connecticut. Which makes it a favorite area for many financial service companies, especially one's with offices in the CT and New York suburban office districts. Situated just to the South of the Plaza District or Midtown East's higher end office buildings, Grand Central has a mix of excellent high-rise office buildings and many smaller side street class B and C buildings that provide lower pricing for the ease of proximity. On the Eastern portion of the area is a mix of high quality class A buildings that were developed to provide large full floor and multi floor tenancies with lower pricing than the prime parts of Midtown. The area just South of 42nd Street has older prewar office buildings that have often provided better value than the Northern portions of the area and in general has more smaller office spaces for midsized private companies and has been popular with professional service firms from Advertising and PR agencies to Law and Accounting firms.

Further to the East in the Grand Central area is Turtle Bay, a neighborhood in New York City, on the east side of Midtown Manhattan. It extends between 41st and 53rd Streets, and eastward from Lexington Avenue to the East River, across from Roosevelt Island. It is the site of the United Nations Headquarters and the Chrysler Building. The clearing of 18 acres (73,000 m2) of slaughterhouses for the construction of the UN Headquarters in 1948, largely completed by 1952, and the removal of the elevated trains opened the neighborhood up for high-rise office buildings and condominiums. In 1957, the Turtle Bay Association was formed by residents and property owners in hopes of guiding the development to maintain the neighborhood's quality of life. The Association's efforts have resulted in more park and landscaping development, creating the neighborhood's tree-lined and relatively quiet atmosphere.

The surrounding area from Turtle Bay to Grand Central to the West has many Diplomatic Missions and Consulates based upon the areas proximity to the UN, many of the office buildings in the area have been converted to commercial condominium and coop ownerships providing foreign countries with the ability to purchase their office spaces. It is one of the few areas of Manhattan where the commercial condominium form of ownership is more common.

Some text and images from List of Manhattan Neighborhoods at Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.