Shutterstock Takes 80,000 SF in Relocation to Empire State Building
By Al Barbarino March 28, 2013 7:30 am
reprintsImage-licensing company Shutterstock is relocating to the Empire State Building, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The tech startup signed a lease for more than 80,000 square feet on two whole floors of the building, leaving behind 60 Broad Street after the addition of 50 employees following its public offering in October maxed out that space.
“We’ve been growing, and what we want is a more collaborative, open environment,” Shutterstock CEO Jon Oringer told the Journal. “We were looking for really big floor plates, but if you want to go around there [in Midtown], you’d have to look at three or four floors to get the same amount of space.”
Annual asking rents in the building have ranged between $51 and $55 a square foot, sources told the Journal. But Malkin Holdings, the controlling owners at the building, undertook a massive, $550 million, three-year makeover that was designed to cut energy use, upgrade offices and ultimately bring higher rents.
Paul Ippolito of Newmark (NMRK) Grubb Knight Frank represented the tenant, while Billy Cohen and Ryan Kass represented the landlord. Mr. Ippolito told the Journal that the company considered 199 Water Street and the former New York Times headquarters in Times Square as alternatives.
The Malkins are in the midst of a contentious bid to make the historic building part of a publically-traded Real Estate Investment Trust.
The latest update on the vote was filed by the Malkins with the SEC on March 15. Of those who had voted at the time, 90 percent of the tower’s unit-holders had approved the plan, as did 95 percent at 1 Grand Central Place and 97 percent at 250 West 57th Street, which equated to roughly three-quarters of the votes needed.
