Hole in the Ground Inc.

For rent: two abandoned subway tunnels that stretch for nearly two miles some 50 feet beneath the streets of Manhattan. They are dark, dank and almost inaccessible. Present occupants are a few rats. If interested, contact New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Though the pitch was not phrased in exactly that way, the MTA did indeed offer last July to lease two vacant subway tunnels to "an imaginative entrepreneur." Now Vital Records Inc. of Raritan, N.J., thinks that it has enough imagination. The company, which stores financial records on computer tapes and microfilm for 50 of the largest U.S. corporations, proposes to convert the tunnels into a vast underground filing cabinet.

If its offer is accepted, the firm will have to install a computer-controlled file locator system and conveyor belts throughout the tunnels in order to turn them into a vault. Cost: an estimated $2million. Despite those expenses, subterranean storage is expected to cost only $1 per sq. ft., compared with up to $50 per sq. ft. for aboveground space.

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