Oppenheimer Leases 220,000 Square Feet at 32 Old Slip

A Wall Street firm that started at 2 Wall Street in 1881 is staying within a short walk of home. Oppenheimer & Co. said it will move its headquarters to roughly 220,000 square feet on six full floors of 32 Old Slip, a 36-story Lower Manhattan tower owned by RXR, according to the company's release ^[1].

A phased move-in is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2028 ^[1].

The deal in numbers

• RXR paid $675M for the 1.1M SF tower in 2015, Bisnow reported ^[2].
• The landlord and tenant plan to put about $66M into the space, with Gensler leading the design ^[2].
• Gov. Kathy Hochul said the move keeps more than 1,000 jobs in Manhattan ^[1].
• Empire State Development is giving the company a $3.2M capital grant, according to Bisnow ^[2].

But this is a downsizing, not an expansion. Oppenheimer is leaving a 270K SF office at 85 Broad St., a JLL spokesperson told Bisnow ^[2]. And the wider submarket is still soft: Cushman & Wakefield put vacancy on the western side of the Financial District at 26.7% at the end of the third quarter ^[2].

What it means for you

By our math, the firm is giving up about 50,000 square feet, roughly 19% of its current footprint. By our math, the $66M investment works out to about $300 per square foot of the new space. For office investors, that is the price of winning a tenant today: landlords are sharing big build-out costs to fill space, even in a renewal-sized deal ^[2].

Zoom out

Downtown has trailed Midtown since the pandemic, but from January through June tenants signed 4M SF of deals below Canal Street, and asking rents were up 8% in July from a year earlier, Bisnow reported ^[2]. RXR manages about $19 billion in gross asset value ^[1].