By Rebecca Picciotto

The New York City office market is recovering from its pandemic debacle faster than any other in the U.S. Nothing speaks more to the turnaround than the gleaming new office tower built for JPMorgan Chase.

After more than six years of development, the bank is preparing to move thousands of employees into its new, 2.5-million-square-foot headquarters at 270 Park Ave. later this month before its October grand opening. The 60-story building is a roughly $3 billion bet that New York is definitively back after years of uncertainty about whether it would maintain its leadership in business and finance.

"It's a very big deal," said the New York power broker Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City. "It's a statement about the future of New York City."

As the city rallies, the rest of the country is slowly clawing its way back. New York City office visits, or foot traffic, exceeded 2019 levels for the first time in July, according to Placer.ai, a location-analytics firm. It was the only major city to hit that milestone. Office visits nationally were down 22% in July compared with the same month in 2019, the firm found.

The city's office rebound is driven by business executives who are looking to put the days of remote work behind them.

To lure employees back to the workplace, more companies are chasing the high-end buildings that Manhattan is known for. Some 2 million square feet of New York City's trophy office space has been leased in the first half of 2025, surging ahead of other U.S. markets, according to the real-estate data firm CoStar.

The premier leases are going fast: Deloitte committed to 800,000 square feet at a Hudson Yards office tower on the West Side before construction began.

Some of the strictest return-to-office mandates are coming from New York's bedrock industry: finance. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are among the few companies that have ordered their employees back to the office five days a week.

The city's tech and law firms, including many that are small and midsize, have been signing new leases. In the first quarter, leasing volume accelerated in the Manhattan office market to 12.2 million square feet, the strongest quarter since 2019, according to the real-estate firm Savills.

At the same time, the city's office glut is showing signs of easing, thanks to a sharp reduction in new supply in recent years and a pickup in the number of offices converting to residential buildings.

JPMorgan announced its plan to tear down its former headquarters and build one twice as tall in 2018. Two years later, the pandemic triggered a commercial real-estate meltdown across New York City. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers left, and those who stayed largely worked from home. Office-vacancy rates hit all-time highs. Even so, the 270 Park Ave. project powered ahead.

"At no point did you have a sense that they pulled back," said Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive of CBRE's New York Tri-State Region.

JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has been leading the charge to return to New York offices. The company has been hiring at a rapid clip, and Dimon called all employees back to the office five days a week starting in March. He has been steadily gobbling up office space across New York to match that mandate.

The firm's aggressive office footprint is concentrated in Midtown and anchored on Park Avenue. It reflects how the stately thoroughfare created in the 1800s is once again one of the hottest office markets in the country.

Before JPMorgan settled on building a new headquarters at its same Park Avenue location, it shopped around at Hudson Yards, the World Trade Center and One Vanderbilt, said David Arena, the firm's head of global real estate. "The best corner on the best street, maybe in the world, is 48th and Park," he said.

Manhattan's second-quarter office vacancy rate of 14% remains well above prepandemic levels, according to CBRE. A number of companies in New York have slowed hiring or even laid off employees in the midst of economic uncertainty. More layoffs could loom as companies adopt artificial intelligence for more entry-level tasks.

For now, New York City is leading the office-market recovery, aided by the city's Midtown East zoning changes passed in 2017. Officials aimed to encourage the development of new trophy buildings around Grand Central Terminal and attract businesses to the area.

The new JPMorgan Chase tower was the first project proposal to take advantage of the new rules, and 270 Park sets an example for how developers can build under the new zoning regime. It eventually will accommodate 10,000 employees.

"Think larger," said Roy March, chief executive of the real-estate investment firm Eastdil Secured. "This will inspire developers and institutions themselves to be part of creating something at greater scale."

The tower, which was designed by the British architectural firm Foster & Partners and developed by Tishman Speyer, etches an imposing new figure into the Manhattan skyline.

The building is sculpted into five tiers as it climbs 1,388 feet, looming over Park Avenue skyscrapers such as the Seagram Building, Lever House and the MetLife Building. At night, its top tiers will light up with custom designs, such as a patriotic theme on Independence Day.

With 19 food operators, two outdoor gardens, meditation rooms, a hair salon and a luxury fitness and wellness center, the building sends a clear message to JPMorgan employees.

"I think they know they better be there," said Wylde.

Since 2023, JPMorgan has occupied the most Manhattan office space of any private entity, according to CBRE. Dimon bought the building across the street from the bank's new headquarters.

Over the past several years, JPMorgan leased even more office space to accommodate temporarily some of its 7,000 employees who had worked out of the old 270 Park Ave., while the new headquarters was under construction.

JPMorgan hasn't said whether it would leave those offices vacant after the leases expire. In any case, office brokers aren't worried given the high demand in New York City.

"What the last few years have proven is that people are willing to pay the highest rents ever in New York," said David Falk, president of Newmark's New York Tri-State Region. "You couldn't ask for anything better."

Write to Rebecca Picciotto at Rebecca.Picciotto@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 17, 2025 20:00 ET (00:00 GMT)

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