The penthouse office of the next Hudson Yards skyscraper is off the market.
Related Cos. and Oxford Properties Group have secured a tenant for the top two floors of 70 Hudson Yards, a $2.5B, under-construction office tower on the West Side of Manhattan, Oxford Head of U.S. Sara Queen said Tuesday at the Urban Land Institute's fall meeting in Miami Beach.
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Queen didn't name the company that signed the lease, but she said it leased roughly 60K SF and that rent in the deal is $324 per SF.
“That is a big number,” Queen said onstage. “What we are seeing is, for the best space in New York, there is a tremendous amount of interest. It is hard to find it.”
Qube Research and Technologies, a London-based quantitative hedge fund with $50B of assets under management, was identified in Avison Young's third-quarter office report this month as a new tenant at 70 Hudson Yards. The deal, which Commercial Observer first reported, didn't specify which floors or the rent, and Avison Young pegged the lease at 52K SF.
A person familiar with the deal confirmed that QRT is taking the top two floors of 70 Hudson Yards, which are each roughly 30K SF. Spokespeople for Oxford and Related declined to comment.
The lease is one of the most expensive ever signed for U.S. office space, but it's not quite a record. Related claimed that crown 2 miles northeast of 70 Hudson Yards at its other in-progress office tower, 625 Madison Ave. Another hedge fund, Castle Hook Partners, is paying $375 per SF for the top two floors at that building, which is expected to open in 2029.
Related and Oxford landed a $1.6B construction loan for 70 Hudson Yards at the end of 2025 from Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Standard Chartered PLC, and they sold a $412.6M stake in the project to the Kuwait Investment Authority.
Deloitte plans to move its North American headquarters to the 1.4M SF tower, which is expected to finish construction in 2028. It signed a 22-year, 807K SF lease in 2025, committing to pay more than $2.6B over the course of the deal with rents close to $150 per SF, according to CompStak.
Designed by Gensler and Roger Ferris + Partners, 70 Hudson Yards is projected to be New York's first all-electric, carbon-neutral office building, Related said earlier this year.
QRT is the second confirmed tenant in the project, but the person with knowledge of its deal said more leases are in the works. It is relocating from the 64th floor of 50 Hudson Yards, also developed and owned by Related and Oxford.
That tower was the largest by square footage in the first phase of the $25B megaproject, which is essentially fully leased as competition for the best office buildings in Manhattan has heated up this year. The developers have secured approval and $2B in public financing for the residential-focused Phase 2 decking over the remaining rail yard, although Mayor Zohran Mamdani is reportedly considering canceling the subsidy, which Related has said the project needs to advance.
When Related and Oxford broke ground last year on 70 Hudson Yards, it was the largest office project to start construction in the U.S. since the pandemic. A group of New York developers, including Related at 625 Madison, have followed suit as tenants demonstrate they will pay historically high rents for new space.
Available office space has rapidly dwindled in Manhattan, which is on pace for the most active year of leasing since 2000.
On an earnings call last week, SL Green CEO Marc Holliday, whose REIT is developing an 850K SF tower at 346 Madison Ave., said new buildings in Manhattan are being underwritten with midpoint average rents between $240 and $270 per SF.
“Those are big rents and they're rents that are being signed up, they're rents that I think the tenant community has come to expect in order to cover costs, cover interest and cover profit,” Holliday said last Thursday. “So I think that is the new mark.”
Chloe Gallivan contributed reporting from Miami.
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