The Big Squeeze: How Technology Start-Ups Found Midtown South, and What Happens When the Bubble Bursts
By Jotham Sederstrom April 24, 2012 9:00 am
reprintsEveryone’s favorite U.K. tabloid, The Daily Mail, settled into a cozy 5,200-square-foot space at 42-44 Green Street last year.
The paper’s online American division moved into the five-story cast-iron building, recently renovated by Zar Property Management, in March.
Like many owners of the area’s aging inventory, the property owner upgraded its properties last year, said David Zar, a principal at the family-run real estate business.
But while it may sound like landing office space on Olympus is easier than signing a lease in Midtown South, there remain some dead areas. For example, 550 Washington Street has been sitting half empty—nearly half a million square feet—since 2005. The cobblestone streets that line this West Chelsea building haven’t been enough to draw businesses, which may continue to avoid an area that hasn’t quite had the development of restaurants and facilities that other Midtown South submarkets have.
The Flatiron district, with Eataly, Shake Shack and a plethora of restaurants opening on Park Avenue South, is now the heart of the trendiest office market, mostly because of tech, said James Buslik, principal at Adams & Co., LLC, which owns four million square feet of office space below 42nd Street.
“The tech sector seems to me to be the hottest growth sector,” he said. Those tenants have gravitated toward a circle that I would put the Flatiron district at the center of.”
Being in the Midtown South market is part of keeping competitive in the creative industry, Mr. Buslik said.
“There is a competition for employees,” he said. “Are you going to want to work Downtown or are you going to work where it’s cool and hip?”
janonfisher@gmail.com
