Manhattan is in the midst of a construction mini-boom.
Between May 2013 and May 2014 five new office towers will be completed, adding more than 6.5 million square feet of office space to the market. That’s the largest volume of new office space to be completed over a 12-month period since 1989.
| Building | Office Square Feet | Developer |
| One World Trade Center | 3,000,000 | Port Authority of New York & New Jersey/Durst Organization |
| Four World Trade Center | 2,000,000 | Silverstein Properties |
| 250 West 55th Street | 896,000 | Boston Properties (BXP) |
| 51 Astor Place | 307,839 | Minskoff Equities |
| 55 West 46th Street | 292,500 | Extell Development Company |
Between 1990 and 2012 a total of 31.7 million square feet of new office space was completed in Manhattan, or roughly 1.4 million square feet per year. So the current construction represents more than four times the average of the previous two decades.
Historically, there was much more new construction in Manhattan than there has been recently. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the city was awash in new construction. Those three decades saw more than 175 million square feet of office space completed in Manhattan or more than 6 million square feet per year for 29 years.
The main contributor to this surge in new construction is the World Trade Center site, where two of the planned four new buildings will be completed. One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere—as well as 4 World Trade Center—will both be completed and ready for tenant fit out in the next seven months. The completion of these buildings represents an important milestone in the ongoing redevelopment of the World Trade Center complex.
New York City has always been defined by its buildings and now, for the first time in decades we are witnessing a re-drawing of the Manhattan skyline.
