Employers seeking top-tier penthouse office space with sweeping views of New York City can now consider the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere.
The 1,776-foot, 104-story One World Trade Center for the first time is marketing 46,000 square feet across two penthouse floors as offices, the Durst Organization, owner of the tower with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said Monday in a statement.
Durst’s move comes as office demand has picked up in New York following the pandemic slowdown where more people worked from home. Now well-resourced corporate tenants are snapping up premier locations.
The One World Trade Center spaces span 33,000 square feet on the 89th floor and 13,000 square feet on the 90th. They're expected to command rents in the mid-$100s per square foot, far above the building’s lease average in the mid-$80s, a Durst spokesperson told CoStar News, adding that the spaces are likely to attract tenants in finance or tech, hedge funds, or private family offices.
The asking rent in the World Trade Center market averages $62 per square foot, according to CoStar data.
The 33,000-square-foot penthouse on the 89th floor was previously leased as a conference center and social space but was never occupied and has never been used as an office, the Durst spokesperson said, and the 13,000 square feet on the 90th floor has never been occupied. The brokerage Newmark is helping Durst lease the spaces.
One World Trade Center, the main building in the World Trade Center complex rebuilt after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, opened in 2014.
Around Manhattan, some of the high floors at top-tier properties such as SL Green Realty’s trophy tower One Vanderbilt in midtown have scored rents in the $200-plus or even $300-plus range per square foot, according to CoStar data.
“Tenants are looking for premium, top-of-house offices in New York City’s trophy buildings — and supply is limited," David Falk, Newmark’s president of the New York tri-state area, said in the One World Trade Center statement. "With double-height floors and two stories of windows throughout, the new penthouse floors ... are truly unique spaces."
Downtown Manhattan’s office market, which has lagged that of midtown and midtown south in recovery from the pandemic, has shown improving signs.
First-quarter office leasing in lower Manhattan totaled 1.42 million square feet, the strongest since the pre-pandemic year of 2019 and over half of 2024’s full volume, thanks to Jane Street’s near 1 million square feet of renewal and expansion at 250 Vesey St., the Alliance for Downtown New York said recently. Downtown also ended the first quarter with the fifth straight quarter of more move-ins than move-outs, the business improvement district said.
One World Trade Center’s observation deck is between the 100th and 102nd floors. The Durst spokesperson said the floors between the observation deck and the penthouse floors house the building's mechanical equipment.
The 3.1 million-square-foot One World Trade Center is 95% leased. It features a full-service 25,000-square-foot amenity space, Well& by Durst, on the 64th floor.
For the record
Leasing at One World Trade Center is led by Eric Engelhardt and Karen Rose at The Durst Organization, and by Newmark’s David Falk, Peter Shimkin, Hal Stein, Jason Greenstein and Nathan Kropp.