Investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. will move its global headquarters to RXR’s 32 Old Slip in Manhattan’s Financial District, signing a roughly 220,000-square-foot lease across six full floors and relocating in early 2028 from its longtime home at 85 Broad Street. The deal keeps more than 1,000 jobs in Lower Manhattan and represents a $66 million investment in New York, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.
For 145 years, Oppenheimer has grown alongside Wall Street, and our new headquarters at 32 Old Slip in Lower Manhattan reaffirms our commitment to the area, President and CEO Robert Lowenthal said in a statement announcing the relocation. The firm said the move is an investment in its culture, bringing teams together on six contiguous floors with modern technology and dedicated client space; Gensler is designing the buildout around natural light and open gathering areas.
The lease is a meaningful win for a Financial District office market that has been rebuilding its tenant base. Completed in 1987, 32 Old Slip is a 37-story tower along the East River near Pier 11, and RXR executives cast the signing as proof of demand for high-quality properties with modern infrastructure rather than a shrinking appetite for downtown space. JLL’s Matt Astrachan, who represented Oppenheimer alongside Mitchell Konsker and Steven Bauer, said the transaction reflects continued competition for well-capitalized financial tenants. RXR was represented in-house by Daniel Birney and Heidi Steinegger, with a CBRE team led by Robert Alexander acting for the landlord.
The move also illustrates how mid-tier financial firms are consolidating footprint decisions in a bifurcated market. Oppenheimer’s existing base at 85 Broad Street — a building once synonymous with Goldman Sachs — is older stock in a borough where October leasing volume surged and asking rents matched pre-pandemic averages for the first time, per Colliers’ most recent report. Firms weighing long-term commitments are increasingly trading scattered, legacy space for fewer, larger blocks in renovated towers with amenity programs designed to bring employees back deliberately.
Lower Manhattan’s pitch has evolved beyond rent discounts. The neighborhood has added residential conversions, transit upgrades and a growing mixed-use employment base since the pandemic, and brokerage leasing data through October showed the district tracking ahead of its five-year average even as some corridors lost ground year over year. Completed in 1987 near Pier 11, the 37-story East River tower gives the firm room to consolidate teams that had been split across floors at 85 Broad, with Fincadia and LevelUp among its existing tenants. For Oppenheimer, whose wealth management and capital markets businesses anchor roughly 1,000 positions downtown, the new headquarters is designed as a recruitment tool as much as a real estate play. For RXR and the district’s landlords, it is further evidence that the post-pandemic flight from New York office space has become a flight to quality — with the losers being aging towers rather than the borough itself.
