Just months after taking over 120,000 square feet Downtown at 222 Broadway, WeWork (WE) is reportedly taking another 86,000 square feet down the street in a 20-year lease at 25 Broadway.
After a one-year period of free rent, the collaborative work space provider will begin paying in the low-$30s per square foot for the 9th and 10th floors at ACTA Realty’s 22-floor, 858,000-square-foot Cunard Lines Building, The Real Deal reported.
WeWork signed a 16-year, 120,537-square-foot lease at 222 Broadway in March, where asking rents are in the mid-$50’s per square foot. The company 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.
In April, an in-depth report in The Commercial Observer argued that the decision by WeWork – and other companies representative of the tech/new media markets – to create an outpost at 222 Broadway was reflective of a broader shift that’s making Downtown a feasible and even attractive alternative to Midtown South (Condé Nast committed to 80,000 square feet inside the same tower in early March).
In fact, many claim that the invisible wall once separated Midtown South’s young, hip upstarts from Downtown’s financial office along Canal Street has eroded.
“The wall that used to exist along Canal Street is gone,” said Ken McCarthy, chief economist at Cushman & Wakefield (CWK), at the time.
CBRE (CBRE)’s Richard Levine, Gary Kamenetsky, Bruce Surry and Stephen Siegel represented the owner, while CBRE colleagues Derrick Ades, Barry Finkelman and Patrick Nelson represented the tenant.
The brokers declined comment.
