Vornado Realty Trust
Steve Roth's Manhattan office REIT, doubling down on Penn and Park
Who it is
Vornado is one of Manhattan's biggest office landlords. The Promote put its NYC office portfolio at about 20M sf in 2024, and the REIT also owns trophy high-street retail and the city's largest signage business. It controls Alexander's too, owner of Bloomberg's 731 Lexington HQ. Its signature bet is the Penn District, where it has redeveloped Penn 1, Penn 2 and the Farley Building and signed tenants from Meta and Apple to Rippling and On. On the old Hotel Pennsylvania site, it shelved a 2.7M sf tower in favor of an interim event space and a giant billboard. Leasing chief Glen Weiss is a broker-world legend.
Its best recent trades turned problem assets into windfalls. Uniqlo paid $350M for Vornado and Crown's retail at 666 Fifth, which went toward repaying Vornado's $390M pref there. At 770 Broadway, after Meta cut its space, NYU took the whole 1.1M sf building on a 70-year master lease. NYU prepaid $935M, Vornado booked an $803M gain, and Vornado kept the Wegmans retail. Not everything has gone that way. Partner SL Green and Vornado had to put in $100M of fresh equity to extend 280 Park's debt, and Vornado and Madison Capital defaulted on 606 Broadway.
The REIT is now buying in. It took its maximum 36% of 350 Park, Citadel's planned 2M sf tower, alongside Ken Griffin's 60% and the Rudins' 4%, and is lining up a $3.3B construction loan. It agreed to buy Zhang Xin's 49% of Park Avenue Plaza at a $1.1B valuation and has an air-rights option with St. Bart's. It also bought Charles Cohen's 623 Fifth for $218M to turn into a boutique office. There has been legal noise as well. Ex-leasing exec Jared Solomon was convicted of running a sham-brokerage scheme that billed Vornado about $9.5M and was sentenced in November 2026 to 11 years. Separately, the Korein family is suing over Penn 1's ground-rent reset.
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