“New York is back — period.” Those were the words used by Vornado Realty Trust’s Glen Weiss to describe the state of office leasing in New York City at Commercial Observer’s Fall State of Office Forum on Nov. 20 at Terminal Warehouse on the far West Side of Manhattan.
The rest of the speakers and panelists seemed to share that sentiment.
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Indeed, there was a definite sea change from previous years, when many of the city’s landlords and brokers tried to put the best face on a market that was unsure if it could fully overcome work-from-home trends, or crushing interest rates, or the general uncertainty that has haunted the office market since COVID.
The morning kicked off with Megan Abraham of The Goldie Initiative introducing a conversation between Jonathan Mechanic, partner at law firm Fried Frank, and David Levinson, chairman and CEO of L&L Holding Company, which developed Terminal Warehouse with Columbia Property Trust.
Levinson touted the low vacancy rate for prime Manhattan office space, the rising rents and the facts that money was coming back into the market and deals were getting inked again. “I wish I had empty space in my building on Park Avenue,” Levinson said. “I would get 30 to 40 percent more rent.”
The action jumped to a panel entitled “Lessons Learned From a Pivotal Year: Office’s Comeback & Forecasts for 2026,” which included Vornado’s Weiss, Empire State Realty Trust’s Chistina Chiu, SL Green Realty’s Steven Durels and Eastdil Secured’s Will Silverman. Andrew Charles from law firm HSF Kramer moderated the panel.
“There’s really no sublease space,” Weiss said a few minutes after declaring Gotham office victorious at the end of its years-long battle with COVID. “There are no blocks of space. [In] the better buildings there are single-digit vacancies. . . . Demand is robust. Tenants are expanding. Everyone wants to live, work and eat in New York.”
“Nobody talks about return to office any more — because it’s already happened,” said Chiu.
And the sales and financing market has been robust.
This is “probably the first in at least 25 years of a fundamentals-led capital markets recovery in New York City,” said Silverman (emphasis his). “Every prior moment, any time we came out of the darkness, it was always the capital markets getting in front of the fundamentals. This was the first time it was the other way around. I can’t tell you how many conversations we had in late 2024 and early 2025 with private equity firms calling and saying, ‘We’re getting more constructive on office.’ We’d say, ‘What changed your view?’ They’d say, ‘We tried to find space.’”
Silverman said that in addition to two recent buyers from Greece, he’s seen an Argentinian buyer who had never bought in New York before. “Eastdil did [$9.5] billion in office financing,” Silverman said about New York City alone ($30 billion nationwide, Silverman later told CO).
Likewise, Weiss also declared that buyers “like us” have a big appetite for new product, and Durels spoke about SL Green’s recent purchase of the old Brooks Brothers building at 346 Madison Avenue for an “800,000-square-foot building that we’ll start demolition on spec.”
Tenants are also back, as per the panel “Between the Headlines: Market Drivers Impacting Growth & Talent Acquisition,” moderated by Lowenstein Sandler partner Julia Sanabria. Adam Frazier of Columbia Property Trust, David Goldstein of Savills and Tyler McCaine of Tishman Speyer described a very different landscape three years ago than now.
Part of Gotham’s success has something to do with the fact that it’s been competitive with prime tech markets. If one had said 15 years ago that New York City would have been securing tech tenants over places like San Francisco, “you would have been laughed at,” said Related’s Philippe Visser in a later conversation with Joanne Franzel and Jennifer Yashar of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. Back then, New York “had some dot-coms — and that’s adorable,” but it wasn’t getting the big techies. That’s changed.
“There’s zero square feet you can rent at Hudson Yards right now,” said Visser (again, emphasis his). In fact, Visser said that Related is so enamored with office that it announced in September that 625 Madison Avenue — which it had bought from SL Green in 2024 and previously planned to rebuild as residential — was being reconceived as high-end office.
“Two-hundred dollars per foot is the new 100,” said Visser. “And 300 is the new 200.”
The one specter that hovered over the morning’s good cheer was the recent election of Zohran Mamdani to the mayoralty.
“Do I really need to say it?” asked Silverman, without invoking Mamdani’s name, when asked what potential stumbling blocks the office market could face. (Rather, Silverman cloaked the issue as recent political developments.)
Others were explicit — and realistic — about Mamdani’s ascent.
“I don’t think it will be better [for the city],” said Levinson, “but it’s a question of how much more difficult it will be.”
Something slightly less spoken about were threats to the market like AI. “It’s on everyone’s mind,” said Visser. “No one really knows the answer.”
But none of this really dampened the mood. The next panel “Office & Mixed-Use: Bringing the 15-Minute City Concept to the Heart of the Big Apple” was moderated by Danielle Lesser of Morrison Cohen and featured the Downtown Alliance’s Jessica Lappin, Brookfield Properties’ Alex Liscio, Newmark’s Chris Mongeluzo and Silverstein Properties’ Jeremy Moss, whose conversation delved into the curation of a big working campus and prime office buildings.
Hospitality is also very much on office developers’ minds, as evidenced in the final panel of the day, “Spotlight Case Studies: Inside the Developments Delivering World-Class Workplace & Guest Experiences,” which was moderated by Nina Roket of law firm Olshan Frome Wolosky and featured the Real Estate Board of New York’s Sandhya Espitia, hospitality firm Convene’s Brian Holland, owner Sage Realty’s Jonathan Iger and Cushman & Wakefield’s Alan Schmerzler.
“One of the things we’ve implemented is the concept of surprise and delight,” said Iger, talking about the personalization necessary in hospitality — like having a coloring book for a child who was taken by their parent to work that day. But that also has to be managed sensibly.
In the past, when the building was throwing breakfasts for tenants, the staff would “order breakfast burritos for 1,000 — because they don’t want to run out,” Iger said. Or, hospitality personnel would bake cookies for every last tenant in the tower. A more subtle approach is to make 50, and leave them wanting more.
