Midtown's New Towers |
A decade of supply is coming to Grand Central.
If you take a walk on Madison by Grand Central these days, it feels like you’re standing on the front edge of a building boom with a whole new wave of towers coming soon.
The kind of Class A+ product with big, efficient floorplates, ones that big corps want and are paying well past $200+ PSF to land. The catch, of course, is that most of these buildings won’t actually arrive until the late 2020's / early 2030's.
Here’s what’s in motion right now:
- JPMorgan just finished its new HQ at 270 Park Avenue - staff are starting to move in this month. Next up, they’ll put 383 Madison, the old Bear Stearns building, through a Foster + Partners-designed renovation, followed by 250 Park’s eventual demolition along with the Roosevelt Hotel.
- Boston Properties has finally gone vertical at 343 Madison, a 46-story, nearly million-square-foot tower with a direct tie-in to Grand Central Madison. Delivery is 2029, with an anchor tenant already in the works.
- Rudin and Vornado (with Ken Griffin as a partner) are pushing through approvals for a 62-story tower at 350 Park Avenue. It’s still in planning, but they can build that tower as-of-right and on track to do so.
- RXR has the Grand Hyatt site in play, with approvals already in hand for a 1,500+ foot tower. It hasn’t commenced yet but enough to give tenants in adjacent buildings offices jitters about staying there through construction. For now, RXR may be catching their breath from the first $1B+ office acquisition in Midtown of this Cycle at 590 Madison (IBM building) a strong bellwether of market confidence.
So while One Vanderbilt may still be the shiny new toy today, it may begin feeling like the elder statesman in just a few years, surrounded by even newer glass as demand for top-tier office space is giving way to substantial new product.
As always, the biggest risk remains the decade-long lag between planning and delivery, and the real question of what part of the cycle we’ll be in by the time all this square footage hits the market.
Until next month,
Ben
Ben Blumenthal
Principal Broker | Noah & Co.
For the rest of our August 2025 Newsletter, click here.