Times Square/West Side Office Space

Everybody knows Times Square. Almost nobody thinks of it as an office market, which is exactly the mistake worth exploiting. Under the billboards and the 300,000-plus people who cross it on a normal day sits roughly 30 million square feet of office space across more than 40 buildings, and right now it is going through the biggest change of its life.

Two of its largest Class A towers are walking off the field. 5 Times Square, where Ernst & Young sat for two decades, is being gutted into about 1,250 apartments. And 1515 Broadway, after SL Green’s $5.4 billion casino pitch got shot down, is now slated to become a 992-room hotel wrapped in an entertainment complex. Pull two blocks that size out of the office supply and the math flips: what is left gets scarcer, not cheaper.

That is why the number that matters here is not the rent, it is the availability. Class A space in Times Square asks about $75 a foot direct (Metro Manhattan, August 2025), a genuine discount to Grand Central at $93 and Columbus Circle at $86. But availability sits at 14% (Transwestern, Q4 2025), tighter than you would ever guess from a neighborhood people still write off. The bargain is real, the window is not permanent, and the building you pick matters more here than almost anywhere in Midtown. If you would rather see the open listings before you read another word, start there.

Times Square and West Side Office Market Overview

Times Square has always run on a different clock than the rest of Midtown, and in 2026 that is truer than ever. While Park Avenue and Hudson Yards fight over trophy tenants at $150 a foot, Times Square is quietly rebuilding itself, tower by tower, into something that is part office district, part hotel corridor, part neighborhood. The office space that survives that transition is getting a serious upgrade, and for the moment it is still a bargain.

The wider market gives you a tailwind. Manhattan just posted its strongest first quarter of leasing since 2014, with availability tightening for the eighth straight quarter to 13.7% (Colliers, Q1 2026), and Midtown Class A now asks about $85 a foot (Cushman & Wakefield, April 2026). Rents are firming across the city. Times Square is the rare place where you can still catch the recovery before it prices you out, as long as you move on the right building. Start with a clear read on office space sizes and budgets, then narrow by block.

Four Forces to Monitor

• The signage towers are leaving the office market, and that is tightening supply. 5 Times Square is being converted into roughly 1,250 apartments, and 1515 Broadway is proposed as a 992-room hotel and entertainment complex after SL Green’s casino bid was rejected. When two of the largest Class A blocks come off the board, the remaining office space gets scarcer, which is part of why submarket availability sits at 14.0% (Transwestern, Q4 2025) rather than the 20-plus percent the vacancy headlines would lead you to expect.
• Flight to quality is real, and landlords are spending to win it. GFP Real Estate and BDT & MSD are pouring $150 million into 1540 Broadway (Commercial Observer, January 2026), and Rudin rebuilt 3 Times Square and filled 310,000 square feet of it with Touro University. The renovated buildings lease; the tired ones convert or sit. Tour the ones that spent the money.
• The tenant base is broadening past media. Times Square was built on TAMI, meaning technology, advertising, media, and information. Now it is also education (Touro at 3 Times Square), law (Kasowitz at 1633, Kilpatrick at 3 Times Square), consumer brands (Pandora and Adobe at 1540 Broadway), and finance (Morgan Stanley, Allianz). That diversification is what is filling the survivors.
• The distressed corners are your leverage. One Worldwide Plaza at 825 Eighth lost Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 2024 and fell to roughly 63% occupancy, and it went to a lender auction in early 2026 (Bisnow). A building working through ownership trouble is a building whose landlord will deal. High availability plus a motivated owner is the recipe for free rent and build-out money.

How Much Does Office Space in Times Square Cost?

The rent is the hook, so start there. Class A space in Times Square asks about $75 a foot direct (Metro Manhattan, August 2025), a real discount to Grand Central five minutes east at $93 and Columbus Circle up the road at $86. For a globally famous address on the best transit in the country, that is a bargain, not a compromise.

The catch hiding in that average is spread, because one number is covering very different space. The signage towers and the rebuilt Class A buildings, 1633 Broadway and 3 Times Square and 1540 Broadway, push into the mid-$80s on the good floors, which is why the aggregate figure that includes them climbs to about $90 (Metro Manhattan, August 2025). Down on the Theater District side streets and the older Seventh Avenue stock, Class B and value space runs from the high $40s into the $60s. Figure out how much space you actually need before a billboard view you cannot afford does it for you, and the Office Space Calculator gets you there in about a minute.

Class A and the Signage Towers

Class A in Times Square splits into two groups: the buildings that got rebuilt and the buildings that are getting torn up on the inside. On the rebuilt side, 3 Times Square is the model. Rudin poured a nine-figure renovation into the 30-story former Reuters tower, gave it a glass triple-height lobby and a 16th-floor amenity center, and then did the unthinkable for Times Square by leasing 310,000 square feet to Touro University. It now fills with law firms and accountants alongside the students. A few blocks over, 1540 Broadway is mid-transformation under GFP Real Estate and BDT & MSD, a $150 million job with roughly half the building available and tenants like Adobe and Pandora already in place.

The blue-chip full-block towers are the other face of Class A. 1633 Broadway, now owned by Rithm Capital, is essentially full at blue-chip rents, home to Allianz, Morgan Stanley, and Warner Music Group. 1585 Broadway is Morgan Stanley’s global headquarters. These are corporate, quiet, and expensive, and they rarely have much to give.

What you will not find much of here is brand-new trophy construction, because there is nowhere left to build it. That is a Hudson Yards or Park Avenue conversation, the kind of market where a tenant just paid a record north of $300 a foot at One Vanderbilt. In Times Square, Class A means a well-run tower with a spectacular address, not a glass box that opened last year. If the true trophy tier is what you are after, the guide to how trophy buildings set themselves apart and the rundown of the top Class A buildings in Midtown will point you the right way.

Class B and Loft Space

Most deals in Times Square close in Class B, and that is where the neighborhood gets interesting for normal-size tenants. The Theater District side streets through the West 40s and 50s are lined with prewar and boutique buildings full of showrooms, entertainment-industry offices, and nonprofits. 1560 Broadway, the Actors’ Equity Building, is the archetype. These floors are smaller, cheaper, and full of character, and a lot of them come prebuilt. This is the same loft stock that pulls tenants toward Chelsea and SoHo, often for less.

What you pay in Class B depends almost entirely on the building and the block (Metro Manhattan internal research, June 2026). Two buildings on the same side street can quote you very different numbers on the same afternoon, so walk the floors and treat the average with suspicion. This is solid ground for media shops, creative firms, nonprofits, and any small business that wants a Times Square address without a Times Square invoice. Not sure what the letter grade actually buys you? The guide to what makes a building Class A, B, or C is worth five minutes.

Class C and Value Space

The genuine bargains sit on Seventh Avenue south of 42nd, in the Diamond District buildings on 47th, and in the older far-west stock toward the Hudson. This is the tier for showrooms, jewelers, early-stage startups, back-office teams, and anyone optimizing for cost per seat. You give up the marble lobby and gain a rent that leaves money for payroll.

Two things to know before you sign down here. First, your best deal probably will not be a sublease, because the submarket had no recorded Class A sublease inventory as of August 2025 (Metro Manhattan); the big blocks that would have hit the sublet market are being converted to housing instead. Your value play is a direct lease in an older building with a landlord who has space to fill. Second, nobody publishes a clean Class C number for these blocks, so a single flat figure quoted at you deserves a hard look (that read is Metro Manhattan internal research, June 2026). If cost is the whole point, it is worth comparing against Downtown and the Financial District, which run well below Times Square.

Where Tenants Leave Money on the Table

The most expensive mistake tenants make here is fighting the wrong battle. They spend three weeks grinding a landlord down two dollars a foot on the asking rent, feel good about the win, and then wave through the two terms that actually move the numbers: free rent and the build-out allowance. That is where the real money lives, and in Times Square, with availability at 14% and several landlords racing to fill repositioned towers, you have real room to push on both.

The ranges below reflect recent deals on a 5 or 10-year term (Metro Manhattan internal research, June 2026). Shorter terms get less, longer terms get more.

Two points before you sign. Once you stack the free rent and the build-out money, your effective rent, the figure that actually matters, drops well below the number on the door (the concessions breakdown runs that math). And a build-out allowance is only as good as what it actually builds, so understand who pays for the build-out before you sit down to negotiate. If the length of the term is your sticking point, the rundown on 3-year, 5-year, or 10-year lease terms lays out the tradeoffs.

Which Businesses Lease in Times Square and the West Side?

Times Square is the natural home of the businesses that need to be seen: media, entertainment, broadcast, advertising, and the consumer brands that want their name in lights. But the modern roster is broader than that. Education, law, finance, and technology have all planted flags here, mostly chasing the transit and the discount to the trophy districts. In practice, the building tells you the tenant, so finding your row below narrows the search fast.

Running a small team or a nonprofit? Times Square is more attainable than its reputation suggests, because the value lives on the side streets and the Seventh Avenue frontage rather than in the billboard towers. To see how it stacks up against other neighborhoods, the guide to the best NYC areas for small businesses runs the comparison, and if you are trading a coworking membership for space of your own, we mapped how to make that leap without regretting it.

Top Office Buildings and Amenities in Times Square

Two things Times Square offers that no other Midtown submarket can match: your name in lights on the most-photographed block on earth, and the deepest bench of restaurants, theaters, and hotels within a two-minute walk. The new money went into rebuilt lobbies, amenity floors, and the LED frontage that turns an address into advertising. It breaks down into three tiers.

Repositioned and signage Class A (3 Times Square, 1540 Broadway, 4 Times Square). Rebuilt lobbies, new amenity floors with fitness and food and lounges, modern systems, and the Times Square signage that markets your brand for free. These buildings spent the money, and they are leasing.

Full-block Class A (1633 Broadway, 1585 Broadway, 1675 Broadway). Blue-chip towers with big efficient floors, attended lobbies, ground-floor retail, and, at 1633, two working Broadway theaters downstairs. Corporate, quiet, and mostly full.

Class B, loft, and value (Theater District side streets, Seventh Avenue, the Diamond District). Prewar bones, good light, showroom and boutique floors, and rents that leave room in the budget. This is where small and mid-size tenants actually sign.

Buildings Worth Knowing

• 3 Times Square (Thomson Reuters Building): Rudin’s rebuilt 30-story, roughly 885,000 SF Class A tower, home to Touro University’s 310,000 SF campus plus Kilpatrick Townsend, Remy Cointreau, and Thomson Reuters. The textbook Times Square reinvention.
• 1540 Broadway: the 44-story, 907,000 SF former Bertelsmann Building, now under GFP Real Estate and BDT & MSD with a $150 million repositioning and roughly half its floors available. Tenants include Pandora, Adobe, and Schrodinger.
• 1633 Broadway (Paramount Plaza): the 2.5-million-SF blue-chip tower, essentially full, anchored by Allianz, Morgan Stanley, Warner Music Group, and Kasowitz Benson Torres, with the Gershwin and Circle in the Square theaters at its base. Now owned by Rithm Capital.
• 1515 Broadway (One Astor Plaza): SL Green’s nearly 2-million-SF tower, longtime home of Paramount, now proposed for conversion into a 992-room hotel and entertainment complex after the casino bid was rejected. Treat it as space in transition.
• 5 Times Square: the former Ernst & Young tower, being converted by RXR, Apollo, and SL Green into roughly 1,250 apartments. Effectively out of the office market.
• One Worldwide Plaza (825 Eighth Avenue): the roughly 2-million-SF Eighth Avenue tower anchored by Nomura, working through ownership distress after Cravath’s 2024 departure. Big floors, real availability, a motivated situation.
• 4 Times Square (151 West 42nd / One Five One): Durst’s re-leased former Conde Nast Building, refinanced with a $1.3 billion loan in 2025, with the Nasdaq MarketSite at its base.

Browse every Midtown building or filter active listings by size and price.

Major Office Landlords in Times Square and the West Side

Ownership in Times Square right now is a story of two strategies. One camp is repositioning: Rudin rebuilt 3 Times Square, GFP and BDT & MSD are rebuilding 1540 Broadway, Durst re-leased and refinanced 4 Times Square. The other camp is reinventing the asset entirely: SL Green wants to turn 1515 Broadway into a hotel, and its partnership with RXR and Apollo is converting 5 Times Square into apartments. Then there are the buildings caught in the middle, like Worldwide Plaza, working through a lender auction. Knowing which landlord is leasing, which is converting, and which is just trying to survive is the difference between a smart deal and a wasted month, and it is exactly what a tenant broker tracks. The rundown on the biggest commercial real estate landlords in NYC fills in the wider field.

Transportation and Commuting to Times Square

Here is the one thing nobody disputes about Times Square: the transit is the best in the country, full stop. The 42nd Street subway complex is the busiest in the system, and it is not close. You have the 1, 2, and 3 under Seventh Avenue, the N, Q, R, and W under Broadway, the 7 running west to Hudson Yards and east under 42nd, and the S shuttle to Grand Central. One block west, the A, C, and E run under Eighth Avenue at the Port Authority. One block east, the B, D, F, and M run under Sixth at Bryant Park. For a team commuting from anywhere, this is as good as it gets, and the Commute Calculator will prove it with everyone’s actual home address.