SL Green Fully Leases One Madison Avenue, Projects Strong Q1 Leasing

SL Green Realty Corp. SLG has achieved a record-breaking first quarter by leasing the remaining office space at One Madison Avenue to Harvey AI. This includes a 92,663-square-foot expansion.

The completion of office leasing cements a remarkable story at One Madison Avenue, a transformational adaptive reuse with construction and lease-up completed on time and budget, at rents exceeding initial underwriting. Following the success of One Vanderbilt (also 100% leased), One Madison highlights SL Green's approach to design and hospitality, in partnerships with industry legends Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) and Daniel Boulud.

One Madison Avenue is New York City's most ambitious adaptive reuse project, located next to Madison Square Park. SL Green and KPF transformed the existing nine-story podium into a flexible Class-A office space, while adding a new 550,000-square-foot tower above.

SLG’s Solid Leasing

The Harvey AI lease follows major recent lease signings at 11 Madison Avenue and 245 Park Avenue. It boosts the company's office leasing in the first 65 days of the year to 832,135 square feet across 44 leases, including more than 344,000 square feet of expansions, while maintaining a pipeline of more than 800,000 square feet.

The company anticipates concluding the first quarter of 2026 with more than 900,000 square feet of office leasing, the highest first-quarter volume in its 28-year history. It also projects that more than two-thirds of its office portfolio will achieve a weighted average leased occupancy of 98% or more by year-end 2026.

Management Commentary

Per Marc Holliday, chairman and CEO of SL Green, “Our incredible first quarter — likely the best in our entire history — has been driven by large, long-term commitments from sophisticated companies, the ultimate response to the false narrative that AI is shrinking the workforce in New York City. This momentum makes clear that New York City will be a net beneficiary of growth in Tech and AI, continuing to attract leading companies that employ top-level talent that is not easily replaced with computers, and benefiting from increased productivity and innovation.”

In the past three months, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have decreased 12.6% compared with the industry's rise of 5.2%.

 

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

 

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are Cousins Properties CUZ and Terreno Realty TRNO, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CUZ’s 2026 FFO per share has been moved a cent northward to $2.93 over the past month.

The consensus estimate for TRNO’s 2026 FFO per share has been revised 3 cents upward to $2.79 over the past month.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (FFO), a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.