Description of Business and Organization

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2016

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

Description of Business and Organization

Description of Business and Organization

As used in these consolidated financial statements, unless the context otherwise requires, “we,” “us,” "our," the "company,” and "ESRT" mean Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.

    We are a self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust, or REIT, that owns, manages, operates, acquires and repositions office and retail properties in Manhattan and the greater New York metropolitan area. We were organized as a Maryland corporation on July 29, 2011.

As of December 31, 2016, our total portfolio contained 10.1 million rentable square feet of office and retail space. We owned 14 office properties (including three long-term ground leasehold interest) encompassing approximately 9.4 million rentable square feet of office space. Nine of these properties are located in the midtown Manhattan market and encompass in the aggregate approximately 7.6 million rentable square feet of office space, including the Empire State Building. Our Manhattan office properties also contain an aggregate of 501,653 rentable square feet of premier retail space on their ground floor and/or lower levels. Our remaining five office properties are located in Fairfield County, Connecticut and Westchester County, New York, encompassing in the aggregate approximately 1.9 million rentable square feet. The majority of square footage for these five properties is located in densely populated metropolitan communities with immediate access to mass transportation. Additionally, we have entitled land at the Stamford Transportation Center in Stamford, Connecticut, adjacent to one of our office properties, that will support the development of an approximately 380,000 rentable square foot office building and garage, which we refer to herein as Metro Tower. As of December 31, 2016, our portfolio also included four standalone retail properties located in Manhattan and two standalone retail properties located in the city center of Westport, Connecticut, encompassing 204,452 rentable square feet in the aggregate.

Empire State Realty OP, L.P. (the "operating partnership") holds substantially all of our assets and conducts substantially all of our business. As of December 31, 2016, we owned approximately 52.1% of the aggregate operating partnership units in our operating partnership. We, as the sole general partner in our operating partnership, have responsibility and discretion in the management and control of our operating partnership, and the limited partners in our operating partnership, in such capacity, have no authority to transact business for, or participate in the management activities of our operating partnership. Accordingly, our operating partnership has been consolidated by us.

We elected to be taxed as a REIT and operate in a manner that we believe allows us to qualify as a REIT for federal income tax purposes commencing with our taxable year ended December 31, 2013. We have two entities that elected to be treated as taxable REIT subsidiaries, or TRSs, and are owned by our operating partnership. The TRSs, through several wholly owned limited liability companies, conduct third-party services businesses, which include the Empire State Building Observatory, cleaning services, cafeteria, restaurant and fitness center and asset and property management services.