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Empire State Realty OP
Anthony Malkin leads Empire State Realty OP, the REIT behind the Empire State Building and 13 other New York-area commercial properties.
Empire State Realty OP
Empire State Realty OP, L.P. is the operating partnership of Empire State Realty Trust, a New York Stock Exchange-listed real estate investment trust (NYSE: ESRT). The firm traces its lineage back to 1961, when a syndicate led by Lawrence A. Wien acquired the operating rights and ground lease for the Empire State Building. The empire — built layer by layer — was consolidated and taken public in October 2013 by Anthony E. Malkin and his team, creating a dedicated public vehicle for the properties. The original Wien family aggregation logic was to assemble a portfolio of irreplaceable assets in New York metropolitan transit hubs. The firm operates as a fully integrated owner, operator, and redeveloper of Class A office and retail properties. Its primary operating segments are concentrated in the Manhattan office market and the greater New York metropolitan area. Real estate asset management is internalized, covering leasing, construction, and building operations. The portfolio spans approximately 8.8 million rentable square feet across 14 office properties, including the 2.7-million-square-foot Empire State Building, plus a retail portfolio of street-level and building-specific spaces throughout the metro region. The REIT generates revenue entirely from property operations and has not historically engaged in external fund-of-funds or co-investment club structures. The portfolio is geographically anchored in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut. ESRT today comprises more than 200 full-time professionals with a heavily institutional public shareholder base. The firm runs a transparent, externally scrutinized public company structure — not a closed family office. In November 2024, the firm appointed Thomas Keltner as an independent director and Audit Committee member, reinforcing an independent board governance model that distinguishes it from legacy, self-dealing office owners (per SEC filing, 2024). The operating partnership itself serves as the primary asset-holding entity, absorbing capital proceeds from public equity and debt raises to deploy directly into real estate operations and capital improvements. The REIT’s core structural differentiator lies in its master ground lease on the Empire State Building, which unifies a sprawling mosaic of individual tenant leases into one manageable economic interest. That legal architecture, first engineered by Wien, creates a rare alignment: a public market’s liquidity and transparency applied to a generational leasehold estate, with an operational concentration on a single, globally recognizable physical asset that acts as its own brand platform.
General information
Firm type
Asset Manager
Year founded
2011
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
New York
Corporate office
111 West 33rd Street, New York, NY, United States
Additional offices
Stamford, CT
Principals
Anthony E. Malkin
Chairman, President & CEO
Thomas N. Keltner Jr.
Executive Vice President, Real Estate
Christina Chiu
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
How is Empire State Realty OP different from the publicly traded REIT?
Empire State Realty OP, L.P. is the operating partnership entity through which Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT) holds substantially all of its assets and conducts its business. The public company is a real estate investment trust, but the actual property operations, leasing contracts, and capital deployment flow through the operating partnership structure, which is standard for UPREITs.
Who controls the master ground lease on the Empire State Building?
The master ground lease is held by a subsidiary of ESRT. The original net lease structure was negotiated in 1961 by Lawrence Wien's syndicate, and the leasehold interest became a central operating asset when Anthony Malkin consolidated the fragmented ownership and took the entity public. The lease provides control over operations and commercial income through 2075 (per ESRT public disclosures).
Does Empire State Realty OP invest in properties outside New York?
The portfolio concentrates exclusively on the New York metropolitan area, with a primary focus on the Manhattan office market and selected transit-oriented locations. One of its properties is located in Stamford, Connecticut. The firm has not diversified into national or international property markets, preferring density and operational control within a single urban corridor.
How does the wealth origin of the Malkin family relate to the current entity?
Anthony Malkin's grandfather, Lawrence Wien, was the architect of the 1961 Empire State Building ground lease syndication. The family did not own the building outright — no single entity did — but they controlled the operating economics through the master lease. Anthony Malkin consolidated those fragmented operating interests from hundreds of investors and rolled them into the modern REIT structure in 2013.
What asset classes does ESRT own besides office towers?
Beyond office space, the firm is a significant owner of retail real estate. The portfolio contains ground-floor and in-building retail spaces in high-traffic urban corridors, including the retail concourse inside the Empire State Building. The firm also generates revenue from the Empire State Building Observatory, an observation-deck operation that produces tens of millions in annual revenue, making it a tourism-adjacent hospitality asset embedded inside a commercial property.
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