A 907,000-square-foot office tower at 1540 Broadway has locked down 226,500 square feet of new leasing in just a few months, anchored by a 140,000-square-foot deal with Comcast Advertising that ranks among the largest Midtown office commitments completed in 2026. The wave of signings follows a $150 million repositioning of the Times Square building, and ownership now expects the tower to reach near-full occupancy by the end of the year.
The leasing push was secured by GFP Real Estate and BDT & MSD Partners, according to New York Real Estate Journal. Comcast Advertising's lease spans floors 27 through 31 at an asking rent in the low $90s per square foot and consolidates the company's operations from 1407 Broadway and 55 West 46th Street, as reported by The Real Deal, which put the deal's size at roughly 141,000 square feet. Comcast was represented by Gabe Marans, Jay Joyce and Greg Bante of Savills, while JLL and Allen Gurevich of GFP Real Estate represented ownership in that transaction along with two smaller deals.
Those additional deals include a 9,314-square-foot lease with Metalmark Capital, represented by Cynthia Wasserberger of JLL, and a 3,123-square-foot relocation and extension for Alight. Together with earlier 2026 activity, the new leasing brings the tower's momentum to more than 300,000 square feet signed since ownership unveiled its repositioning in January.
Pandora and Woori Bank Set the Stage Earlier in 2026
The Comcast deal builds on leasing announced in March, when Pandora Jewelry expanded its footprint and Woori Bank's New York agency established a new headquarters at the tower. The station's reporting partner on that earlier round, the same New York Real Estate Journal, has noted the two deals collectively delivered around 74,000 square feet. Per New York Real Estate Journal, Pandora took the entire 34th floor, nearly 28,000 square feet, bringing its total footprint at the tower to 55,872 square feet, while Woori Bank signed a 20-year lease for the full 38th floor, relocating from 245 Park Avenue.
Ownership says it is seeing strong interest from media, technology, financial services and professional services firms, with multiple active negotiations still underway. Brian Steinwurtzel, who leads GFP Real Estate's development arm, credited the pace of dealmaking to broader shifts in what companies want from their office space. “Companies continue to prioritize high-quality office environments that help attract talent, foster collaboration and support long-term growth,” Steinwurtzel said, according to the same New York Real Estate Journal report. He added that executing more than 226,000 square feet of leasing in just a few months is a strong validation of the transformation underway at the property.
A $150 Million Bet on Amenities and Infrastructure
The repositioning includes more than 45,000 square feet of new tenant amenities, designed by Fogarty Finger, with construction currently underway and completion scheduled for January 2027. Plans call for a 27,000-square-foot wellness and collaboration space on the eighth floor and an 18,500-square-foot executive lounge and private club with a landscaped terrace on the 36th floor. The building's floor plates range from 18,000 to 28,000 square feet, and the tower sits within walking distance of Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station, with access to nearly every major subway line.
JLL's Clark Finney, part of the leasing team that also included Frank Doyle, Mike Pallas and Carlee Palmer, said Comcast's commitment reflects a broader flight to quality across Midtown. That framing lines up with recent market data: Commercial Observer reported in February, citing Newmark research, that office availability across Midtown's top 50 trophy buildings had dropped below 3.7 percent, compared with more than 12 percent before the pandemic. Colliers separately found that Manhattan's overall office availability rate fell to 13.0 percent in the second quarter of 2026, its lowest point since October 2020 and down sharply from a peak of 18.2 percent in February 2024, according to Colliers.
Cushman & Wakefield reported that Midtown Manhattan logged 5.0 million square feet of new office leasing in the second quarter of 2026, a 15.0 percent quarterly increase, with Class A properties capturing 82.6 percent of year-to-date Manhattan leasing activity. That flight-to-quality dynamic helps explain why a heavily amenitized, recently repositioned tower like 1540 Broadway is absorbing space quickly even as older, un-renovated Class B and C buildings across the borough continue to struggle.
A Tower That Has Been Rebuilt Before
The current campaign is only the latest reinvention for the tower, which architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed and which opened in 1990 as One Broadway Place. Original developer Ian Bruce Eichner filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992 and sold the building to German media conglomerate Bertelsmann for $119 million, according to historical reporting by The Real Deal. Former owners Edge Fund Advisors and HSBC later invested $40 million in a Gensler-designed renovation that added an eighth-floor amenity space and an on-site cogeneration plant generating 70 percent of the building's electricity, Commercial Observer reported in 2019.
That ownership structure changed again in January 2026, when BDT & MSD Partners acquired control of the office condominium from Edge Fund Advisors and HSBC for $237.5 million while assuming responsibility for a $358 million loan held by Apollo Global Management, per PincusCo. The tower's retail base, owned separately by Vornado Realty Trust, has its own momentum: Commercial Observer reported that Vornado signed collectible brand Pop Mart to a 10-year, 7,000-square-foot lease for its U.S. flagship store at roughly $2,000 per square foot, a deal Hoodline covered in a Pop Mart flagship lease report.
The office leasing campaign is being run by GFP Real Estate's newer development arm, which launched in April under co-CEO Brian Steinwurtzel to focus on complex repositionings and office-to-residential conversions across Manhattan, a strategy Hoodline detailed in its report on GFP's new development arm. The firm has pursued similarly ambitious projects elsewhere in the city, including its Wrey conversion at 222 Broadway in the Financial District and chairman Jeffrey Gural's pursuit of the Chrysler Building ground lease.
