The two priciest office leases in New York City history were signed in rapid succession.
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Nscale, an Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence infrastructure company, agreed to pay $320 per SF in a 7,204 SF, five-year lease for part of the 54th floor of One Vanderbilt, SL Green's supertall atop Grand Central Terminal, according to JLL data provided to Bisnow.
Nscale, which develops data centers using Nvidia graphics processing units, raised $2B in its latest funding round, bringing its valuation to $14B, the British company announced last month. It signed the lease during the first quarter, making it the priciest per-SF deal in city history at the time, according to JLL.
Joseph P. Day Realty Corp. Senior Vice President Craig Berman, Nscale's leasing broker, declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for SL Green. Nscale didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 1.6M SF One Vanderbilt was 100% leased at the end of last year, according to SL Green's annual report. It is unclear if another tenant moved out to make way for Nscale. The tower was valued at $4.7B when SL Green sold a 5% stake to Mori Building Co. last year.
Not to be outdone, Soloviev Group announced Wednesday that it signed a tenant to a 5,063 SF, 10-year lease for the 50th floor of 9 W. 57th St. at a rental rate of $327.50 per SF. The tenant was an unnamed “private international family office,” according to a press release.
“The price speaks for itself,” Soloviev Group Chairman Stefan Soloviev said in a statement.
The first office lease in the city to cross the $300-per-SF threshold was Citadel's penthouse lease at L&L Holding Co.'s 425 Park Ave. in 2016. One Vanderbilt had already broken that record when GFL Environmental took the 10K SF top office floor in 2022 at an asking rent of $322 per SF, The Real Deal reported at the time. It is unclear what rent GFL ultimately paid.
CBRE's Howard Fiddle, John Maher, Gregg Rothkin, Alex Leopold and Tara Rhodes represented Soloviev Group in its record-setting deal. SL Green's Steven Durels and David Kaufman run leasing at One Vanderbilt.
The eye-watering prices are reflective of a Manhattan office market in which the best spaces are dwindling and their owners can ratchet up asking prices. Asking rents overall rose 3.5% in the first quarter from a year prior, according to JLL. Average Class-A rents are now north of $95 per SF, and direct vacancy in Midtown has fallen to 10%.
Roughly 11.8M SF of office leases were signed in Manhattan during the first quarter, the most for any first quarter since 2014, according to Colliers.
“Along with higher repricing in a growing number of existing availabilities, there is clearly a rebalancing of the market in favor of building owners,” Colliers Executive Managing Director Franklin Wallach said in a statement.
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