Good news for the remaining employees of Hachette Filipacchi: your new offices won’t likely alter your commute much.
Magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi is planning to trade its too-capacious offices at the Paramount Group’s 1633 Broadway for more recession-friendly offices less than half the size at the Time-Life tower two blocks east, according to multiple industry sources.
The publisher of Elle magazine has a sublease out for 120,000 square feet in the space that Lehman Brothers used to sublet from Time at 1271 Avenue of the Americas, which is owned by Rockefeller Group Development Corp.
This comes about eight months after the New York Post reported that Hachette was looking to cut costs by finding better-priced offices. Call it providence or plain good judgment, but the publisher is timing its move wisely. The Manhattan office market has seen far rosier days, and the over-abundance of space, coupled with the paucity of tenants, means that Hachette is bound to get a relatively cheap rent in a relatively top-notch office building.
The publisher is also saving money by taking drastically less space. Right now, Hachette has a lease expiring in the beginning of 2011 for about 280,000 square feet at the Broadway tower, more than twice as much as it is taking on along Sixth Avenue. Hachette declined to comment for this story, as did Newmark (NMRK) Knight Frank’s Fred Trump, who is representing the publisher in negotiations, and Studley’s Howard Nottingham, who is representing sublessor Time.
drubinstein@observer.com
