The art market may be heading for a correction, but you wouldn’t know it from the number of existing galleries expanding and new galleries opening around town this fall.

On October 4, Marlborough Chelsea will open a 10,000-square-foot space on the first two floors of the new Chelsea Arts Tower at 545 W. 25th St. The gallery was previously located in a considerably smaller space on West 19th Street. With 15-foot ceilings on the first floor, the new space will allow the gallery to show monumental sculpture. It also has a system of movable walls and sophisticated track lighting, so that paintings can be lit either on the external walls or in the middle of the gallery, depending on how the space is configured, a vice president of the gallery, Tara Reddi, said.

The new space will open with a show on the first floor by the sculptor Tom Otterness, and one on the second floor by the painter Steven Charles, whose abstract paintings, created by dripping paint in painstaking repeated patterns, have a large following.

The gallery reportedly paid over $9 million for the two floors; Ms. Reddi would not confirm the price. Other dealers who have bought space in the tower include Tina Kim Fine Art and Larry Warsh, who has an Asian contemporary art gallery. The investment banker Glenn Furman has also purchased a space in the building for his private collection.

Meanwhile, Lehmann Maupin will open a second space later this year, at 201 Chrystie St., in an area that is quickly becoming an arts neighborhood. Several new galleries have recently opened or will open in the coming months, including Eleven Rivington, Salon 94 Freemans, Rental Gallery, and Smith-Stewart. They join galleries that have been in the neighborhood for years, such as Rivington Arms. The hub of this new cultural network will be the New Museum of Contemporary Art, set to open in its new building on the Bowery on December 1.

The tremendous growth of the art market in the last few years has driven many galleries to expand their real estate, in order to be able to take on new artists and to give their existing artists either more frequent exhibitions or, in the case of sculptors and installation artists, more room to play in.

“I was looking for a way to develop together with my artists,” Rachel Lehmann of Lehmann Maupin said of the new space. “We have a group of artists, most of whom started out unknown and who are very well-known today. This is about giving them the necessary support and developing with them.”

The space on Chrystie Street, formerly the headquarters of the East Side Glass Company, offers approximately 5,800 square feet of exhibition space and ceiling heights up to 26 feet. For the opening of the new space, in early November, Lehmann Maupin is planning a solo exhibition by the artist Do-HoSuh, which will occupy both the gallery’s locations, on Chrystie and on West 26th Street. In the Chrystie Street space, the gallery will install a sculptural piece called “Reflection,” which for space reasons, Ms. Lehmann said, “we could never have shown in our space in Chelsea.” Mr. Suh produced the piece in two editions. One is already in a museum in Japan; Ms. Lehmann said she hoped the version on display will be acquired by an American institution.

Both galleries said they would take on several new employees to run the new spaces. Ms. Lehmann estimated that her gallery would hire between three and five new people. Ms. Reddi said Marlborough Chelsea would probably take on five new people, “between reception and an art handler and staff and someone to do the archives.” Then there will be hefty mortgage payments for Marlborough Chelsea, and the monthly rent for Lehmann Maupin, which has a long-term lease with an option to buy, on the Chrystie Street space.

But neither Ms. Lehmann nor Ms. Reddi voiced concern that their galleries would find themselves out on a limb in the event of an art market downturn.

“Corrections are necessary,” Ms. Lehmann said. “We feel comfortable that none of our artists are overpriced.” If the market slows, she said, “maybe you cut an art fair or two, maybe you do a show or two less,” but the gallery won’t change its approach to managing its artists’ careers.

In terms of the second space, she said, “We’re comfortable that our investment will justify itself, if not in the first six months or the first year, then definitely in the first two or three years.”

Ms. Reddi expressed similar confidence. “We’ve weathered many different markets,” she said. “And we have an international group of clients,” she added, referring to the fact that Marlborough has galleries in London, Madrid, Barcelona, Monaco, and Santiago, Chile, in addition to its gallery in Midtown, on West 57th Street.

And what about the gallery’s real estate investment? While there have also been predictions of a nationwide decline in real estate values, experts say that is unlikely to affect a submarket like Chelsea, where there is such high demand and so little available space.

“Space is very tight; rents are going up; business is still good,” the president of Whitehall Storage, Jack Fuchs, said. “People who want big spaces are pulling their hair out.” Mr. Fuchs, who sold the land to the developers of the Chelsea Arts Tower, Young Woo Associates and Jack Guttman, said that Marlborough “got a key spot on a key block, and I don’t think they paid too much, whatever they paid.” Of course, he added, “If the art market crashes, they won’t do well, but I think their real estate decision was great.”