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’s 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 in September 2025, is now being pitched as an entertainment complex with a hotel. Pull two blocks that size out of the office supply and you’d expect what’s left to get scarcer. So far, it hasn’t.

That’s why the number that matters here isn’t the rent. It’s 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. And CBRE put availability in its Times Square/West Side district at 21.8% in the third quarter, the highest in Midtown, so landlords here still have plenty of space to fill. On a 5,000-square-foot office at $75 a foot, every extra month of free rent you win is worth about $31,000. The bargain is real, but it won’t last forever, and the building you pick matters more here than almost anywhere in Midtown. If you’d rather see the open listings first, start there.

Office Space for Teams of 5 to 30 People

Many of our clients are teams of 5 to 30 people. The headline deal here in the third quarter was Proskauer Rose’s renewal of about 448,000 square feet at 11 Times Square, the biggest Midtown lease on CBRE’s third-quarter list. But plenty of buildings around the square lease suites of 1,000 to 3,000 square feet, and some come prebuilt.

Plan on about 150 to 250 square feet per person, depending on how many private offices you want. That works out to roughly 750 to 1,250 square feet for 5 people, 2,250 to 3,750 for 15, and 4,500 to 7,500 for 30. Our office space calculator will give you a closer number before you tour.

The older Broadway buildings and the side streets are where small teams get the most for their money. Suites we listed at 1560 and 1674 Broadway in February and March 2026 asked $43 to $49 a foot. At $45 a foot, a 2,000-square-foot office for about ten people costs about $7,500 a month before electricity. The rebuilt towers ask far more: 1540 Broadway was asking about $89 a foot this year (New York Post).

Ask about prebuilt suites. Landlords build them out ahead of time with offices, a conference room, and a kitchen, so you can sign and move in within weeks instead of waiting months for construction. The 1,847-square-foot suite we listed at 1560 Broadway in February came with four windowed offices, a conference room, and a pantry already in place.

Buildings to start with:

• 1560 Broadway (Actors’ Equity Building, at 46th Street): a 17-story building from the mid-1920s with a fourth-floor sky lobby and destination-dispatch elevators added in 2019. Suites of 1,847 and 1,143 square feet were listed here in February and March 2026 at $49 and $43 a foot.
• 1674 Broadway (between 52nd and 53rd Streets): a boutique building where a 2,508-square-foot suite with five windowed offices, two bathrooms, and a pantry was listed in February 2026 at $43 a foot.
• 333 West 52nd Street (between Eighth and Ninth Avenues): an Art Deco loft building designed by Arthur J. Barzaghi and owned by Abramson Brothers, with a doorman and 24/7 access. A 1,240-square-foot office loft with a private terrace was listed in December 2025 at $54 a foot.
• 1500 Broadway (at 43rd Street): a 33-story 1970s tower on Times Square whose owner, Tamares Group, set aside about $20 million for leasing and capital work as Good Morning America and Nasdaq moved out. We listed a prebuilt suite of about 2,900 square feet here in 2024.
• 566 Seventh Avenue (at 40th Street): a nine-story building from 1923 with floors averaging about 8,500 square feet, so a team of 30 can take most of a floor.

For two to five people, a private office in a coworking space can cost less than a lease of your own.

Times Square and West Side Sub-Areas

Inside Times Square and the West Side

Times Square / West Side is really five markets, and the rent and the feel change block to block.

• The Bowtie, where Broadway crosses Seventh between 42nd and 47th, is the signage core and the part in the most flux. This is where the billboard towers live and where the two big conversions are happening.
• Broadway North, up from 47th to 53rd, is quieter and more corporate: Morgan Stanley’s headquarters at 1585, the blue-chip roster at 1633 Broadway, the Rudin building at 1675.
• Eighth Avenue and the far west is where the floor plates get bigger and the price drops, which is where a larger tenant chasing value should look.
• The Theater District side streets through the West 40s and 50s are the boutique belt: showrooms, nonprofits, entertainment-industry offices, and the smallest, cheapest floors.
• Seventh Avenue below 42nd, bleeding into the Diamond District on 47th, is the value frontage, older stock at the lowest rents in the submarket.

Same trains, same Times Square framed in the window, wildly different rent. Which of the five you pick is most of the decision, and sorting them is what we do all day. If you want the loft-and-timber look instead, that’s a Midtown South conversation, not a Times Square one.

Times Square and West Side Office Market Overview

Times Square has always run on a different clock than the rest of Midtown, and that’s even more true in 2026. Park Avenue and Hudson Yards are fighting over trophy tenants at average asks above $130 a foot (Cushman & Wakefield for Park Avenue, Savills for Hudson Yards, Q3 2026). Times Square, meanwhile, is quietly rebuilding itself, tower by tower, into something that’s part office district, part hotel district, part neighborhood. The office space that survives that transition is getting a serious upgrade, and for now it’s still a bargain.

The wider market gives you a tailwind. Manhattan just had its strongest first nine months of leasing since 2000, availability fell to 12.4% in the third quarter (Colliers), and Midtown Class A now asks $90.57 a foot, the highest since 2008 (Cushman & Wakefield, Q3 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, but supply hasn’t tightened yet. 5 Times Square is being converted into roughly 1,250 apartments, and SL Green is pitching 1515 Broadway as an entertainment complex with a hotel after its casino bid was voted down in September 2025. Even with those blocks coming off the board, CBRE put availability in its Times Square/West Side district at 21.8% in the third quarter, the highest in Midtown, with sublease availability alone at 6.3%. For tenants, that means room to negotiate.
• 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’s 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’s a bargain, not a compromise. CBRE’s third-quarter average for its Times Square/West Side district, $74.02 a foot across all classes, lands in the same place, about $11.50 under its Midtown average of $85.53. On a 3,000-square-foot office, that gap is worth about $34,500 a year.

That average hides a wide spread, because one number covers 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 can’t 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 won’t find much of here is brand-new trophy construction, because there’s nowhere left to build it. That’s a Hudson Yards or Park Avenue search, the kind of market where Castle Hook Partners just agreed to a record $375 a foot for the penthouse at 625 Madison Avenue (Commercial Observer, October 2026). 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’re 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’s 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, don’t skip the sublet market. The submarket had no recorded Class A sublease inventory as of August 2025 (Metro Manhattan), but CBRE’s third-quarter figures put sublease availability across its Times Square/West Side district at 6.3%, the highest in Midtown. Weigh those offers against 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’s 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’s where most of the money is, and in Times Square, with CBRE putting availability in its Times Square/West Side district at 21.8% 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. For scale, CBRE’s third-quarter report puts Midtown packages on direct new raw-space leases of 25,000 square feet or more, with terms of 10 years or longer, at 17 months of free rent and about $151 a foot in build-out money.

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’re 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 owners spent the money, and their buildings 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 pitched as an entertainment complex with a hotel after the casino bid was voted down in September 2025. 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’s 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

Nobody disputes the transit at Times Square: it’s the best in the country. The 42nd Street subway complex is the busiest in the system, and it’s 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.