Stefan Soloviev Eyes Record $400 Rent at 9 West 57th Street

Manhattan office leasing is red-hot. But is it $400 a foot hot?

Stefan Soloviev is marketing an office space at 9 West 57th Street that, if achieved, would shatter the $327 record rent his building achieved earlier this year.

His Soloviev Group is eyeing $400 per square foot for the 11,155-square-foot space on the 50th Floor, one of two remaining spaces in the 1.5 million-square-foot tower.

“Filling 9W is something that has never been done before and has always been a moderate goal of mine because I put a lot of time into this building throughout my life,” Soloviev told The Real Deal. “My father assembled 17 parcels and bet everything he had to build this amazing building and though our business styles clashed — as did we — it’s somewhat satisfying that through it all we collectively made 9 West 57th Street the best building in the world.”

Soloviev’s father, Sheldon Solow, developed his iconic office tower in 1974, and famously kept portions of the building empty because he was so selective about the kinds of tenants he allowed at the exclusive address.

Soloviev — who clashed with his father and spent much of his career building a farm-and-agriculture empire across the U.S. heartland — took over the tower when his father died in 2020 at the age of 92. He’s spent the last several years modernizing the crown jewel in the family portfolio, which was beginning to show signs of its age and slip behind newer towers. To help attract new tenants, the company is debuting a new 20,000-square-foot amenity floor with Central Park views, executive dining and a hospitality area.

Over the last few months Nine West has inked a pair of leases in the $300 range — a figure that until recently was uncharted territory.

In April, Soloviev announced he had signed a 5,000-square-foot lease on the northwest corner of the 50th floor at $327.50 per square foot, topping the previous high-water mark at SL Green’s One Vanderbilt, which in 2022 signed a 9,871 square-foot deal on its highest office floor with the Canadian waste management company GFL Environmental.

The company recently signed another big deal: Webster, the family office for the founder of the agricultural trading commodities company SFI, took 5,000 square feet on the 50th floor averaging $315 per square foot.

Rents above $300 a foot are still extremely rare a decade after L&L Holdings first broke that mark in 2015 when Ken Griffin’s Citadel paid that price for the penthouse portion of its 200,000-square-foot space at 425 Park Avenue. But they are becoming more common.

Manhattan recorded one such lease last year when SL Green signed the infrastructure service provider Kyndryl to a $305 per square foot deal for 6,300 square feet at One Vanderbilt.

But the market could be headed more toward that direction. Deals for previous price barriers that were once thought to be exceptional — such as $100 and $200 a foot — are now much more commonplace.

New York saw a record 313 leases starting at $100 per square foot or more in 2025, up from 2024’s record of 212 leases, according to JLL’s annual report of top-of-market deals. There were 28 deals at $200 per square foot or higher, including six deals above $250.

Soloviev said he’s recently signed 5 deals at 9 West 57th Street in the $200 range. They include deals with the private equity firm Infinedi Partners, Pittsburg-based PE shop Continuim LLC, Halle Capital Management (coming from across the street at the LeFrak’s 40 West 57th Street), Redding Ridge Asset Management (an affiliate of Apollo Global Management, which is headquartered at 9 West) and an undisclosed tenant.

Catch Hospitality Group also recently signed a lease to take over the former Cucina 8 ½ restaurant space.

Manhattan office leasing has totaled 12.78 million square feet this year so far through May, according to CBRE. That’s in line with figures from last year, which ended just shy of the decade peak of 32.4 million in 2018. The average asking rent is up nearly 6 percent year over year at $86.55 per square foot.