Sagard was founded in 2005 by the Power Corporation of Canada with offices also in Toronto and Paris. It currently has its New York City outpost in about 7,000 square feet on the third floor of 280 Park, the source said.

Vornado handled the deal in-house via Edward Riguardi along with CBRE’s Gregg Rothkin. David Dusek of Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant.

Spokespeople for CBRE, Vornado and C&W declined to comment.

Other tenants in the 1.3 million-square-foot complex include Cardinia Real Estate, Wells Fargo and Antares Capital.

Nicholas Rizzi can be reached at nrizzi@commercialobserver.com.

Bank OZK plans to move into the property in the summer, according to Savills.

“It was important to Bank OZK to create a new, upgraded work environment for their New York City employees without straying too far from their current location,” said Savills’ James Wenk, who represented the bank along with Sam Mann, Allison Buck, Alex Redlus and Kirill Azovtsev.

CBRE’s Gregg Rothkin and Peter Turchin negotiated on behalf of the landlords. CBRE declined to comment.

Bank OZK’s 28th-floor space will be near the top of the 1.3 million-square-foot, two-building complex between West 48th and West 49th streets, just below Sagard Holdings, a private equity firm that signed for a similar footprint in October 2021.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.

SL Green, which co-owns the 1.3 million-square-foot tower with Vornado Realty Trust, also announced a 77,000-square-foot lease with Stonepeak Partners Monday at 245 Park Avenue. 

CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe, Ken Meyerson, Brendan Herlihy, Eric Thomas and Marlee Teplitzky represented the tenant, along with Evan Margolin of JLL. Vornado’s Glen Weiss and SL Green’s Steven Durels handled the deal in-house for the landlords, along with Peter Turchin, Gregg Rothkin and Jason Pollen of CBRE. A spokesperson for CBRE declined to comment on the deal, and JLL’s spokespeople didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Weiss and Durels said in a joint statement that the deal “reaffirms the strength of the Park Avenue submarket.”

Vornado and SL Green recently spent $150 million renovating the two-tower complex, which runs through the block from East 48th to East 49th streets between Park and Madison avenues. Updates include a new double-height lobby on Park Avenue, modernized amenity spaces, a redesign of the outdoor plaza and upgrades to the mechanical systems. 

Rebecca Baird-Remba can be reached at rbairdremba@commercialobserver.com

The social media giant was a massive boon to the city’s leasing market in recent years — signing a blockbuster, 730,000-square-foot lease at Vornado’s Farley Post Office development in 2020 — but has started to reverse course. Facebook previously walked back its plans to expand at the landmarked 1.2 million-square-foot 770 Broadway and instead will shrink its footprint by about 35 percent. 

Facebook also cut about 250,000 square feet from its 1.9 million-square-foot Hudson Yards offices in 2022 and terminated its 200,000-square-foot lease at 225 Park Avenue South when it moved into the Farley building that same year.

All told, Facebook expected to spend at least $2.9 billion last year to get out of leases around the country, and it appears it might not be done.

A spokesperson for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook’s decision to drop space at 770 Broadway was one reason Vornado predicts its 20 million-square-foot Manhattan portfolio will take a hit in 2024 before the leasing picture brightens.

Vornado President and Chief Financial Officer Michael Franco said earnings will take a “ding” this year, partly thanks to tenant turnover at 770 Broadway, 1290 Avenue of the Americas and 280 Park Avenue. 

“We have already leased up a good chunk of this space, but the [generally accepted accounting principles] earnings from these leases won’t begin in 2024,” Franco said. “We expect 2024 will represent the trough in earnings, and for earnings to increase meaningfully from there.”

And it wasn’t just losing Facebook that made Vornado’s earnings call less than stellar. 

Vornado’s funds from operations fell from $139 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, or 72 cents per share, to $123.8 million, or 63 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the REIT.

Meanwhile, revenue fell slightly in that time from $446.9 million to $441.9 million while its office occupancy rate dropped from 91.6 percent in the third quarter of 2023 to 90.7 percent in the fourth quarter.

Vornado ended 2023 with $508.2 million in funds from operations, a drop from the $608.9 million it had in 2022, according to its earnings report. 

The REIT’s stock price fell more than 7 percent Tuesday morning to a low of $24.50 per share after its earnings report. 

Vornado took some heat for suspending dividends for part of 2023, paying 67.5 cents per share by year’s end. In the year ahead, Vornado anticipates it will pay one dividend in the fourth quarter of 2024.

“What we did with the dividend was correct,” Chairman and CEO Steven Roth said. “It’s just not the most efficient use of capital.”

While Vornado didn’t have a great 2023, and 2024 won’t be much better, Roth thinks things will get better thanks to upcoming income in Manhattan’s Penn District and the potential to turn a profit by selling off more assets.

Roth predicts about $100 million in income will begin flowing from Vornado’s Penn 1 and Penn 2 office towers toward the end of 2024. 

“Our occupancy is going to climb from 90,” Roth said. “And so that’s going to increase our earnings. And the big thing is, over the next two years Penn 2 will rent, and the income from that will come online.”

While it’s hard to imagine a return to the 97.2 percent peak office occupancy Vornado reached in 2018, the office market “is on the foothills of recovery,” Roth said.

“New York City has bottomed and is recovering rapidly,” Roth said. “While rents have a way to go to reach peak pricing of five years ago, we feel very good about the activity level.”

And the REIT had some success selling off Manhattan properties for a profit, something it expects to do a bit more of in the next two to three years.

Vornado made $100 million from the sale of four retail condos at 510 Fifth Avenue, 48–150 Spring Street, 443 Broadway and 692 Broadway last August. It also sold a parcel of vacant land in Rego Park, Queens, for $71 million, handed off the Armory Show last year for $24.4 million, and sold two condo units for $24.48 million.

Franco hinted at plans for “a handful of assets that we intend to exit over the next two to three years,” but the proceeds he expects the REIT will realize are “TBD.”

Plus, the challenges facing the capital market could spell good news for Vornado.

“Foreclosures and givebacks are still in front of us, and therefore so is the opportunity,” Roth said. (Vornado itself hasn’t been spared from some distress, with its loan tied to 280 Park Avenue hitting special servicing in January.)

Roth also remains bullish on the Penn District, where Vornado owns 9 million square feet across three blocks between Avenue of the Americas and Ninth Avenue, making it the largest property owner in the district. 

Vornado has nearly completed the $750 million redevelopment of the 1.6 million-square-foot Penn 2 tower and is planning a 2.7 million-square-foot tower on the former Hotel Pennsylvania site across Seventh Avenue called Penn 15 next. 

“That’s a hell of a neighborhood,” Roth said. “We’re very, very happy with our position.”

Despite losing some major tenants, Roth said Vornado’s leasing team “won a gold medal” last year.

Tenants signed on for 840,000 square feet of office space across Vornado’s portfolio in the fourth quarter, paying an average of $100.33 per square foot. That’s a little over 10 percent of the total 8.2 million square feet of leasing volume Manhattan’s office market saw during the same period, according to a fourth-quarter market report by Colliers. 

And it’s orders of magnitude above the 154,000 square feet of office space signed in the fourth quarter of 2022 at an average rent of $84.58 per square foot.

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.

Antares had been in 55,000 square feet on the 21st through 23rd floors at Vornado Realty Trust and SL Green Realty’s 280 Park, after it moved from the nearby 299 Park Avenue. 

In the new deal, Antares will take over the 20th floor previously occupied by investment manager Cohen & Steers, which moved to 1166 Avenue of the Americas in 2022.

Antares was represented by Michael Sessa and Michael Movshovich of Cushman & Wakefield, sources said. The joint venture ownership handled it in-house by David Kaufman of SL Green and Ed Riguardi of Vornado along with a CBRE team led by Peter Turchin. 

The brokerages and owners either declined to comment or did not return requests for comment.

SL Green and Vornado spent $150 million renovating the 1.2 million-square-foot property, which they bought for close to $500 million in 2011.

The joint venture has had its ups and downs, and the two real estate investment trusts recently clashed over deciding whether to expand other tenants versus bringing in the larger Citadel.

Another large tenant in the property, Franklin Templeton Investments, will soon relocate and expand to 347,000 square feet at SL Green’s One Madison Avenue.

The venture also suffered a setback when the long-heralded relocation of the Four Seasons restaurant from Seagram Building to 280 Park ended up a bust as the eatery never got its mojo back. 

Since then, the space has been occupied by the acclaimed Italian restaurant Fasano.

The mezz loan was marketed by Newmark’s Adam Spies, Adam Doneger, Jordy Roeschlaub and Daniel Fromm and received several bids, one source said. Ultimately, the borrowers bought their own debt — a sign of their commitment to the property, the source said.

The April 2024 loan extension on 280 Park Avenue extends the maturity date on the loan to September 2026 (at an interest rate of 1.76 percent over term SOFR) with an option for SL Green and Vornado to extend until September 2028.

The most recent Data from CRED iQ, a CRE data analytics firm, shows that the $1.08 billion loan secured by 280 Park is current but that it was sent to special servicing on Dec. 20, 2023. 

SL Green and Vornado secured the loan modification and extension on 280 Park Avenue “after lengthy negotiations,” and that in exchange for this initial round of extensions, the borrowers were required to contribute $100 million to cover “current and anticipated shortfalls,” according to CRED iQ data.   

“The fact that the borrower is willing to contribute equity is a good sign and that they’re not running away from it,” said Mike Haas, founder and CEO of CRED iQ, a CRE data analytics firm.”  

Moreover, all cash securing the non-recourse loan has been trapped until the loan is paid off, and each extension will require the borrowers to contribute an additional $25 million. SL Green and Vornado also delivered a standard recourse guarantee carveout to the lenders, with the stipulation that the $1.08 billion loan will only be returned to the master servicer after three successful payments, according to CRED iQ. 

The $1.08 billion CMBS loan on 280 Park Avenue was provided by a consortium of lenders, including Deutsche Bank, Barclay, Citi and Goldman Sachs, according to CRED iQ.  

The financial machinations at 280 Park Avenue come after CO reported in October that the $1.1 billion loan secured by the building did not pay off on its original maturity date of Sept. 9, 2023.

At the time, SL Green CEO Marc Holliday told CO that he would not comment on whether SL Green would extend or refinance its debt on 280 Park, but he did emphasize that the building currently has 94 percent occupancy. 

Year end data for 280 Park Avenue showed the property generated a net-operating-income of $78.4 million while yielding a debt-service coverage ratio (DSCR) of 1.1 — slightly below the benchmark DSCR of 1.50. 

“That’s not good,” noted Haas. “You want your DSCR around at least 1.25 and a solid DSCR would be in the 2s. 1.50 is the underwriting average, so 1.1 doesn’t really give you much cushion.” 

Brian Pascus can be reached at bpascus@commercialobserver.com. 

Once upon a time, before the pandemic, the firm’s office occupancy rate was north of 97 percent. But occupancy has been sliding for five years now, and executives at Vornado say it hasn’t yet reached the bottom, with Facebook parent Meta planning to vacate its 275,000 square feet at 770 Broadway in June, among other lease expirations coming up this year.

Large vacancies at 770 Broadway, 280 Park Avenue and 1290 Avenue of the Americas have been largely to blame for last quarter’s slip in occupancy, but Vornado thinks this will be a fairly short-lived drop, Chief Financial Officer Michael Franco told investors during a Tuesday morning earnings call.

“We expect this impact to be temporary, as we have already leased up a good chunk of the space,” Franco said. “But the earnings from these leases won’t begin until sometime in 2025.”

For the time being, the dipping occupancy caused Vornado’s earnings to take a hit. Vornado reported $108.8 million in funds from operations, as adjusted, in the first quarter declining quarter-over-quarter from $123.8 million and year-over-year from $116.3 million.

Meanwhile, revenue for the quarter fell 2 percent from $445.9 million in the first quarter of 2023 to $436.4 million last quarter.

Shares in Vornado dipped more than $2 from its Monday opening as traders responded to the figures, closing at $24.21 on Tuesday. The REIT’s stock price plummeted to $12.31 per share last May — cheaper than any time since the 1990s — before recovering to the mid-$20s per share in the second half of 2023. In early 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, Vornado’s stock price was near $69.

Vornado CEO Steven Roth said earnings will recover as Vornado finds new tenants to fill vacancies, but it will take some time.

“As we get back from whatever we are now to our normal 96 to 97 percent occupancy, that adds a big number to our earnings,” Roth said.

One of Vornado’s biggest office tenants took advantage of its newfound leverage. The landlord agreed to a unique package of concessions in order to keep Bloomberg on as a tenant at 731 Lexington Avenue. The media company renewed its 946,815 square feet in the property until 2040, Vornado announced Monday. 

The deal creates a sliding scale to lower Bloomberg’s $98-per-square-foot rent by up to 10 percent, according to Vornado’s quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission filing released Tuesday. 

Roth described it as “a fair deal and a clever way of handling the future.” 

At the 60-year-old 280 Park, which Vornado co-owns with SL Green Realty, a $1.1 billion commercial mortgage-backed securities loan tied to the property that went into special servicing earlier this year was saved last month as the firms managed to extend the deadline by two years.

Vornado has attracted a few major office tenants to its recently redeveloped Penn 1 and Penn 2 office towers directly above Pennsylvania Station, including Major League Soccer, which took 126,000 square feet at Penn 2 in March.

But the stalled development site of Penn 15 across Seventh Avenue remains a sore spot for Roth.

Roth remains an eternal optimist about the Midtown neighborhood, telling investors, “great things are happening in our Penn District.”

Plus, the recently redeveloped Penn 2 will bring in about $100 million in new annual revenue when it’s fully leased, Roth predicted.

“The company has the potential of earnings being, we think, pretty spectacular,” Roth said. “We’re looking at it not on a one-month or one-quarter basis. We’re looking at what the company’s earning power would be two or three years out, and we are extremely excited about that.”

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.

As part of the deal, Elliott will sublease 126,000 square feet on the sixth, seventh and eighth floors of the building from asset management company Franklin Templeton until Franklin Templeton’s lease runs out in 2031, TRD reported. It will then move to a five-year direct deal with the landlords.

Elliott also signed a separate, 12-year lease with SL Green and Vornado for 23,000 square feet on part of the sixth floor not already occupied by Franklin Templeton, according to TRD.

SL Green, Franklin Templeton and Elliott did not immediately respond to requests for comment while Vornado declined to comment.

Asking rent for the deal was unclear, but average asking rent in Midtown East in the second quarter of 2024 was $80.25 per square foot, according to a report from Avison Young.

Elliott, with $65.5 billion in assets under management and a staff of 570 people, maintains a New York City office of unknown size at LaFrak’s 40 West 57th Street. Four years ago, Singer moved the company’s headquarters to West Palm Beach, Fla.

The move to Park Avenue will help Elliott put its offices on adjacent floors, instead of the unconnected six floors it currently occupies at 40 West 57th, Bloomberg reported.

Newmark’s Neil Goldmacher and Chris Mongeluzo negotiated on behalf of Elliott Management while Robert Lowe of Cushman & Wakefield represented Franklin Templeton and Edward Riguardi and Alexandra Bedell handled it for Vornado in-house.

Newmark declined to comment while C&W did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other tenants in the building include private equity firm Antares Capital, which expanded its offices to 76,000 square feet in April, and investment bank PJT Partners, which boosted its footprint to 270,000 square feet in December 2023.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.

“I don’t think you’ve seen the last,” Franco added.

And, with a half dozen Fifth Avenue retail properties still remaining in its portfolio, the $20,000-per-square-foot sale price of Uniqlo’s flagship store at 666 Fifth Avenue is a good omen for the REIT’s future in retail. 

And that’s great news for Vornado, since its retail portfolio in New York is currently struggling with a 77 percent occupancy rate — lower than the 89.3 occupancy rate its office portfolio ended the second quarter with, but a slight improvement from the 75 percent retail occupancy rate it had in the last quarter.

It’s not just selling off retail properties that has Vornado feeling confident about that sector since the REIT has about 150,000 square feet of retail in the pipeline in various stages of negotiations, according to the company’s executives.

“Retailers are more active and we’re seeing continued recovery there, both in terms of rents improving and vacancy rates,” Franco said. 

Vornado’s funds from operations (FFO) rose in the second quarter to $112.8 million from $108.8 million last quarter, but that’s still down 19.9 percent year-over-year.

Part of that yearly FFO drop was caused by tenants moving out of Vornado’s portfolio — which contributed to a 7 cents per share decline in net operating income. Another 3 cents per share was lost via higher expenses.

Things could get worse as Vornado has yet to feel the impact of major vacancies coming just around the bend, including Facebook parent Meta’s departure from 770 Broadway and other chunks of space opening up soon at 1290 Avenue of the Americas and 280 Park Avenue. (Vornado executives did not specify who was leaving those buildings.)

Vornado CEO Steven Roth was nonplussed about the upcoming vacancies, and even hinted that a deal was in the works to fill the 275,000 square feet left behind by Meta at 770 Broadway by masterleasing the entire 1.2 million-square-foot building to a mystery tenant, according to Roth. He declined to share further details.

Meanwhile, the occupancy rate is looking stellar at 731 Lexington Avenue, thanks to Bloomberg’s 946,815-square-foot renewal in May, but trouble could lie ahead for the debt tied to the office tower. The $500 million loan on it comes due later this year and negotiations are in the process to refinance, Franco said during the call.It’s the last major office maturity Vornado will face this year after refinancing 640 Fifth Avenue’s $400 million debt in June and modifying and extending 280 Park Avenue’s $1.1 billion loan in April. 

The nosedive the stock markets saw in the last 48 hours was the “elephant in the room,” Roth said. But he was bullish about the long-term success of the Federal Reserve’s crusade against inflation and predicted “a significant reversal of interest rates” soon.

“All this will have a significant positive impact on our numbers and our values,” Roth said. 

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.

Glenn Weiss and Andrew Ackerman handled the deal in-house for Vornado, and Newmark Knight Frank’s Neil Goldmacher and Brian Goldman represented Investcorp. A Vornado spokesman declined to comment on the transaction, and an NKF spokeswoman declined to comment.

Vornado and SL Green purchased the building for nearly $500 million in 2011 and spent $150 million revamping the 1962 property in 2014 with the help of architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox.

Tenants in the building include Wells Fargo, Antares Capital, Blue Mountain Realty and Teneo Holdings. The new iteration of the Four Seasons restaurant is also set to open in the bottom of 280 Park Avenue later this spring, after relocating down the block from its home of nearly 60 years at the Seagram Building.

“Post-pandemic, financial services has been a leading driver of demand in Midtown,” said Reed Hatcher, senior research manager at Cushman & Wakefield. “That’s come as TAMI has fallen off somewhat in recent years.”

As Midtown’s most dominant tenant base, financial services has starkly led the leasing charge in the years since 2020. The industry’s dominance correlates, in part, with many financial firms’ stringent return-to-office policies and desire for higher-quality spaces. Yet, as leasing activity continues, Midtown’s Class A options are dwindling and may inform the future of all industries in the neighborhood. 

Right now, leasing in Midtown as a whole has reached its highest point since the pandemic’s onset. Roughly 77 percent of Manhattan office leases across industries were concentrated in Midtown in the last quarter of 2024, according to a Savills report. Meanwhile, Midtown office visitation rates have returned to about 76 percent of their pre-pandemic levels, said Hatcher, citing Cushman & Wakefield data. 

Under the umbrella of Midtown’s leasing successes, financial services firms have recently demonstrated a significant uptick in activity in leasing velocity and transaction volume, said David Goldstein, president of the New York tri-state region at Savills. 

Midtown’s newly vigorous financial tenants include Citadel, which recently inked half a million square feet at 660 Fifth Avenue; Blackstone, which expanded its 345 Park Avenue footprint by 250,644 square feet; and Blue Owl Capital, which expanded by more than 70,000 square feet at 375 Park.

Yet, the successes of financial services firms are more than just anecdotal. In the last quarter of 2024, the industry drove 30.9 percent of leases across Manhattan, as outlined by the Savills report. In keeping with Savills’ findings, Cushman & Wakefield found that roughly 36 percent of Midtown’s new leases across 2024 correlated with financial services firms.

The prevalence of financial services in Midtown has held up both pre- and post-pandemic, but with a more palpable rise in recent years. According to Cushman & Wakefield data, the sector was responsible for 31.1 percent of Midtown leases in 2005 and 31.74 percent in 2010. Between 2018 and the first quarter of 2020, financial services companies signed 25.9 percent of Midtown’s new leases exceeding 10,000 square feet, with TAMI companies closely behind at 22.1 percent, according to another Cushman & Wakefield report. The real estate industry itself followed at 13.6 percent. 

Between the second quarter of 2020 — just as the pandemic lockdowns started — and January 2025, however, financial services firms accounted for 43.7 percent of new leases. By comparison, TAMI’s share declined to 14.8 percent, while legal firms exhibited the third-highest leasing activity at 13 percent, followed by professional services, then real estate. 

“It’s not surprising that finance and real estate, insurance and banking, and law firms constitute the bulk of the activity,” said Michael Gottlieb, a principal of office leasing at Avison Young, “because they are the bulk of the tenants, not only in Midtown but really in the city.” 

In Midtown specifically, the nature of post-pandemic work helps explain why leasing activity from financial services firms has strengthened. As a sector, the industry has spearheaded stricter return-to-office policies. Many financial companies, such as J.P. Morgan and HSBC, have led the charge toward a more normalized work schedule by requiring office employees to work in-person five days a week.

“Midtown has certainly received a strong boost by those factors that have come to play in terms of companies wanting to take a flight to quality, if you will, looking to attract staff back to the office,” said Hatcher.

Many companies have exhibited a preference for the neighborhood, given the nature of its office buildings and its many options for commuters, said Hatcher. Midtown offers easy access to transportation hubs such as Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station.

Beyond location, however, Midtown also houses the highest concentration in the city, and maybe in the nation, of high-
quality Class A and trophy office space, both new and converted. 

“The reality is, as organizations have shaped their return-to-office policies, many have led through the lens of offense in creating the workplaces of choice,” said Goldstein, “and a lot of those workplaces will be found in buildings that were either recently built or recently recapitalized and amenitized.”

These in-demand spaces include both adaptive reuse projects and newer buildings, such as Tishman Speyer’s The Spiral and Related’s Hudson Yards development. Within Midtown, however, Park Avenue in particular has materialized as a preferred location for many financial firms, with roughly 33 percent of the avenue’s post-pandemic leasing stemming from the financial services sector, said Hatcher. Specific tenants include Blackstone, as well as Elliott Management, which leased roughly 149,000 square feet at 280 Park, and Ares Management with a 131,749-square-foot expansion at 245 Park.

Still, while Park Avenue houses various financial services firms, it also helps explain the challenges of Midtown leasing across industries, indicating further fluidity in the neighborhood’s tenants. Following the pandemic, Class A office space has become a major draw with major limitations.

“Park Avenue already has the lowest vacancy rate in all of Manhattan,” said Hatcher. “As of January, it was 10.9 percent, so it’s a fairly tight, tight submarket.”

The majority of Class A space is in Midtown, said Gottlieb, who foresees a moment of scarcity for potential tenants. As outlined in the Savills report, Midtown’s trophy market availability rate dropped by 350 basis points, to 11.1 percent, in the last quarter of 2024.

“The trend over the past number of years has really not been driven so much by geography, but by finding the right space, and a lot of that is due to tenants that want to improve their quality of life,” said Gottlieb.

Goldstein also noted the lack of vacancy in Midtown, declaring a “triple witching hour” given the post-pandemic drop-off in sublease availability. Then again, Midtown has — and will likely always be — something of a citadel for global finance, law and corporate companies, said Goldstein.

Regarding the neighborhood’s last few leasing cycles, he pinpointed an increase in larger technology companies — Apple, for instance, signed a lease for 61,000 square feet at Penn 11 in November — alongside finance, as well as law. Per Cushman & Wakefield’s data, the legal sector accounted for nearly 19 percent of 2024’s new Midtown leases, thanks in part to Ropes & Gray’s move to a roughly 535,000-square-foot office at 1285 Avenue of the Americas. 

For comparison, leases from legal firms in 2005 and 2011 hovered just under these numbers, responsible for 14.6 and 12.96 percent of Midtown leases, respectively, per Cushman & Wakefield. Between 2018 and 2020, legal services accounted for 12.7 percent of new Midtown leases. 

As for the tenants of Midtown’s future, the neighborhood’s past may therefore be the best crystal ball. “Midtown has in many ways reinvented itself already, right?” said Savills’ Goldstein. “It’s sort of the hub of finance and law, but it has tech, it has creative services, it has nonprofits, hospitals, schools — so it’s really a beautifully diversified sort of marketplace to begin with.”

Anna Staropoli can be reached at astaropoli@commercialobserver.com.