Douglas Durst and Jonathan “Jody” Durst

There’s been plenty of headlines proclaiming the death of the office since COVID-19 hit, so it’s an accomplishment when a newspaper writes the opposite about your building.

That happened to The Durst Organization in December when The New York Times proclaimed that its 1 World Trade Center was “winning” the return-to-work battle since the building hit 95 percent leased and became “a buzzy tech, advertising and media hub.”

Durst made other publications — this one included — eat their hats with its success at 1 WTC after it dealt with major tenant Condè Nast shrinking its space and trying to skip out on rent, and with more employers in America’s tallest office tower embracing remote work. To do so, Durst pivoted from its original plan to lease out large blocks of space to single tenants and instead targeted smaller, mostly tech companies.

“We were wrong,” Douglas Durst said about the company’s original plan for the building. “It was lucky we misguessed the market because the tech tenants keep growing and the space is becoming very attractive because there are so many there.”

Case in point: Artificial intelligence startup Celonis took 34,328 square feet in 1 WTC in 2020 and signed on for an additional 40,763 square feet in March 2022.

It wasn’t just 1 WTC where Durst succeeded recently. The firm inked 945,000 square feet of leases since January 2022, including Global Relay signing for 77,000 square feet at 1155 Avenue of the Americas in April 2022, and Chicago Trading Company taking 68,339 square feet at One Five One in July.

And Durst found plenty of success with its “Durst Ready” offerings of furnished, short-term office space outfitted with technology for tenants that want to move in quickly. Durst Ready made up 15 percent of Durst’s leasing last year, and it already accounts for 130,000 square feet this year.

On the residential side, Durst opened its 70-story Sven multifamily building in Long Island City, Queens, last year and fully leased it by this March. All without giving any concessions, Jonathan “Jody” Durst pointed out.

“Our philosophy here is that when we build a building we use the opportunity to build the absolute best build we can at the time,” Jody Durst said. “Doing that makes it much more competitive as time goes on.”