Return To 'Glory': Finance Giants Are Doubling Down On Park Avenue

Around lunchtime on a Thursday, Park Avenue bustles like few other areas of New York City. The greenery-lined corridor is filled with executives taking calls between meetings and first-year analysts eating lunch outside, laughing despite likely having to work into the night. 

Existential questions about the future of office buildings continue to swirl, but those doubts have disappeared in this iconic stretch of Midtown Manhattan, where titans of finance are gobbling up some of the most expensive workspace in the world. 

“There's something classic and powerful about the address. That matters for people,” said Winston Fisher, whose family’s firm owns 299 Park Ave. and Park Avenue Plaza. “Don't get me wrong. It's great to be on Ninth Avenue, but it doesn't ring the same as Park Avenue.”

Office availability on Park Avenue is just above 8%, while average asking rent exceeds $100 per SF. In some buildings, landlords have achieved double that, according to data provided by CBRE. 

The rest of the city has an average availability rate of 22%. Even buildings with high-quality spaces and in superior locations across Manhattan are at a rate of over 17% for those in Manhattan generally and 11% in Midtown’s core, according to CBRE.

In just the past month, Blackstone signed a deal to expand its headquarters at Rudin's 345 Park Ave. to over 1M SF, Ares Management expanded its headquarters at SL Green Realty's 245 Park by more than 130K SF to 307K SF and JPMorgan Chase reached a deal, in a joint venture with Hines, to acquire 250 Park for more than $300M.

JPMorgan is also redefining the strip's skyline. Construction crews are building the bank's new 1,388-foot supertall headquarters at 270 Park Ave. The 60-story skyscraper, expected to be completed in 2025, will deliver 2.5M SF of office space, enough for 15,000 employees. 

It's not the only financial titan adding a big new tower for itself. A few blocks up, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, alongside Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin, recently released renderings for a planned 1.8M SF office tower at 350 Park Ave. Griffin's companies plan to occupy more than 800K SF in the 62-story building.

The ramp-up in activity has come as many finance firms have posted record profits and are gearing up to take advantage of the market volatility. Wall Street compensation and bonuses are also anticipated to increase this year as more deals take place, and these companies have also made the strongest push among white-collar firms to summon their workers back to their desks, including some requiring five days a week of in-person work. 

To make room for new hires, financial firms have scooped up more space. And on Park Avenue, landlords are reaping the benefits.

“If you want to find 200K SF on the upper half of a building on Park Avenue right now, that does not exist,” SL Green Executive Vice President and Director of Leasing Steven Durels said.

SL Green owns four buildings on Park Avenue in the Grand Central submarket, along with one in Midtown West and two more on Park Avenue South.

“We've made a very conscious decision to focus on the Park Avenue corridor over the last couple of years,” Durels said. “If we had an ability to make additional acquisitions along the avenue, that's something that we would be very interested in doing.”

Each firm may have different thought processes that landed them on Park Avenue, but developers point to several congregating factors resulting in the current leasing rush.

In 2021, availability on Park Avenue reached 15% as firms exited leases and consolidated space in favor of remote work, freeing up space, according to CBRE data. Landlords up and down the corridor took the opportunity to renovate lobbies and add amenities. A 2017 rezoning also brought plans for new shiny towers to the avenue — including JPMorgan's and Citadel's —  potential competition for those who failed to get with the times.

“Nothing gets more permanent than building your own building,” said Alan Bernstein, managing director at Waterman Interests, which oversees Lever House at 390 Park Ave. “It's not easy to move a firm like that.”

Financial firms signed nearly half of the highest-priced leases last year, according to a report by JLL. Park Avenue has the qualities that financial firms desire, developers and brokers said, most of all its central location.

Park Avenue runs straight through Grand Central, the transit hub that has only grown since the Long Island Railroad began service at the terminal in January 2023. Experts say that it’s a simple meeting point for residents of other boroughs too.

But the location goes beyond ease of access. The recognizable Park Avenue address matters, several experts told Bisnow. For financial firms, the name brings clout and a sense of history — Park Avenue has long been at the forefront of the city’s constant development. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Grand Central underwent construction that would make it the largest train terminal in the world as well as create Park Avenue. The redevelopment led to a string of new buildings rising on the avenue as owners aimed to capitalize on the new hub. 

The Belmont Hotel, on the corner of Park and 42nd Street, became the tallest hotel in the world at the time. Across the strip, luxury residential properties were built, replacing tenements and empty lots. At one of the largest residential developments at 277 Park Ave., units cost anywhere from $200 to $400 a month — equivalent to $3,500 to $7,000 today — The New York Times reported.

In 1929, Park up to 60th Street was zoned for commercial use. In 1931, the Waldorf Astoria was built and garnered a reputation for lavish living. In 1946 the Tishman family built the first postwar office building at 445 Park. Over time, the avenue became known for its ties to America’s wealthiest families and corporations, from the Vanderbilts to the Kennedys.

Rudin co-CEO Michael Rudin said that Park Avenue’s historic context prevented it from an office leasing surge. There simply has never been this much availability, Rudin said. He said the 2017 Midtown East rezoning was the game changer.

“[Park Avenue] had its glory years and decades when most of these buildings were built, in the '50s and '60s and '70s and '80s. Then nothing was built here for a really, really long time,” Rudin said. “Those of us who have buildings on Park Avenue were watching [companies] move west or move south to the new World Trade Center complex and Hudson Yards — the new shiny buildings. Park needed some upgrading.”

And since 2019, Park Avenue landlords have done just that, with a number of buildings undergoing restoration projects.

“Companies are coming to Park Avenue because it still is this epicenter of business,” Rudin said.

In the financial world, one lease leads to another and another, creating an ecosystem in an area of the city. 

Okada & Co. CEO Christopher Okada said that though Park Avenue is attracting higher rents, some companies and investors are eyeing Lexington and Madison avenues, which sandwich Park, due to expectations that Park Avenue will run out of space.

“It's definitely very important to be near each other because those are essentially your clients,” Okada said. “If you're in the financial world or anything related, you can go to 245 Park, then go to 277 Park, and then go up and down, in and out of these buildings.” 

Savills Tri-State President David Goldstein said that the concentration can be both good for business and rewarding for tenants — after all, bumping into a former colleague or friend can be the highlight of someone’s day.

But it can also allow competitors to poach talent away.

“It would seem that most organizations have come to terms with being across the street, or even in the same building, or God forbid, the same elevator stack, as a competitor,” Goldstein said, adding that the other determining factors outweigh that fear for tenants.

“If Park Avenue was out of favor, it was for a brief moment,” Goldstein said. “In our mind, an elegant location like this never really loses its luster.”