BlackRock has expanded its office space at 50 Hudson Yards in New York City, subleasing approximately 194,000 square feet from Meta. This brings the asset manager’s total footprint in the building to 1.24 million square feet, which is close to half of the tower’s total 2.9 million square feet.
The deal was arranged by a JLL team including Peter Riguardi, Matthew Astrachan and Joseph Messina. Terms of the sublease were not disclosed. When 50 Hudson Yards opened three years ago, asking rents ranged between $175 and $240 per square foot. The average asking rent in the neighborhood during the second quarter was $153.52 per square foot, according to Avison Young.
Meta originally put about 250,000 square feet of its space on the market at the end of 2022 after freeing up part of its overall 1.2-million-square-foot lease at the building.
BlackRock previously increased its presence last July with an additional 50,000 square feet after first committing to take 850,000 square feet for twenty years back in 2016.
According to a recent Colliers report, Manhattan office tenants leased a total of 9.4 million square feet in the third quarter—a two percent increase from the previous quarter and almost twenty-seven percent above the five-year quarterly average. Overall leasing volume for this year has surpassed thirty million square feet so far—exceeding pre-pandemic levels and representing the strongest year-to-date demand since 2002. If this pace continues through year-end, more than forty million square feet could be leased citywide—about twenty percent higher than in 2024.
