Warner Music Looks Beyond 75 Rock as Lease is Set to Roll
By Daniel Geiger September 27, 2012 7:15 am
reprintsFacing an impending lease expiration at 75 Rockefeller Plaza, Warner Music is in the market exploring its options, sources say, including a potential consolidation into 1290 Avenue of the Americas where its label Atlantic Records already has offices.
Leases at the 600,000-square-foot building all roll over in 2014 and 2015, a mass expiration that includes major tenants in the property such as the network NBC, the real estate firm Sterling Equities and Warner Music, which occupies eight floors totaling over 100,000 square feet at the property.
Extending at 75 Rockefeller Plaza is currently impossible because the landlord, the Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, is in the process of marketing a leasehold interest in the property and the possibility of offering a vacant building is advantageous to that because it would allow a buyer to redevelop the asset. According to sources, the investment firm RXR Realty is in talks to acquire the leasehold.
Warner Music would appear to have ample opportunity to consolidate in 1290 Avenue of the Americas. Microsoft, a large tenant at that Sixth Avenue building, is in the process of doing a deal to relocate to 11 Times Square, freeing up a few hundred thousand square feet at the roughly 2.1 million-square-foot building.
