Office Space for Lease in Park Ave/Madison Square

Every few years a single Manhattan neighborhood catches fire, and everyone scrambles to get in before the door shuts. Right now that neighborhood is Park Avenue South. The artificial intelligence companies rewriting the economy didn’t plant their flags in Hudson Yards or Midtown. They came here, to the old Silicon Alley blocks around Madison Square Park, and leased nearly everything that was not nailed down.

The two towers on the park tell the story. One Madison and 11 Madison both filled to the last square foot this year, and their tenant rosters read like a snapshot of the moment: Harvey, Clay, and Sigma carrying the AI banner, with IBM and Franklin Templeton lending it old-line Wall Street weight. A block east, developers gutted the old Armory at 345 and reopened it as a two-billion-dollar life-sciences lab.

None of that came cheap, which is why Midtown South rents just crossed $88 a foot, the highest they have ever been.

Naturally, that number scares people off. But it shouldn’t. Eighty-eight dollars is an average stretched across two very different worlds. In the glass towers on the park, you will pay $90 to $180 and fight for the privilege. But walk three blocks west toward Sixth, or onto the quiet side streets east of Park, and the same neighborhood, on the same trains, rents in the sixties.

Knowing where one world ends and the other begins is the whole game, and it is what we do all day. If you would rather see the open listings before you read another word, start there.

Park Avenue South and Madison Square Office Market Overview

One force explains everything happening on these blocks: artificial intelligence reset the price of office space, and Park Avenue South felt it first.

The recovery is real citywide, and Manhattan just posted its strongest leasing quarter since 2014. However, this submarket outran the rest of it. Availability fell to its lowest point since 2020, and asking rents climbed while plenty of other neighborhoods were still nursing empty floors. Savills put a number on the cause, crediting AI demand on Park Avenue South for a roughly 60 percent jump in Midtown South leasing in a single quarter.

The clearest signal came from the landlord side. When both towers on the park filled up, SL Green refinanced One Madison for $1.65 billion, the kind of move you only make when you are certain the demand is here to stay.

Four Forces to Monitor

• AI set the ceiling, and you will feel it in every negotiation. These firms leased roughly a million square feet across Manhattan last year and came back hungry for more, and a large share of that appetite landed right here. So when Harvey and Clay are signing ten-year deals near $90 a foot on Madison Avenue, expect every landlord you meet to wave those comps in your face. You are bidding in the same market as the best-funded companies on earth, so walk in ready for it.
• The two trophy towers are done. One Madison and 11 Madison are both 100% leased. If your heart is set on a brand-new floor overlooking the park, the only way in is a sublease or a tenant handing space back, because there is no direct space left to sign.
• This is the rare Midtown South address with real lab space. The old Armory at 345 reopened as “Cure,” a life-sciences building with working wet labs a block off Madison Square Park, and that is the reason biotech and health-tech even look at this part of town. Nowhere else in the submarket can offer it.
• The discount is real, but the clock is running. Savills tracks Park Avenue South around $77 a foot and the Flatiron blocks next door in the mid-sixties, and the cheaper space clusters west toward Sixth and along the side streets. The catch is that Manhattan sublets dried up nearly 30% last year, so the cut-rate deals that saved tenants in 2023 are vanishing. If price is what is driving you, the time to move is now.

What Does Office Space on Park Avenue South Actually Cost?

Anyone who answers that with a single number is selling you something. On these blocks, a trophy floor asks $180 and a prewar loft asks $60, and the two can sit on opposite sides of the same street.

The honest breakdown looks like this. Midtown South averages roughly $88 a foot, but that average papers over a wide gap. Savills pins Park Avenue South itself around $77 and the Flatiron blocks to the west near $65, which tells you the buildings closest to Madison Square Park carry a premium over the loft stock a few minutes away. At the very top, the two towers on the park ask around $90 at 11 Madison and $120 to $180 at One Madison. At the other end, older space in NoMad and along the side streets still trades in the fifties and sixties.

So the question was never really about price. It is about what you are buying. If you need a Madison Avenue address to recruit engineers or reassure clients, you will pay for it, and in this market it can be money well spent. If what you actually want is a great building in a great neighborhood, look west, take the loft, and keep the difference.

Before you tour a single space, run your headcount through our office space calculator so you are chasing the right footprint instead of falling for the prettiest floor.

Class A and the Trophy Towers

Class A on these blocks means Madison Avenue and the handful of rebuilt buildings on Park Avenue South, and One Madison is the one everyone talks about. SL Green stacked a gleaming 1.4-million-foot tower on an older base, and it leased out completely, with Harvey AI alone expanding into 185,000 feet. The rest of the roster, IBM, Franklin Templeton, Palo Alto Networks, FanDuel, and Coinbase, is the corporate equivalent of a velvet rope. It asks $120 to $180 a foot, and it knows exactly what it is worth.

Which is why, for most clients who want to be on Madison, we point them one block up to 11 Madison instead. It is the old Metropolitan Life North Building, an Art Deco landmark with full 100,000-foot floors, and it leased to 100% right alongside its flashier neighbor. UBS took the space Credit Suisse used to hold, next to Sony Music, WME, and Pinterest. And it asks around $90 a foot, roughly half of One Madison for essentially the same address. If you can fill a big floor, that is the smarter money, and we will happily make that case to you in person.

Down on Park Avenue South itself, 315 is the sharpest play, a crisp prewar rebuild with an Equinox in the base and a tenant list that reads like a venture fund’s portfolio. 360 is Boston Properties’ reimagined tower with a roof terrace worth the elevator ride. And 345, the lab building, stands alone, offering infrastructure almost nothing else in Midtown South can match. If you are trying to sort a genuine trophy from a building that merely charges like one, our guide to what actually separates trophy buildings is worth reading before you sign anything, and so is our list of the best Class A towers in Midtown.

Class B and Loft Space, Where Most of the Deals Actually Happen

Strip away the trophy headlines and most of the leasing on these blocks happens in the old loft buildings, which is good news, because the stock is excellent. Park Avenue South, lower Fifth, and the Broadway blocks of NoMad are lined with early-1900s lofts, high ceilings, oversized windows, and the kind of open floor plates that creative and tech tenants actually want. The American Woolen Building at 225 and the Everett Building at 200 are the classics on the strip, and 1133 Broadway, the old St. James Building, holds down the NoMad end.

One piece of advice worth more than the letter grade itself: ignore the “Class B” label. A renovated loft on Park Avenue South can wear a B and still out-ask a Class A tower in Midtown, because what you are paying for is ceiling height, natural light, a usable floor plate, and the address, not a letter an appraiser typed into a spreadsheet. Two loft buildings on the same block will quote you wildly different numbers, so tour them yourself and do not put much faith in the average. This is the same loft stock that pulls tenants into SoHo and Chelsea, often at similar money.

Class C and Value Space

The genuine bargains sit just off Park Avenue South: the side streets running east toward Lexington, the older buildings up in NoMad, and the Flatiron blocks heading west toward Sixth, where the average slides into the mid-sixties. This is the space for the companies that want the neighborhood without the Madison Avenue invoice, the small firms, the early-stage startups, the nonprofits, and the back-office teams.

Two honest warnings before you get excited. Nobody publishes a clean Class C number for this submarket, so if a landlord hands you one precise figure as if it is settled fact, keep your guard up. And the cheap space is thinning out fast as leasing spreads and owners renovate their way upmarket, so the window that is open today is narrower than it was two years ago.

Concessions, Where the Real Money Hides

This is the part of the deal where tenants leave the most on the table. They negotiate hard on the asking rent, claw back a few dollars, feel like they have won, and completely ignore the two levers that actually move the math: free rent and the build-out money. The market is tightening, so the giveaways are not what they were a couple of years ago, but there is still real room to negotiate, especially off the trophy towers.

Roughly what recent deals have looked like on a five- or ten-year term, keeping in mind that shorter terms earn less and longer terms earn more:

Two things to fix in your head before you sit down at the table. Your effective rent almost always lands well below the face rent once you count the free months, which is a calculation our breakdown of rising concessions walks through in full. And a build-out check is only as valuable as what it actually pays to build, so settle who is covering the build-out before you start talking numbers. If the length of the term is your sticking point, our guide to three, five, and ten-year leases lays out the tradeoffs.

Who Leases Here, and Where You’ll Fit

On these blocks, the building chooses the tenant as much as the other way around. The towers on the park and the rebuilt Class A on Park Avenue South pull in AI, tech, and finance. The lab building pulls biotech. The old lofts pull creative shops, media, and design firms. And the cheaper side streets pull the startups and the nonprofits. Find your row in the table below and you have narrowed your search before you have toured a thing.

Running a small team? This is not the cheapest corner of Manhattan, and we will not insult you by pretending otherwise. But the side streets and the blocks west of Park make it far more attainable than the AI headlines would suggest. If you are still deciding between neighborhoods, our guide to the best NYC areas for small businesses is a good place to start, and if you are finally trading a coworking membership for a space of your own, we walked through how to make that leap without regretting it.

The Buildings, and What You Actually Get

Two things you simply cannot buy in Midtown at any price: Madison Square Park out your front door, and the restaurants ringing it, from Eleven Madison Park inside the tower to Gramercy Tavern around the corner. The new towers set the amenity bar absurdly high, and the older buildings answered the only way they could, by gut-renovating their lobbies and filling up with move-in-ready suites. It breaks down into three tiers.

Trophy, One Madison and 11 Madison. New or landmark full-block towers with modern systems, park views, serious dining downstairs, roof gardens, and private lounges. This is the top of Midtown South, no qualifier needed.

Renovated Class A, 315, 360, and 345. Updated lobbies and mechanicals, an Equinox in the base of 315, a roof terrace at 360, lab-ready floors at 345, and the 6 train waiting at the corner.

Class B loft and value, 225, 200, 1133 Broadway, and the side streets. Prewar character, high ceilings, big windows, attended lobbies, and a growing supply of prebuilt suites, usually a short walk from the park.

Buildings Worth Knowing

• One Madison Avenue (1 Madison): SL Green’s 1.4-million-foot rebuild on the park, 100% leased, anchored by IBM, Franklin Templeton, and Harvey AI. (Link to building profile if one exists.)
• 11 Madison Avenue: the 2.3-million-foot Art Deco landmark (old MetLife North) with 100,000-foot floors, home to UBS, Sony Music, and now Clay and Tempus. The value play among the towers.
• 345 Park Avenue South: Deerfield’s “Cure” lab building, a gut-renovated life-sciences project one block from the park.
• 315 Park Avenue South: the best-in-class prewar rebuild, Equinox in the base, a tenant roster running from PitchBook to Gemini.
• 360 Park Avenue South: Boston Properties’ repositioned Class A building at 26th, roof terrace included.
• 225 Park Avenue South (American Woolen Building): a prewar loft landmark, a classic Class B creative address.
• 200 Park Avenue South (Everett Building): a prewar corner loft looking out over Union Square Park at the south end.
• 1133 Broadway (St. James Building): a landmarked NoMad loft with smaller, characterful floors.

See all Midtown South buildings, or filter live listings by size and price.

Who Owns These Buildings, and Why You Should Care

Who holds the keys matters as much as which building you choose, because no two of these landlords play the game the same way.

SL Green owns the trophy tier outright, One Madison and 11 Madison, and with both buildings full, they are negotiating from a position of comfort rather than need.

Meanwhile, Deerfield runs 345 as a life-sciences campus rather than a conventional office building, so expect a different kind of conversation entirely. Columbia Property Trust, now under PIMCO, treats 315 like a flagship. Boston Properties rebuilt 360 from the studs. Global Holdings owns Nomad Tower.

The real value of a good tenant broker is knowing which of these owners deals straight and which one will grind you on every last dollar, and that knowledge is worth more than any listing site. Our rundown of the biggest landlords in NYC lays out the wider field.

Transportation and Commuting to Park Avenue South and Madison Square

The transit here is genuinely excellent, and that is not a throwaway line, it is a real reason to sign a lease on these blocks. The 6 runs directly beneath Park Avenue South, so the spine of the neighborhood is quite literally sitting on a subway line. Penn Station and Grand Central are both a short ride away, which means a team commuting in from the suburbs is not the daily headache it becomes somewhere like Columbus Circle. Before the commute turns into an office-wide argument, settle it with our commute calculator and everyone’s home address.