A 28-story office tower planned for the corner of Grand and Varick Streets in Hudson Square could break ground even though developers have yet to land a single tenant after a year of marketing the building. Taconic Partners, which is developing the 430,000-square-foot project known as One Grand alongside Nuveen Real Estate, says the tower does not need an anchor tenant locked in before construction begins.
That marks a notable posture shift for a project that once seemed to hinge on securing a marquee occupant first. According to the New York Post, Taconic's Colleen Wenke said One Grand does not need an anchor tenant to start construction, even as the firm continues trading paper with a number of prospective tenants. The tower is expected to take 36 months to build, according to JLL's Kristen Morgan, who also told the paper that tenants increasingly want growth space immediately rather than waiting years for a building to rise.
A Tower Designed to Stand Out in a Converted Neighborhood
One Grand is billed as Hudson Square's only new, purpose-built office space in a submarket long dominated by converted printing facilities. The building will feature open floor plates, large-window views, expansive amenity spaces, and a roof deck, along with 20,000 square feet of outdoor space designed to appeal to tenants who want to create their own environment within the building. The tower's design, from SHoP Architects — the firm behind Brooklyn's Barclays Center — includes a rhomboid-shaped building with a lightweight steel-and-glass façade, according to Commercial Observer.
The plans also call for double-height, 30-foot loggias built into south-facing floor plates on alternating floors between the seventh and 26th stories, per the same outlet, giving future tenants covered outdoor workspace with Hudson River views. Office floors won't start until roughly 100 feet above ground level, because the building's lower base is designed to house a 444-seat public elementary school for the city's Department of Education — a civic requirement tied to Hudson Square's 2013 rezoning, Commercial Observer reports. One Grand is also targeting LEED Gold, WELL, and WiredScore certifications, with a design engineered to be 40% more energy-efficient than comparable commercial buildings, according to the New York Real Estate Journal.
The Land Behind the Tower
The 0.75-acre site sits on land owned by Trinity Church Wall Street, one of Lower Manhattan's largest and oldest commercial landowners, which awarded Taconic and Nuveen a 99-year ground lease in 2019, according to 6sqft. The full-block parcel was historically part of Manhattan's printing press district, where development was restricted for decades until the city created the Special Hudson Square District in 2013, per CityLand. Before it was marketed as One Grand, municipal filings and architectural plans referred to the trapezoidal, 32,699-square-foot plot as 2 Hudson Square or 76 Varick Street, according to New York YIMBY, which notes the site sits adjacent to Duarte Square Park at the junction of SoHo, TriBeCa, and Hudson Square.
A Neighborhood Reshaped by Tech and Media
One Grand's slow leasing comes even as Hudson Square — bounded roughly by Clarkson Street, Canal Street, West Street and Sixth Avenue — has become one of the city's hottest office corridors for tech, AI and media firms. Disney maintains its Manhattan headquarters at 7 Hudson Square, a building constructed for the company, while Google purchased St. John's Terminal nearby. Anthropic has committed to 466,000 square feet at 330 Hudson Street, a building that opened in 1910 and where the AI company signed a lease for the entire property, the New York Post reports.
PayPal has leased 261,000 square feet across 345 Hudson Street and 555 Greenwich Street, and Hudson Square has recorded more than 1.5 million square feet of leasing volume so far this year — well above the under-500,000-square-foot pace logged in 2024, per the same report. Total availability in the neighborhood stood at 16.6% in the second quarter, a 2.1 percentage-point year-over-year decline, while asking rents average $185 per square foot, according to Morgan. Hudson Square's roughly 12 million square feet of office space has drawn younger employees in part because of easy mass transit access and a boom in fitness-oriented retail and new restaurants.
Unlike most other large Hudson Square tenants, which moved into previously existing converted buildings, a tenant at One Grand would occupy ground-up, purpose-built space — a distinction Taconic and its leasing team at JLL, which includes Peter Riguardi, Mitchell Konsker, Clark Finney and Matt Astrachan, are marketing as a selling point. The building is being marketed jointly by Taconic Partners and JLL as the neighborhood's only new construction office option.
Part of a Broader Wave of Hudson Square Investment
The tower's uncertain leasing timeline arrives amid a broader surge of institutional capital flowing into the district. Brookfield entered negotiations in July to acquire a 10% stake in Hudson Square Properties, a 6-million-square-foot office campus portfolio valued at $3.5 billion and jointly owned by Trinity Church Wall Street, Norges Bank Investment Management and Hines, as Hoodline previously reported. Nearby at 122 Varick Street, Global Holdings and MAG Partners formed a joint venture in May on another Trinity Church ground lease to build a 149-unit residential rental tower — a site once planned for boutique office space — with roughly a quarter of those units set aside as permanently affordable housing under the state's 485-x program.
Street-level retail in the district has been shifting too. Tech-driven chain Luckin Coffee signed a 10-year lease for space at 180 Varick Street in July, replacing a neighborhood pizzeria that had operated there for more than 40 years, as landlords modernize commercial space to serve incoming tech and media workers. Whether One Grand ultimately rises on speculation or waits for a signed tenant, Taconic's stated willingness to build without one signals how confident the developer remains in Hudson Square's continued draw for growing companies.
