With a mere 12 million square feet, Hudson Square might be the city’s most in-demand subdistrict.
In the former printing-house zone bounded roughly by Clarkson and Canal streets to the north and south and between West Street and Sixth Avenue, leasing volume soared from under a half-million square feet in 2024 to more than 1.5 million so far this year.
The boom is reflected in Disney’s new Manhattan headquarters at 7 Hudson Square, Anthropic’s just-inked lease for all of 330 Hudson St., Google’s purchase of St. John’s Terminal and PayPal’s 261,000 square-foot lease at 345 Hudson St./555 Greenwich St.
Tech, AI and media firms, Hudson Square’s favorite tenants, are expanding all over town.
So why after a year of marketing are Taconic Partners and leasing agent JLL still without a tenant for the planned One Grand, a state-of-the-art, 430,000 square-footer at the corner of Grand and Varick streets?
Simple, according to Kristen Morgan, part of the JLL team: tenants want their growth space now. “They want butts in seats right away,” Morgan said. One Grand will take 36 months to build.
“Two years ago, you couldn’t get arrested in Hudson Square,” Morgan joked. “Now it’s the hottest neighborhood in the city.
“Tech was quiet for a while after COVID, but once people realized how easy it was to get there from uptown, Brooklyn and New Jersey, it took off,” she said. The JLL leasing team also includes Mitchell Konsker, Matt Astrachan, Peter Riguardi and Clark Finney.
Hudson Square’s total availability fell year-over-year by 2.1% to 16.6% in the second quarter — a stat released even before Anthropic’s 466,000 square-feet commitment at 330 Hudson St.
Hudson Square’s atmospheric older properties and easy mass transit access appeal to younger employees, which in turn has prompted a local boom in fitness-oriented retail and new restaurants by “name” chefs.
Taconic president/COO Colleen Wenke said One Grand doesn’t necessarily need an anchor tenant to start construction. “We’re trading paper” with a number of suitors, she said, noting that the building “has the capacity to bring tenants the neighborhood’s only new, purpose-built space.”
Unlike 7 Hudson Square, which was built expressly for Disney, most other large tenants in the district moved into “previously existing buildings,” some more than a century old. Anthropic’s home at 330 Hudson, for example, opened in 1910.
One Grand will have features that especially appeal to tech firms, including open floor plates, views from large windows, 20,000 square feet of outdoor space, a roof deck and expansive amenities spaces.
Morgan said asking rents average $185 per square foot. She called the project “perfect for tenants who want to create their own environments within the building.”
“It just ends up being a timing thing,” she said.