Durst finally marketing top floors of 1 WTC

How much would tenants pay to work from what may be the highest office space in the entire Western Hemisphere? The Durst Organization is ready to find out.

The developer made the 89th and 90th floors of One World Trade Center in the Financial District available for lease, Bloomberg reported. While the spaces at the top of the tower have been utilized for various purposes in the past, this is the first time they’re being marketed to office tenants.

Durst is hoping to achieve rents in the ballpark of $160 per square foot. While that doesn’t reach the incredible heights of the upper echelon office buildings in New York City, like SL Green’s famous $300 per square foot ask at One Vanderbilt, the $160 mark is still more than triple the average asking rent in Downtown Manhattan, according to CBRE.

“It’s certainly likely to be something in finance,” leasing agent Eric Engelhardt said of potential tenants for the floors. “Maybe it’s a venture capital that invests in these technology companies that we have all over the building.”

Getting to the penthouse floors is a commute in itself, requiring two elevator rides that take more than a minute. Once there, tenants have access to 46,000 square feet and 360-degree views of the city.

A Chinese business center — a subsidiary of Vantone Holdings — planned to use the 89th floor as a hosting space for potential national investors, but never occupied the space. The 90th floor, meanwhile, has been used by broadcast equipment rendered obsolete by technological gains in the industry.

Tenants at the 3.1 million-square-foot property, co-owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, include Conde Nast, Wunderkind Corp. and Energy Capital Partners. This year, Masterworks agreed to lease 37,000 square feet on the 57th floor of the property, subleasing from mortgage lender Network Capital.

The property is 95 percent occupied.

— Holden Walter-Warner