Verizon has quietly put the office space it preleased at Vornado’s PENN 2 tower back on the market for sublease, reversing the Manhattan headquarters move it announced last summer. The space hit the market less than seven months after the July 2025 lease was signed and sends roughly 200,000 rentable square feet back into the Midtown mix, an unexpected twist for what had been held up as a marquee vote of confidence in the Penn District.
A public listing dated Feb. 17 shows the full 8th through 10th floors, about 198,893 rentable square feet in total, being marketed as sublease space with a term running through September 2044 and Cushman & Wakefield listed as the contact broker, according to LoopNet. The posting touts large private terraces and the option to combine the floors with adjacent availability on the 11th floor, language that tracks with typical trophy-office pitches aimed at tenants hunting for big, contiguous blocks.
Background: How the deal unfolded
Vornado announced on July 29, 2025 that Verizon would relocate its New York headquarters to PENN 2 under a 19-year lease, taking roughly 203,000 square feet across the same floors now being marketed, according to a release from Vornado Realty Trust. At the time, the landlord cast the commitment as a cornerstone of its Penn District redevelopment and a sign that big corporate tenants were still willing to bet on Midtown offices. The new sublease listing puts that storyline on pause and drops a high-profile block of space back into circulation.
Industry coverage this week flagged the move as a step back from Verizon’s previously announced headquarters plan. CoStar first reported the development and noted the listing activity, and public commercial-marketing pages now show those floors being actively offered for sublease.
Market implications
Deals of this size were treated last year as a bellwether for Midtown’s recovery, and Verizon’s original commitment at PENN 2 was covered in the broader context of companies consolidating offices and tightening return-to-office policies. The Wall Street Journal reported on Verizon’s larger Manhattan lease and its push for more in-office days in 2025, noting that the company aimed to consolidate more than 1,000 employees into the new space.
The sublease now adds a sizable, high-end chunk of contiguous inventory to a market where landlords have been working to refill top-tier towers. Brokers will be watching to see whether a tenant grabs the ready-made headquarters setup or whether the space simply swells the sublease pool. Marketing materials list the Cushman & Wakefield team that handled the original negotiations among the contacts on the posting, according to LoopNet. With the listing live, the impact on Midtown leasing will hinge on how quickly a subtenant emerges and whether the block is still sitting there as new lease-up cycles roll through later this year.
