Lower Rents? Check. Speakeasy? Check. How Office Landlords Are Enticing Tenants.

As New York City stirs to life, landlords are trying to hold on to their tenants by redesigning spaces to accommodate social distancing and Zoom calls — but also socializing.

Even as life returns to many New York City neighborhoods, its big commercial districts are awash with empty office space. Most workers haven’t yet returned — and it’s unclear if they all will. That uncertainty is terrifying the city’s biggest office landlords, and many of them are going to great lengths to retain and attract tenants. Lower rents or free months in multiyear leases are now de rigueur. But landlords are also trying to entice new and returning tenants with sweeping redesigns and new technology that can quickly refashion office space based on needs. They are dangling upscale new clubs and food halls available largely for tenants, hoping to draw back employees starved for workplace socializing while also pursuing new business opportunities. In one building on West 26th Street near the Hudson River, the owners — the private equity firm Blackstone and the building owner and developer RXR Realty — are showing off a 600-square-foot speakeasy tucked away in a corner of the ground floor. Steven Durels, the director of leasing and property at SL Green, one of the city’s biggest landlords, recently told Wall Street analysts that the concessions his company and its rivals were making were “brutal.” But corporate landlords don’t have much choice. Almost one-fifth of the total market for office space in Manhattan is available for rent — a record high, according to CBRE, a real estate services firm. The amount includes roughly 79 million square feet of both unrented space and offices that existing tenants are trying to sublet.