Atmosphere outside 1515 Broadway on June, 23, 2025. Photographer: Yuvraj Khanna/Bloomberg
© 2025 Bloomberg Finance LP
Even though a Times Square casino is not in the cards, SL Green is doubling down on ways to monetize 1515 Broadway.
Less than three months after a community advisory committee voted against the landlord’s proposal to build a casino above the Minskoff Theatre at 1515 Broadway, it has found another way to cash in on the venue. The office building will now be converted into a high-rise hotel, representing “a pivot to an equally attractive plan B,” described its chairman, Marc Holliday, in a speech to investors last week.
With the largest tenant, Paramount, moving its headquarters to Santa Monica following its $8 billion merger with Skydance, it is expected that most of the tower will soon be empty. According to SL Green’s executive vice president of retail and opportunistic investments, Brett Herschenfeld, “32 floors of office become 992 hotel rooms.” With windows on all four sides of the building, “it will have the best hotel views in the city,” he said, commenting that “I think a hotel in the middle of the world’s greatest tourist destination might be a pretty good idea.”
But, while visitors to the hotel might soon have good views, visitors to the Minskoff Theatre might no longer have any view.
“We now control the rights to all the windows showing The Lion King advertisement,” highlighted Herschenfeld to investors. “How can we create enormous value in its place?” he asked. “Very simple,” he said, explaining that SL Green plans to wrap the windows overlooking Times Square with a digital billboard like at the Marriott Marquis next door.
“All I have to do is reprogram the screens, and we have the best signage at the center of the bowtie,” Herschenfeld stated. Times Square, he insisted, has “the most robust advertising market in the world.”
The Nederlander Organization renewed its lease for the 1,710-seat Minskoff Theatre a few months ago, and it is unclear whether or not any other changes will be made to the space.
However, there could soon be other activities for people to do within the same building.
SL Green plans to put a “SUMMIT” observation desk on the top of 1515 Broadway, and there could be a theme park experience built next to The Lion King. Virtual ride technology has “become so real that you feel like you have traveled the distance of a Coney Island roller coaster, but, yet you remained in the confines of a 10,000-square-foot room,” he said, adding that “we could put an entire theme park of the future at the base of 1515.”
