Publicis to Move From Manhattan to LIC in Blockbuster 100,000-Square-Foot Deal
By Daniel Geiger July 18, 2012 5:45 pm
reprintsThe advertising and media firm Publicis has signed a nearly 100,000-square-foot lease to relocate Manhattan offices to Long Island City.
The company, a large multinational firm that occupies hundreds of thousands of square feet in the city, is taking space at the Brause Realty-owned 27-01 Queens Plaza North in a sublease from the insurance firm MetLife.
According to people familiar with the deal, Publicis is doing the deal for the remainder of MetLife’s term on that portion of the space, a period that stretches another ten and a half years. MetLife leases the entire 700,000-square-foot building but has subleased portions of the space to other tenants, including a 200,000-square-foot deal with JetBlue, which moved into the space earlier this year. Publicis will take the building’s entire third floor in the deal, which had asking rents around $40 per square foot.
The lease comes at a time when companies like Publicis have been grappling with low vacancy rates and high rents in Midtown South, the neighborhood that has become the city’s nexus for creative tenants and technology businesses in recent years.
Gordon Ogden, a principal at the real estate firm Byrnam Wood, represented Publicis in the deal. Lloyd Desatnick and Erika McNeil, executives at Jones Lang LaSalle repped MetLife. None could be reached for comment.
