Is Goldman Sachs move indicative of things to come?

In 2003, Westchester County, N.Y., officials crowed after Morgan Stanley chose a former Chevron Texaco facility to house 1,500 employees, at the time intimating that additional Wall Street firms would soon follow.

As Goldman Sachs Group Inc. establishes a major operation in Greenwich, city officials and those in Stamford wonder whether the company”™s action will grease the skids for other financial icons to consider building Fairfield County into the investment capital of New England.

The county has a ways to go before being able to hoist any such banner. Boston, home of Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management Co. and Bain Capital L.L.C. among other giants, would have reason to quibble with any such declaration.

But besides Goldman Sachs establishing a local office, officials can point to a flood of recent tidings, including details of the massive role hedge funds play in the world economy, the completion of Peoples United Financial Inc.”™s IPO as it prepares to expand to other states and the steady drumbeat of growth at UBS AG in Stamford and General Electric Co.”™s financial arms in Fairfield County.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has taken over the Greenwich lease of Amaranth Advisors L.L.C., marking the Wall Street giant”™s first major presence in Connecticut.

Goldman”™s intent to establish an office at 1 American Lane in Greenwich was first reported in the Jan. 22 edition of the Fairfield County Business Journal. The building is owned by Tishman Speyer.

The company is taking 125,000 square feet, about a quarter of the building”™s total space. according to real estate trade publication CoStar Group, which obtained the first confirmation of the news this month via a regulatory filing. At last report, the lease was scheduled to run through 2015.

Goldman Sachs has yet to comment on its plans for the Amaranth building. Real estate observers have said privately that while the space may have originally been intended as a data center operation, Goldman Sachs is believed to be expanding its plans for the facility to include a range of back-office and perhaps even client-side roles.

The move comes as Goldman Sachs tweaks its office needs as it erects a headquarters tower in downtown Manhattan.

While Morgan Stanley has yet to prove a Pied Piper leading major Manhattan players north to Westchester, the Goldman Sachs move gives county and state economic development officials a large horn to toot.