By Billy Gray 3/13 3:55pm

Lease Beat

222 Broadway

WeWork Leases 120,537 Square Feet at 222 Broadway, Builds Momentum of “Downtown North”

The collaborative workspace provider WeWork signed a 16-year, 120,537-square-foot lease at 222 Broadway, The Commercial Observer has learned.

David Berkey and Andrew Wiener represented the building owner L&L Holding Company in-house. Mark Lapidus of WeWork and Sean Black of Jones Lang LaSalle represented the tenant. Asking rents at 222 Broadway are in the mid-$50 per square foot range.

WeWork typically provides communal office space to tech and new media companies, making the lease another sign of Lower Manhattan’s growing appeal to that type of firm. Mr. Berkey was quick to point out that tech and media tenants are “nothing new” in the neighborhood.

“I’ve been telling whoever will listen that for two years now we’ve seen nothing but this kind of tenant here and at [L&L's] 195 Broadway,” Mr. Berkey said. “We haven’t seen financial services or law firm tenants. It’s not a new phenomenon by any stretch.” Read More

By Daniel Geiger 10/17/12 7:00am

Midtown South

Midtown South.

Computing Midtown South: Tech Is Booming, but for How Long?

Late last year, when the education publishing company Scholastic offered up about 60,000 square feet of sublease space at the top of the Soho office building 568 Broadway, the firm quickly found it wouldn’t be difficult to fill.

Within weeks, a host of tenants were competing for it, including several tech firms, one of the most active sectors of the leasing market in Manhattan right now. Tumblr, foursquare and AppNexus, all well-known names in the industry, moved to the front of the pack.

On the face of it, such a decision would seem easy. Of the three, only AppNexus, a firm that specializes in online advertising and is backed by the software giant Microsoft, is known to be profitable. But in a tech boom in which riches don’t always flow from the most likely sources, the deal for the space took a different turn.

The competition soon boiled down not to AppNexus but to Tumblr and foursquare, two companies that have become top brands in the new internet boom and have raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital between them, but have yet to find income-producing platforms for their services. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 9/25/12 7:00am

Power Broker

Sean Black.

Checking In: Jones Lang LaSalle’s Sean Black on Foursquare’s 568 B’way Deal

Foursquare’s Soho offices are bright and open, with a large skylight in the center of the floor that allows sunshine to bathe down on a giant wooden replica of the teardrop-with-a-hole-punched-in-it logo that serves as the company’s locational icon. Look up a bar or a restaurant on Foursquare’s site and this is the tab you will see highlighting its suggestions.

Its prominence is a purposeful reminder of what the company wants to be—a location-based social network that people on the go will use to negotiate daily life—versus what initially brought it fame: a gimmicky online check-in service that has since been handily usurped by not one but two tech giants, Facebook and Twitter.

The tech world is a ruthless place, where battle happens both online and off. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 7/24/12 7:30am

Lease Beat

1385 Broadway

Shunning MTS, M5 Networks Comes To 1385 Broadway

Joining a growing list of tenants disuaded from Midtown South because of the neighborhood’s rising rental rates and scare availability, M5 Networks has signed a lease to relocate to 1385 Broadway.

The company will take 23,000 square feet, the 435,000-square-foot building’s entire seventh floor, where asking rents are in the $40s per square foot. M5 will be moving from 245 West 17th Street in Chelsea, where it had about 14,000 square feet. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 7/23/12 1:21pm

Lease Beat

54 West 40th Street

WeWork Signs 56K S/F Lease For Former Daytop Space

WeWork has signed a 56,000 square foot lease for a new Manhattan location, the latest of several major deals done by the company as well as other office suite providers in the city in recent months.

WeWork will occupy all of 54 West 40th Street in the transaction, which stretches for 15-years.

The deal is one among a number of leases the company has committed to in what appears to be an ambitious roll out of locations in Manhattan. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 6/14/12 2:56pm

Lease Beat

261 Madison Avenue

WeWork Does 44,000 s/f Deal At 261 Madison

WeWork, a fast growing office suite company, has signed a roughly 44,000-square-foot deal to open a location at 261 Madison Avenue sources say.

The company has been rapidly expanding in the city over the past two years, most recently signing a 75,000-square-foot lease at 175 Varick Street last November.

WeWork leases space, then partitions the Read More

By Dan Geiger 2:30pm

Lease of the Week

175 Varick Street

WeWork Takes New York City

Notwithstanding WeWork’s impressive track record of growth and success in the city, Sean Black knew his tenant wasn’t necessarily going to be an easy sell to landlords.

In just over a year, WeWork had opened three thriving locations, in midtown, Soho and the meatpacking district. The company leases offices, then prepares the facility for smaller tenants and rents out the space on a desk-by-desk basis.
Though there are several companies in the city in what is known as the office-suite business, WeWork has created a distinct concept by constructing space with open floorplans and glass partitioning, a layout that fosters interaction between the tenants. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 10/25/11 9:11am

Exclusive

Foursquare

Exclusive: Foursquare Nears Deal on Broadway

Location-based social network Foursquare will say goodbye to its longtime office mates at 36 Cooper Square. The startup, which raised a $50 million round of funding this summer, has vastly outgrown the 7,600 square feet at the East Village digs it shares with Curbed and web design shop Hard Candy Shell, and is negotiating a sublease for the top two floors at 568 Broadway. Read More