Midtown's Plaza District Fades As Manhattan Office Landscape Shifts

In the latest potential blow to the area surrounding the elegant Plaza Hotel - the city's most coveted business address for decades - asset manager BlackRock is poised to lease 850,000 square feet at a planned 58-story tower at the new Hudson Yards development on the far West Side.

Also spurring the slow exodus is the notion that the area just southeast of Central Park, which includes the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, is showing its age and fails to satisfy the city's burgeoning millennial workforce.

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Four towers with an average height of 69 stories that are under construction by Related Cos, Brookfield Properties and the Moinian Group at Hudson Yards already are pressuring prices. Five other behemoths have been proposed for the far West Side.

Average leasing rates for 62 "trophy" buildings in Midtown have slid a touch more than 1 percent in October from a post-recession peak last year of $99.43 a square foot, which capped a 33 percent increase since 2009, real estate specialist Jones Lang LaSalle said.

... high-profile names have left or will soon, such as private equity firm KKR's planned move from the Solow Building on West 57th Street, often called the city's most prestigious building, to Hudson Yards. The move is seen as highly symbolic.