Law firm Goodwin Procter signs Park Ave lease, breathing life into once-sleepy Midtown South

Law firm Goodwin Procter’s planned move from the New York Times building on Eighth Avenue to BXP’s 200 Fifth Ave. in Flatiron says a lot about today’s commercial market.The relocation in late 2026 represents only modest short-term growth — from 216,000 square feet at its old digs to 250,000 square feet — but the deal includes  expansion options in the building.The firm’s move is a stroke of faith in once-sleepy Midtown South, where SL Green’s One Madison is now home to IBM and Franklin Templeton’s New York headquarters.

 Welcome to the mighty, ever-evolving Manhattan office market in 2025.Although saddled with too many obsolete old buildings and a hesitant lending environment, it’s in a vastly better place than doomsayers dreamed of five, or even two, years ago.A Newmark survey this month found that Manhattan’s office recovery has “defied the national narrative” — that is, it clobbered  other large US cities both in terms of volume and percentage.Data from CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, Newmark, Savills, Colliers and Avison Young differ by a half-percentage point here or there, but all found the first quarter of 2024 recorded the most leasing volume since the fourth quarter of 2019 — plus-or-minus 12 million square feet.The availability rate fell to around 17%, the lowest in five years.

It was under 15% in prime Midtown and under 10% on Park Avenue.The first quarter’s five largest leases were all above 300,000 square feet.And — wait for it! — physical office attendance, still regarded by some as the holy grail even though most large  landlords now say work-from-home is  “in the rear-view mirror,” continued to its rise.

The Partnership for New York City found March office attendance at 76% of pre-pandemic levels, compared with 72% last year.But five years since the pandemic’s horror fully took hold, it’s worth a look back at how prisoners-of-the-moment media organs viewed the future of the Manhattan office...