Law firm Elsberg Baker & Maruri signed a lease for 39,000 square feet at the Empire State Building, the Commercial Observer reported. Elsberg will occupy one full floor and one partial floor at Empire State Realty Trust’s landmark at 20 West 34th Street.
The asking rent for the space and the lease duration were not disclosed. The average asking rent in Midtown during the second quarter was $82.28 per square foot, according to CBRE.
The law firm is relocating from another notable property in the area, Vornado Realty Trust’s 1 Pennsylvania Plaza. In a statement, the firm’s chief executive officer said the “office will accommodate our growth now and into the future.”
Newmark’s Brian Goldman, Nicholas Lucia and Jason Perla represented the tenant. Newmark’s Scott Klau, Erik Harris and Neil Rubin represented the landlord, alongside Jordan Berger in-house.
Other recent leases at the Empire State Building include construction firm Mott MacDonald NY taking 25,000 square feet earlier this month and the NCAA’s Big East Conference leasing 7,900 square feet last month.
ESRT conducted a $550 million renovation of the property’s infrastructure in 2006, but concerns surfaced in recent years over the building’s future, raising the possibility of an office-to-residential conversion as questions circled over how the building could compete with higher-quality and newer properties in a post-pandemic, hybrid-work world.
The office space at the 2.7 million-square-foot, 102-story was 95 percent leased at the end of the first quarter, according to an earnings supplement published by ESRT. The company’s second-quarter earnings will be released at the end of Wednesday.
Office leasing volume in Manhattan hit 9.2 million square feet in the second quarter, an 18.9 percent drop from the previous quarter, according to a report from Colliers.
Still, the borough recorded its strongest first half of the year in more than a decade. Tenants signed deals for 20.7 million square feet in the first six months of 2025, according to Colliers, the most since 2014.
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