Midtown Madness Part I – 738,794 Square Feet
By Richard Persichetti April 7, 2015 6:56 pm
reprints
It’s time for the second annual Midtown Madness tournament! So for all of you out there who are already eliminated from your NCAA office pool, here’s a chance to see if you can guess which Midtown submarket will be victorious this year. Last year, the Fifth/Madison submarket stood tall at the end of the tournament; did this submarket perform well enough over the last 12 months to repeat as champion?
Similarly to last year, we’ll split the nine submarkets into East and West regions with the seeding based on the submarkets’ total size. Since there are five submarkets in the West Region, this year the two smallest submarkets in the West, Times Square and Penn Plaza/Hudson Yards will have a play-in round. Total year-over-year absorption will decide which submarket makes it to the dance, and Penn Plaza/Hudson Yards wins that round in a blow-out by posting 738,794 square feet of positive absorption compared to Times Square’s negative 240,366 square feet.
The first round is decided by the largest basis-point-drop in availability over the past year. In the West, the fourth-seeded Penn Plaza/Hudson Yards continues its Cinderella story by scoring a huge upset over the top-seeded Sixth Avenue/Rock Center submarket with a 360 basis-point-drop in availability compared to only a 180 basis-point-drop. Although both the second and third-seeded submarkets had jumps in availability, the second-seeded Fashion District wins this bracket, as its availability rate only rose 100 basis points compared to Midtown West/Columbus Circle’s 310 basis point increase.
In the East Region, after getting upset in the first round last year, top-seeded Grand Central is out for revenge and easily dismisses the fourth-seeded East Side/UN with a 290 basis-point-drop in availability compared to only a 50 basis-point-drop. The closest matchup of the first round was between the second-seeded Park Avenue submarket and the third-seeded Fifth/Madison. And for the second year in a row Fifth/Madison scores the upset victory, as it edges out Park Avenue by a decline in availability of 190 basis points to 100 basis points.
Be sure to come back next week to see which submarket wins the second annual Midtown Madness tournament!
